How We Kill Geniuses
blog.wired.com
blog.wired.com
Not every good idea can make a profit. When you demand that all ideas do, you'll be missing out...
The iterative improvement that Apple uses to design and perfect products is somewhat darwinian but it lacks the random mutation and recombinative aspects that define evolution. I'd have to say (since the water has already been clouded by this new little corollary of Godwin's law) that it more nearly approximates intelligent design.
Incidentally (to the OP), you always make multiple designs before you pick one. That's not loss of artistic process. I've got three drafts of a single chapter of the book I'm working on now. I've got something like 5 different possible melodies to fit a song I've been Garagebanding. That doesn't take away from the power of the individual when it comes to designing a product. (Considering how in-depth people have looked at Jony Ive's design process and inspiration, I find it sad that people still think Apple products are made through a generic idea-forming process, that the people barely matter in the creation process.
(Also, this author is not a particularly good one, and the fact that she's citing Tom Waits is not a good sign. Waits is a legendary practical jokester and story spinster, and all reports of his songwriting I've read say that he undergoes a very strict process when constructing his songs.)
Tell me: How many post Apple I/II inventions of Woz are you familiar with? He certainly hasn't stopped inventing. He just doesn't worry about selling inventions any longer...
And the line between graduate school and consulting is getting way too thin. One of my GRAs required that I spend time on-site with the customer -- sorry, "corporate partner on the research grant."
I upmodded you because I think your post is worthwhile but I think you're conflating entreprenurship with short-sighted greed.
Entrepreneurship and genius are just different aspects of the same thing: solving problems in new ways, more often than not by challenging the percieved rules of the game.
Certainly Ron Popeil is some kind of genius...George Foreman too. But I'd challenge anyone to hand me a business model that could be formed around General Relativity! If we had demanded a business plan from Einstein before we let him continue working on his ideas, he'd probably have died a patent clerk.
The secret to doing pure research in the modern era is to hype up the applied aspects for grant-hunting purposes. Developmental biologists and geneticists don't do "pure research": They do "cancer research" or "stem cell research aimed at curing Alzheimers". Even when someone who hasn't read certain paragraphs of the grant proposal would have a lot of trouble telling the difference. ("Are you sure you're not just having fun trying to make the fruit fly grow new eyes in embarrassing places?" "No, I'm studying the regulation of this very important oncogene, implicated in 36% of human cancers, that also happens to make fruit files see out of their feet." The beauty of it is: None of this is untrue. [1])
And a lot of that vice-Provost stuff is for show. Most professors couldn't actually make money in the market if it fell on their head. They're filing patents, collecting letters of collaboration from captains of industry, and talking big about "entrepreneurship" because it's cheap talk that impresses funding agencies. (A lot of funding applications have a section for listing such things.)
Finally, it's important to remember why there used to be a lot of industry money for "pure" research [2]: Monopolies. The public paid for that research via what amounted to a set of not-particularly-progressive sales taxes on phones (Bell Labs), photocopiers (Xerox PARC), and computer equipment (IBM labs). I don't have a study or anything, but it seems to me that soon after each of these big companies started seeing significant market competition, their pure research started to dry up, despite its world-class quality. It may be that pure research can't survive in a competitive market: The only way to sustain it is via tax-supported public funding. Hopefully with more intelligently-designed taxes than, say, a tax on all our phones.
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[1] Except that I made this oncogene up. ;) What I'm trying to say is: It's true that understanding cancer requires us to understand apparently unconnected facts about eye development in fruit flies. There's little about growth and development that doesn't have implications for cancer.
[2] It's also possible to argue that the industrially-funded "pure" research of old wasn't particularly pure. It was all intended to be applied or sold... just on a time scale more suited for a monopoly than a startup. Of course, it turned out that, even given a long-enough time, such a plan often doesn't work: For example, Xerox turned out to be well equipped to prototype the Alto, but was very ill equipped to manufacture and market it. It took a much younger and less mature company to do that.
I also think it's worth noting that the longer the time-scale over which the research will become profitable, the greater the number unforeseen applications. A good example of this was Shannon's work at Bell Labs. Not only did it justify the eventual move toward digital transmission, but it also made possible a wide swath of genetics research. Now who could have foreseen that? and how much did those geneticists actually pay for the research?
As for the ability of researchers to game the system, and your assertion that the University entrepreneurship push is all for show, I'm less sure than you that "everything will be okay". I recently, as a graduate student, approached the office of sponsored research (OSR) for assistance in applying for NIH funding. The people in OSR didn't have a director and didn't know who was overseeing my department. When I finally did locate the correct person there, he was rather helpful, but I posed the question to him: There are many opportunities for both students and professors, but I had to find this one on my own. Why doesn't OSR promote more federal funding?
His response was that the school is actively pursuing funding through patent licensing and commercial partnerships, so the OSR has received less attention and has fewer resources at its disposal.
In other words, I don't doubt the ability of researchers to sell their basic science programs to federal funding agencies and the public as having practical applications, but I do worry about them loosing institutional support as institutions look more and more toward industry partnerships. After all, a congressperson might be fooled into believing that E. coli genetics research can help cure heart disease (a spin that I personally put on an application for AHA funding ;-), but Merck or Pfizer will be much less enthusiastic about the same spin if they don't have a lead molecule in 3-4 years time.
1. Jeff Hawkins, with Numenta, and the Redwood Neuroscience Institute.
2. David Shaw, with D.E. Shaw Research.
3. Elon Musk, with SpaceX.One might argue, that by definition a 'good idea' is one that is profitable for its pursuer.
Don't confuse the exchange of federal reserve notes for profit.
By your saying "When you demand that all ideas do, you'll be missing out..." I take it you are not confused in this regard.
In my experience, genius is the result of turning over a problem in your head over and over, learning all the angles, and then relaxing and forgetting about it for a while. While you're forgetting about it, your brain can make subconscious connections between everything you've learned that seem to come from nowhere. But you have to have the background knowledge.
I find that I have tons of creative ideas when I'm just starting out a project. They almost all turn out to be bad ones. Then once I explore a bit, learn everything there is to know about the area, I'll occasionally get a decent idea. If I don't think too hard about it.
I've never seen that in fiction, though.
"I often hear people say, “I’m not good enough yet to be published.” That’s quite possible. Probable, even. All I’m saying is: Let someone else decide that. Magazines, editors, agents – they all employ young people making $22,000 a year whose job it is to read through piles of manuscripts and send you back letters telling you that you aren’t good enough yet: LET THEM DO IT. Don’t pre-reject yourself. That’s their job, not yours. Your job is only to write your heart out, and let destiny take care of the rest."
"There are heaps of books out there on How To Get Published. Often people find the information in these books contradictory. My feeling is -- of COURSE the information is contradictory. Because, frankly, nobody knows anything. Nobody can tell you how to succeed at writing (even if they write a book called “How To Succeed At Writing”) because there is no WAY; there are, instead, many ways. Everyone I know who managed to become a writer did it differently – sometimes radically differently. "
http://www.elizabethgilbert.com/writing.htm Submitting essay link for what it's worth..
If any of you enjoy biographies, stories of scientific and engineering heroism, and haven't read "The Making of the Atomic Bomb," please do. It is an extraordinary story.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Oppenheimer
Oppenheimer destroyed himself, allying himself with the only orthodoxy [but somehow being not orthodox] that was more murderous than fascism.
If you're willing to loosen your grip on the necessity for all ideas to be fact-based, and let some of the fuzzy in, the idea of a muse can serve as a useful perspective on the creative process. It's a hell of lot more useful than sticking electrodes on people and trying to quantify creativity with statistical analysis.
Even hackers have muses.
I'm OK with fuzziness, but mysticism appals me.
Frank Zappa had an excellent quote about this. When discussing spiritualism in music with a fellow musician, he said: "Look, these are just instruments. Find out what the range is, and start writing." And that's what it is. Writing music is difficult, and requires a degree of brilliance to come out with even a comparatively mediocre song, but there's no magic to it. It takes work and thought. It doesn't take superstition.
Even if we start with your premise, that it's only the person's brain, the brain itself is an amalgamate of many, many other things, very few we have direct responsibility for. So, even then, it doesn't make sense to take full responsibility for any genius we may possess.
No, you don't live in a vacuum. Newton was indeed standing on the shoulders of giants. But to go from there to saying you don't deserve responsibility for what you've done is a grossly illogical step to take.
You could argue that Zappa did everything because of circumstance. You could make a good and utterly meaningless case because of that, that everything is responsible for everything. It's good because it's generic enough to be obvious; it's meaningless because if everything causes everything it's the same as nothing causing anything.
In Zappa's case particularly: I know of no other musician that learned music through modernist composers and then translated that into rock music, who started off playing drums in a small band, took control of that band, taught himself guitar and became a virtuoso, and produced 90 albums in about 30 years in every genre imaginable. Nobody even comes close in that regard, and nobody has ever done anything like it. So, who's responsible for that genius? The record stores, for selling albums that caught Zappa's eye? Zappa's parents, for letting him buy records? The band members who ducked out and let Zappa take control? Those aren't genius acts. The genius is the thing that Zappa provided that came from him and him alone.
Most historical genii I know of attribute their greatest work to something outside of them. Is there a good counter to this observation?
Shakespeare didn't. Joyce didn't. Beckett didn't. The author of my favorite novel, Daniel Handler, is quoted as saying something to the effect that the only sacred thing about his writings is that he took the time to revise them. Bach wrote for the church but I've never read something saying that he was merely writing for God. The attitude stated here, that genius comes from an outside force, is incredibly rare. I've never heard anybody who's made anything truly extraordinary crediting anybody but themselves. The act of creation requires ego above anything else.
But, do you think there's a difference between the deep insights we call genius and someone who achieves a lot? I do. The people who are most celebrated for such insights vs. only being prolific seem to have a common claim to a transcendent source of insight. Off the top of my head: Homer, Plato, Dante, Einstein. Plus, Bach dedicated his work to God, not the church.
Like the speaker says, people saying that they are the genius is very recent. Having read a fair amount of the Western corpus, I'd agree. Makes sense too from an etymological standpoint, since genius means some kind of spirit, like genie. Plus, the individualist attitude seems to coincide with a derth in good art, so it looks like modern artists are missing something. It also leads to the really lame idea that good art means being totally original, which actually results in no one being original and mostly just incoherent instead. Finally, for what it's worth, my own experience validates this idea. Any ideas that seem truly good to me seem to be something outside of myself that I've grasped. Haven't you had this same experience?
We don't know much about Homer, Plato's concept of "the gods" was one that said humans had their own free will and were not tools of the gods (brush up on Greek mythology, particularly Prometheus), Einstein gets called religious but wasn't actually. Dante you may be right about: I haven't studied him enough to know.
People claiming brilliance goes back as far as Shakespeare, who was known for being hotheaded and arrogant with his writing. It certainly goes back further, though I couldn't name specific names earlier than Shakespeare, who's pretty much the perfect null hypothesis. If Shakespeare thought he was good in and of himself, that means possibly the greatest artist of all time rejects this theory of divine inspiration.
Art isn't about originality. It's about personality. Art is partly about technical expertise, partly about artist ego. You only know yourself: the process to genius in art is the process of discovering your own standards.
For what it's worth, I've never had that experience. I know exactly what caused me to have the ideas that I do. I analyze my ideas until I understand what drives me to create them. As a result, I'm extraordinarily egotistical. It's why I thought it was worth denying the statements from the original post.
Homer starts off the Iliad with an invocation of the muse. Read Plato's dialogue Ion, where Socrates says exactly what I'm saying. Plus, you will find the same idea in Phaedrus, Republic, and the Symposium. I'm not saying Einstein is religious. He's obviously not a theist. But, he did think his ideas were not merely constructs out of his own mind but following some higher sense of beauty.
pg writes a similar idea in his essay on taste:
http://www.paulgraham.com/taste.html
He says taste is not subjective, not something people just create. There is a timeless logic to it.
Finally, in closing, here's a relevant cite from the very end of Dante's Paradiso:
As the geometrician, who endeavours
To square the circle, and discovers not,
By taking thought, the principle he wants,
Even such was I at that new apparition;
I wished to see how the image to the circle
Conformed itself, and how it there finds place;
But my own wings were not enough for this,
Had it not been that then my mind there smote
A flash of lightning, wherein came its wish.
Here vigour failed the lofty fantasy:
But now was turning my desire and will,
Even as a wheel that equally is moved,
The Love which moves the sun and the other stars.
I'd differ, though, in saying that we are our own standard. The greatest art is that which most reflects its creator.
If I came on here and started saying how we need to get rid of computer networks because they just provide more mechanisms of control, I would be downvoted to oblivion.
Painting mysticism as bad because of how some people us it against the gullible is pretty poor reason to be "appalled" by it, but it's one that happens to appeal to the biases of the hacker mind. But if you want to do more than pay lip service to objectivity you ought to think it over a little more carefully.
Ignorance of such a very basic thing as what is and what isn't real is an appalling state to purposely manipulate people into and is more than enough to damn all such practices.
Ignorance is ignorance, organized or not, and just as easily used to manipulate people. Mysticism is appalling because because it embraces ignorance and irrational magical thinking. You may find this OK, but I assert that it's bad, and worse, dangerous.
Or taking excessively precise measurements of the shape of people's heads. ;-)
The muse is some mystical bullshit that we feed one another to make things look like magic. No one wants to hear the dirty details of creating something because, for some reason, it ruins the image of the final result.
It's a Jedi-mind-trick thing.