Re: [pypy-dev] i just had the book FLOWS reccomeenmded to me
In a message of Tue, 13 Apr 2004 13:39:44 +0200, Alex Martelli writes:
<snip> somewhere along the line, we have the interesting phenomenon that Alex Martelli doesn't think of himself as creative ... meanwhile, he goes about life creating a lot. :-) You must think that creativity is something different than what happens to you when you are creating things. How very odd. I would say that all of those support people are creators too. However, the joy of 'helping' might be more of what motivates them than the joy of 'creating'. I am curious as to what happens to those people who are getting satisfaction out of their lives while not being creative, because I understand them so poorly This will make it hard for us to build attractive work environments for them. Whatever it is that they want, we probably do not have. Laura
On Tuesday 13 April 2004 02:47 pm, Laura Creighton wrote:
No, actually, I acknowledge to creativity -- when I write poems, I create; I bring something into being "from nothing". The "background" elements, i.e., the Italian language [or the English one, sometimes I do write English poetry], my feelings and experiences as a human being, etc, I do "take for granted": they're far from "nothing", of course, but, like water to a fish, they can be implied, otherwise no human being could ever "create". But the last time I wrote a poem was almost two years ago -- I was rather depressed at seeing how posting it made me a target of spam from "poetry societies" just burning with desire to shower me with honors... as long, of course, as I paid their entry fees, paid to attend their conferences, and, sure I would want a few dozens beautiful copies of the book with MY poetry in it, at a deeply discounted price, and... Pooh. Last time I had published my stuff, 30 years earlier, I had gotten real recognition and prizes, not these vultures preying on would-be-poets. Ah well, creativity IS its own reward. Anyway, it's because I _know_ how creativity FEELS, due to those very occasional bouts of poetry-related creativity, that I know that just about all of my programming, teaching, technical writing, etc, _isn't_ creativity. It's quite close to the _POST_-creativity part of poetry writing -- carefully weighing the syllables and sounds, trying out alternate words or word orders to get the feeling and the sound just right and matching each other, rebuilding the rhymes you've broken (yep, I'm a dinosaur, I care for rhymes!-), and so on. You have to know a lot of words, and have the right kind of "combinatorial" thinking, to mentally try them all out, and an ear for word sounds, to sift productively through them. But the creativity, the invention, the spark, is just about all in that first draft, sometimes penned with a near-dry bic on a bar napkin, because the imagery, the thought, the poem itself, _erupted_ by its own strength right out of you -- THAT is the 1% that's inspiration. Comes when IT wants to come, out of the blue. You don't DECIDE to create -- when you must, you MUST. The _rest_ is the 99%, the careful and time-consuming work of polishing up, and takes willpower and patience, as well as the right kind of "mechanical" mental skills (which can be trained and enhanced with study and experience -- creativity itself can't, really). Note that the world of poetry is chock full of rough gems that were never polished, often published after the author's death and against his or her stated will -- e.g., 99% of what we have from Emily Dickinson. You can still see the gem's inner light through the rough, but it's obvious why the author didn't want them published, or, not yet. There's even more examples of doggerel that's just as carefully and skilfully polished as you please, but just lacks that inner fire -- all perspiration, without the inspiration; in poetry (and most other arts), that, IMHO, means _dreck_. Fortunately, in _most_ fields of human endeavour, "mechanical" skill, care, knowledge of the way things are done in that field, takes you a long way. I can eat and enjoy my food in many places, even when it doesn't have the genial perfection that so many Gothenburg restaurants amazingly display, even when it's "just" carefully and skillfully prepared without that creativity behind it. Somebody, once, invented those recipes, and just applying them carefully and without gross mistakes can ensure pleasant and palatable nourishment. Somebody once invented "arabic" numerals, double-entry book-keeping, and all the amazing products of creativity that go into ordinary everyday accounting -- but now, you can just apply them all carefully and skilfully and produce useful accounts for any firm. (Indeed, "creative" accountants are probably the kind who helped run Enron, Parmalat, etc; their creativity may have helped their employers, but surely not society at large]. Similarly, thanks to the infectiousness of ideas, clear and readable books of essays can be written, excellently useful programs can be coded, perfectly serviceable furniture can be built, etc, etc, without needing each worker in the field to display the creativity that originally sparked the ideas behind the work. I do not know who invented the concept of table, that of armchair, that of padding a piece of furniture with leather, etc, etc -- without the creativity of those unsung geniuses, our lives would all be poorer. But, all of those ideas (and many more "minor" ones, relating to processes using in building furniture) _have_ done their "spreading like infections" work, fortunately, so we can all benefit -- _with_ a lot of "followup" work on the part of MANY of us "normal" people, of course. We _do_ know (roughly;-) who invented computers, programming, Python, all sorts of nifty algorithms &c used in its library, and so on, and so forth. But that doesn't really change the picture: again, thanks to this wealth of accumulated cultural baggage, it _IS_ quite feasible for the rest of us to _use_ these ideas, just like accountants, ordinary cooks, furniture makers, etc, use the products of past creativity to help us all live better.
I would say that all of those support people are creators too.
Then I have a hard time understanding where creativity stops in your worldview. An accountant carefully and skilfully applying a rich mass of concepts and practices, for most people, would be sort of the "symbol" of non-creative work; indeed, "creative accounting" IS used disparagingly in ordinary language. A judge, say, is most definitely NOT supposed to "create": he's supposed to apply EXISTING laws carefully and skilfully. I consider my professionality, my mindset when I work, to be quite similar to those of other professionals such as judges or accountants. I do understand that more creativity may be needed for many jobs where clear and complete rules are basically unthinkable -- anybody who manages others, for example, is dealing with all the complexity and unpredictability of human beings, day in day out, as is, say, a salesperson. We may have a lot "hard-wired" (in a cultural if not biological sense) about how best to sell wares, or organize people, but such is the complexity of the job [as it deals with humans directly] that improvising must be the order of the day. But I think that judges, accountants, etc, are just as crucial to society as manages, salespeople, etc.
There is an intrinsic pleasure in patiently and carefully applying rules and obtaining a satisfactory result, even if you're not creating anything, but just, say, determining judicially who, of two neighbours squabbling over their dividing wall, must carry which part of the repair costs for it -- the kind of job most judges spend most of their time on. When I was a kid, I played both with Lego bricks (great creativity enablers) _and_ model plane kits, where no creativity was needed, you "just" had to place each piece right according to the instruction, with enough glue but not too much, etc, etc. The kind of pleasure given by each kind of toy was very different: one, intrinsically unending, the other, finite and delimited, basically centered on _not making mistakes_. The first kits I put together were disasters, even though chosen among the easiest ones, but gradually I progressed to harder models and built the planes better. I also liked having the planes to play with; I could have bought them pre=assembled but they would have cost much more. So, one kind of reward for the patient, meticulous toil was that I got more planes to play with later -- just like part of the satisfaction in most jobs is knowing that you're making a living from them;-).
This will make it hard for us to build attractive work environments for them. Whatever it is that they want, we probably do not have.
IMHO, we do. For example (but that's for python-marketing, not here) we could make more, word of mouth, about the peculiar fact that Python programmers make more money that those using other languages on their job (yearly confirmed by SD Magazine's surveys) -- present it as PART of the return from extra productivity, the other part going to those smart enough to EMPLOY Pytonistas, of course, so you don't antagonize either employers or employees. That plays on the part of job satisfaction that is based on the job's rewards. Alex
Alex Martelli wrote:
This is all rather too romantic for me. I suspect that instead of some kind of romantic spark of unsung geniuses, in many cases we are looking at the end result of an incremental process. An accumulation of fairly simple ideas on how to improve matters, filtered by what actually worked. Similarly, the amazingly complicated beautiful natural world is, according to biological science, not the result of a creative spark but arose through mutation and natural selection. The result of patient optimization with an occasional reshuffling *can* look like an amazing idea afterwards.
We _do_ know (roughly;-) who invented computers, programming, Python, all sorts of nifty algorithms &c used in its library, and so on, and so forth.
And a clear example of accumulation and optimization can be witnessed there. Python is a perfect example; there wasn't a breakthrough of genius involved with astoundingly new ideas, but a good combination of existing ideas. This *is* creative in my book, and did create something new. Many people were involved in the invention of computers. Witness the phenomenon of an idea being 'ripe' for its time, and multiple people having the same idea at approximately the same time. Apparently the memetic niche just opened up and people (smart people, creative people) could fairly easily move into it.
Instead, accountants, cooks and furniture makers can and do apply optimization. This can lead to results that look like genius creativity on the longer term. A flat surface of rock can over time turn into a wooden table with legs. I've written poetry before. I don't know whether it's any good, of course, which one could use an argument against me here. I've noticed that the core of a poem does require a different style of thinking than the polishing later. But to take that different style of thinking and apply this as a template to all creativity doesn't make much sense to me. To get a potentially new idea, an unusual combination or twisting and turning of existing concepts is required. It requires an experience with these concepts; you've been turning them around in your mind for a long time. In poetry these are feelings and their expressions in language. Because feelings are involved, to introspection it feels impressive when you've reached a combination that reverberates. In other fields feelings are not so directly involved, I suspect creativity can creep up on one more. An accountant who by careful thinking through of laws and circumstances can come up with an original way to legally spare his client some taxes is creative in my book. And like a programmer, such accountant could excitedly try to tell someone else who will just shrug and not consider it creative at all. I do agree with Alex's thesis that fairly uncreative activitiy is a necessary ingredient of human society in many cases. I'm glad we don't all want to be programmers working on a new software system; this way some of us can be the grunt programmers, the taxi drivers and the cooks of this world. Regards, Martijn
On Tuesday 13 April 2004 02:47 pm, Laura Creighton wrote:
No, actually, I acknowledge to creativity -- when I write poems, I create; I bring something into being "from nothing". The "background" elements, i.e., the Italian language [or the English one, sometimes I do write English poetry], my feelings and experiences as a human being, etc, I do "take for granted": they're far from "nothing", of course, but, like water to a fish, they can be implied, otherwise no human being could ever "create". But the last time I wrote a poem was almost two years ago -- I was rather depressed at seeing how posting it made me a target of spam from "poetry societies" just burning with desire to shower me with honors... as long, of course, as I paid their entry fees, paid to attend their conferences, and, sure I would want a few dozens beautiful copies of the book with MY poetry in it, at a deeply discounted price, and... Pooh. Last time I had published my stuff, 30 years earlier, I had gotten real recognition and prizes, not these vultures preying on would-be-poets. Ah well, creativity IS its own reward. Anyway, it's because I _know_ how creativity FEELS, due to those very occasional bouts of poetry-related creativity, that I know that just about all of my programming, teaching, technical writing, etc, _isn't_ creativity. It's quite close to the _POST_-creativity part of poetry writing -- carefully weighing the syllables and sounds, trying out alternate words or word orders to get the feeling and the sound just right and matching each other, rebuilding the rhymes you've broken (yep, I'm a dinosaur, I care for rhymes!-), and so on. You have to know a lot of words, and have the right kind of "combinatorial" thinking, to mentally try them all out, and an ear for word sounds, to sift productively through them. But the creativity, the invention, the spark, is just about all in that first draft, sometimes penned with a near-dry bic on a bar napkin, because the imagery, the thought, the poem itself, _erupted_ by its own strength right out of you -- THAT is the 1% that's inspiration. Comes when IT wants to come, out of the blue. You don't DECIDE to create -- when you must, you MUST. The _rest_ is the 99%, the careful and time-consuming work of polishing up, and takes willpower and patience, as well as the right kind of "mechanical" mental skills (which can be trained and enhanced with study and experience -- creativity itself can't, really). Note that the world of poetry is chock full of rough gems that were never polished, often published after the author's death and against his or her stated will -- e.g., 99% of what we have from Emily Dickinson. You can still see the gem's inner light through the rough, but it's obvious why the author didn't want them published, or, not yet. There's even more examples of doggerel that's just as carefully and skilfully polished as you please, but just lacks that inner fire -- all perspiration, without the inspiration; in poetry (and most other arts), that, IMHO, means _dreck_. Fortunately, in _most_ fields of human endeavour, "mechanical" skill, care, knowledge of the way things are done in that field, takes you a long way. I can eat and enjoy my food in many places, even when it doesn't have the genial perfection that so many Gothenburg restaurants amazingly display, even when it's "just" carefully and skillfully prepared without that creativity behind it. Somebody, once, invented those recipes, and just applying them carefully and without gross mistakes can ensure pleasant and palatable nourishment. Somebody once invented "arabic" numerals, double-entry book-keeping, and all the amazing products of creativity that go into ordinary everyday accounting -- but now, you can just apply them all carefully and skilfully and produce useful accounts for any firm. (Indeed, "creative" accountants are probably the kind who helped run Enron, Parmalat, etc; their creativity may have helped their employers, but surely not society at large]. Similarly, thanks to the infectiousness of ideas, clear and readable books of essays can be written, excellently useful programs can be coded, perfectly serviceable furniture can be built, etc, etc, without needing each worker in the field to display the creativity that originally sparked the ideas behind the work. I do not know who invented the concept of table, that of armchair, that of padding a piece of furniture with leather, etc, etc -- without the creativity of those unsung geniuses, our lives would all be poorer. But, all of those ideas (and many more "minor" ones, relating to processes using in building furniture) _have_ done their "spreading like infections" work, fortunately, so we can all benefit -- _with_ a lot of "followup" work on the part of MANY of us "normal" people, of course. We _do_ know (roughly;-) who invented computers, programming, Python, all sorts of nifty algorithms &c used in its library, and so on, and so forth. But that doesn't really change the picture: again, thanks to this wealth of accumulated cultural baggage, it _IS_ quite feasible for the rest of us to _use_ these ideas, just like accountants, ordinary cooks, furniture makers, etc, use the products of past creativity to help us all live better.
I would say that all of those support people are creators too.
Then I have a hard time understanding where creativity stops in your worldview. An accountant carefully and skilfully applying a rich mass of concepts and practices, for most people, would be sort of the "symbol" of non-creative work; indeed, "creative accounting" IS used disparagingly in ordinary language. A judge, say, is most definitely NOT supposed to "create": he's supposed to apply EXISTING laws carefully and skilfully. I consider my professionality, my mindset when I work, to be quite similar to those of other professionals such as judges or accountants. I do understand that more creativity may be needed for many jobs where clear and complete rules are basically unthinkable -- anybody who manages others, for example, is dealing with all the complexity and unpredictability of human beings, day in day out, as is, say, a salesperson. We may have a lot "hard-wired" (in a cultural if not biological sense) about how best to sell wares, or organize people, but such is the complexity of the job [as it deals with humans directly] that improvising must be the order of the day. But I think that judges, accountants, etc, are just as crucial to society as manages, salespeople, etc.
There is an intrinsic pleasure in patiently and carefully applying rules and obtaining a satisfactory result, even if you're not creating anything, but just, say, determining judicially who, of two neighbours squabbling over their dividing wall, must carry which part of the repair costs for it -- the kind of job most judges spend most of their time on. When I was a kid, I played both with Lego bricks (great creativity enablers) _and_ model plane kits, where no creativity was needed, you "just" had to place each piece right according to the instruction, with enough glue but not too much, etc, etc. The kind of pleasure given by each kind of toy was very different: one, intrinsically unending, the other, finite and delimited, basically centered on _not making mistakes_. The first kits I put together were disasters, even though chosen among the easiest ones, but gradually I progressed to harder models and built the planes better. I also liked having the planes to play with; I could have bought them pre=assembled but they would have cost much more. So, one kind of reward for the patient, meticulous toil was that I got more planes to play with later -- just like part of the satisfaction in most jobs is knowing that you're making a living from them;-).
This will make it hard for us to build attractive work environments for them. Whatever it is that they want, we probably do not have.
IMHO, we do. For example (but that's for python-marketing, not here) we could make more, word of mouth, about the peculiar fact that Python programmers make more money that those using other languages on their job (yearly confirmed by SD Magazine's surveys) -- present it as PART of the return from extra productivity, the other part going to those smart enough to EMPLOY Pytonistas, of course, so you don't antagonize either employers or employees. That plays on the part of job satisfaction that is based on the job's rewards. Alex
Alex Martelli wrote:
This is all rather too romantic for me. I suspect that instead of some kind of romantic spark of unsung geniuses, in many cases we are looking at the end result of an incremental process. An accumulation of fairly simple ideas on how to improve matters, filtered by what actually worked. Similarly, the amazingly complicated beautiful natural world is, according to biological science, not the result of a creative spark but arose through mutation and natural selection. The result of patient optimization with an occasional reshuffling *can* look like an amazing idea afterwards.
We _do_ know (roughly;-) who invented computers, programming, Python, all sorts of nifty algorithms &c used in its library, and so on, and so forth.
And a clear example of accumulation and optimization can be witnessed there. Python is a perfect example; there wasn't a breakthrough of genius involved with astoundingly new ideas, but a good combination of existing ideas. This *is* creative in my book, and did create something new. Many people were involved in the invention of computers. Witness the phenomenon of an idea being 'ripe' for its time, and multiple people having the same idea at approximately the same time. Apparently the memetic niche just opened up and people (smart people, creative people) could fairly easily move into it.
Instead, accountants, cooks and furniture makers can and do apply optimization. This can lead to results that look like genius creativity on the longer term. A flat surface of rock can over time turn into a wooden table with legs. I've written poetry before. I don't know whether it's any good, of course, which one could use an argument against me here. I've noticed that the core of a poem does require a different style of thinking than the polishing later. But to take that different style of thinking and apply this as a template to all creativity doesn't make much sense to me. To get a potentially new idea, an unusual combination or twisting and turning of existing concepts is required. It requires an experience with these concepts; you've been turning them around in your mind for a long time. In poetry these are feelings and their expressions in language. Because feelings are involved, to introspection it feels impressive when you've reached a combination that reverberates. In other fields feelings are not so directly involved, I suspect creativity can creep up on one more. An accountant who by careful thinking through of laws and circumstances can come up with an original way to legally spare his client some taxes is creative in my book. And like a programmer, such accountant could excitedly try to tell someone else who will just shrug and not consider it creative at all. I do agree with Alex's thesis that fairly uncreative activitiy is a necessary ingredient of human society in many cases. I'm glad we don't all want to be programmers working on a new software system; this way some of us can be the grunt programmers, the taxi drivers and the cooks of this world. Regards, Martijn
participants (3)
-
Alex Martelli -
Laura Creighton -
Martijn Faassen