Creativity and Capacity
your Saturday roundup
Professionally, I focus on creating social benefit startups. In my Saturday morning emails I share what I’m learning and thinking. Topics range from better living and parenting to business and philosophy.
The Creative Act. Continuing my study of creativity, I absorbed the book The Creative Act by Rick Rubin. After recommendation by my friend Ron, I knew I had to read it. I plan to read it again. Don’t expect any stories of famous musicians. This book is about the mindsets and habits of creativity. Although it focuses on artists, it explicitly ties to creativity in other fields. You may be familiar with advice like collecting all your ideas (he calls them “seeds”) and not judging them too early. You may have heard conflicting advice on what to do when inspiration strikes: do you follow it completely or do you try to stop the days work in the middle to allow for easier beginning the next day? The most striking assertion is that artists are channeling creative ideas that come from outside. Have you ever felt that way? (BTW, in an interview about the book, he claims “I’ve not seen any computer-generated images based on instructions that have moved me in any way.”)
AGI. In approximately 2003, at a conference held at Yale, I presented a research review and some original calculations predicting that we would have enough computing power for AGI in ~2025. While not particularly original, that prediction looks less crazy. (See headlines about computer programs passing medical and legal exams.) Back then I thought we would have more insight on the algorithms to run on all that hardware. Is it time to panic? Or at least start protesting? At the very least it's time to improve your cybersecurity posture.
The State Capacity Movement. We can debate what things we want the government doing. For those things we ask it to do, government should do them well. Do you view the US military as more effective than other parts of our government? Perhaps that is because the US military has adopted the concept of commanders intent. (‘Don’t follow my orders. Follow the orders I would have given you if I were there and knew what you know.’) I’m looking forward to reading Jennifer Pahlka’s new book on other approaches to improve state capacity. Until then, I’m settling for this summary.
Until next week,
Miles
Enjoyed this one Miles!