Orlando here,
In addition to intelligence I think there are other personality traits
involved in original insight (creativity). It seems to me one must
accept the possibility of ridicule and be willing to be considered a
fool. Pursuit of personal expression at all cost seems to be
essential. In this regard I am quoting Martha Graham to Agnes De
Mille. Her words, for me, touch on artistic creativity. Or at least
partially explain what enables it. I think they apply to scientific
creativity but I'm not sure.
MARTHA GRAHAM TO
AGNES DE MILLE
There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated
through you into action and because there is only one of you in all
time, this expression is unique.
And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and
will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to
determine how good it is nor how valuable it is nor how it compares with
other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and
directly, to keep the channel open.
You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to
keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you.
Keep the channel open. No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction
whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a
blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive.
It may be so that insights are "historically situated" and the "time is
just ripe" and if it is not this person it will be another but does
this explain why Einstein perceived E=MC2 and not Poincare'.
The Yudowsky post is wonderful.
O
Carl Tollander wrote:
Not sure that the Cosmic Pez Dispenser of Picassos would have produced a
similar Guernica painting five years later. Insights are historically
situated, as you say. Any of these players, in a different milieu or
time would have different insights, but insights they would have.
This doesn't say anything about mapping propensity to insight to some
average relative "intelligence" (as if it were measurable by one scalar
or located in one place). Even the village idiot has a good day now and
then; it's just that the crowd (or what we call "The Crowd") hasn't
engineered itself to listen. The argument that insights will happen
anyway in effect says it doesn't have to.
C.
Günther Greindl wrote:
Hi,
Orlando here,
What
is it that allows Newton or Einstein or Picasso to see something
essential that no one has seen or understood before?
I guess the time is just ripe (viz.: enough knowledge has accumulated
and is lying around for a new synthesis) at certain moments for
intelligent guys to have insights. If it hadn't been Einstein or Newton,
then it would have been another bright person 5 years later.
The intelligence of these people in relation to other people is usually
overrated.
See this lovely post by Eli Yudkowsky on OB about Einstein, the village
idiot, and _real_ superintelligences:
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/05/my-childhood-ro.html
Cheers,
Günther
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Orlando Leibovitz
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.orlandoleibovitz.com
Studio Telephone: 505-820-6183
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