All of jakesmith's Comments + Replies

That's a good point. It seems potentially relevant that TV seems to have been most exempt from this trend (with all the "Golden Age of TV" discourse over the last decade or so), and TV is probably the one medium where financial results are furthest downstream from the production itself. There's a lot tighter feedback loop between a movie's popularity and its profitability than there is with a TV show. Maybe there's a lesson in there for how to promote creativity in other domains, but I'm not sure.

The Curse of Plenty

jakesmith1y2

This is great, I feel like I finally have a mental model for understanding why movies are all franchises and reboots now!

Adam Mastroianni's original post--and my previous take on this phenomenon--were pretty pessimistic about the state of creativity in our culture. But, for me anyway, understanding what's happening through the lens of this mental model restores a lot of optimism. The big takeaway for me is that looking at the creativity of the top performing works in a field isn't a good way to assess the creativity of the whole field.

When we see yet anoth... (read more)

2mattclancy1yThanks! I think there is also a pessimistic read, which is that these dynamics affect the direction of cultural creation; specifically, commercial creators will be pulled towards doing franchise-like work for anything expensive. Original and outlier work will have to happen on smaller budgets, where a smaller return can justify the investment. Whereas we used to get "expensive + original", now we'll probably have to content ourselves with "cheap + original."

The mystery of the miracle year

jakesmith1y5

Expanding on the "Youth and freedom" idea a bit: My dad was a musician, and always said that most bands' best albums were their first ones. He figured the bands had been thinking about, refining, and practicing those songs for years and years before even having an opportunity to make an album. Then their first album looks like this singular piece of great work, but it was really the culmination of all the years of toiling in obscurity.

I think there could be something similar going on with at least some of these scientists and their miracle years. They spen... (read more)

2Jim Muller1yYeah, I came here to make the same comment. It seems like the main possible dimension Dwarkesh doesn't cover. With bands there are lots of examples of great first albums that contain all or much of the bands' best work, and lots of stories about those people writing those songs starting 5 or sometimes even 10 years before the band's first album was recorded. I'll wager that the same thing applies with scientists, even though the tasks are different. When Newton or Einstein or Darwin was younger, each perhaps had versions of many of their famous ideas already in their heads. At age 5, primitive versions, perhaps, but look, Darwin was clearly a guy who was obsessed all his adult life with the endless forms of living beings, so my best guess is he was asking the adults Why Why Why about those same subjects even when he was a small boy. You spend your childhood thinking about these things, and also slowly picking up the mathematical and investigational tools you'll need. Importantly, when you get to be about 20, you also get to the point where people start taking you seriously. And then you publish and have a great year. Another thing that happens all of a sudden when you get to be about 20: You go to Cambridge for the first time, and there are other people there, both professors and colleagues, who can tell you a lot of new stuff you didn't know -- fresh ideas. Perhaps your ideas in response to it are rapid. Perhaps they have a strong and immediate positive influence.