progress
You can get anywhere from anywhere
You need to make the step forward
To do something well you have to like it
If you can't beat the classics
The Evolution of Useful Things
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge
The illustrated guide to a Ph.D.
Stepping stones in possibility space
An Article by Gordon BranderIf we try to cross this lake by following only the stepping stones that lead toward our objective, we’ll soon get stuck. But what if we let go of our objectives? What if we focused on trying to find new stepping stones instead? This is novelty search. Instead of looking for something specific, you look for something new.
Novelty search isn’t just random, it’s chance plus memory. Together, these ingredients do something interesting.
...Stepping stones are also combinatorial. Each new stepping stone we discover expands our potential to find even more stepping stones. Collecting stepping stones is a luck maximization algorithm. By collecting and combining stepping stones, we might arrive at our destination by accident, or somewhere more interesting!
Stepping out of the firehose
An Article by Benedict EvansIn 1800, if you’d said that you wanted something ‘made by hand’, that would be meaningless - everything was handmade. But half a century later, it could be a reaction against the age of the machine - of steam and coal-smoke and ‘dark satanic mills.’ The Arts and Crafts movement proposed slow, hand-made, imperfect craft in reaction to mass-produced ‘perfection’ (and a lot of other things besides). A century later this is one reason I’m fascinated by the new luxury goods platforms LVMH and Kering, or indeed Supreme. How do you mass-manufacture, mass-market and mass-retail things whose entire nature is supposedly that they’re individual?
...we keep building tools, but also we let go. That’s part of the progression - Arts and Crafts was a reaction against what became the machine age, but Bauhaus and futurism embraced it. If the ‘metaverse’ means anything, it reflects that we have all grown up with this now, and we’re looking at ways to absorb it, internalise it and reflect it in our lives and in popular culture - to take ownership of it. When software eats the world, it’s not software anymore.
How do you know when your paintings are finished?
A Quote by Gerhard RichterWhen nothing disturbs me and I have no idea what to do more, what I could add or destroy. This is very surprising, often, when I’m painting, again and again, every day and it feels like it is never-ending […] and it will never become a good painting. And suddenly, it’s finished. Oh! Good. Thanks.
One Tenth of a Second
An Article by Venkatesh RaoThe details are fascinating, but the central argument — that the birth of modernity can be traced to a meta-crisis spawned by the 0.1s problem — is worth understanding and appreciating whether or not you’re a time nerd like me.
There is no convenient leitmotif, comparable to the 0.1s problem, for our contemporary version of the rhyming conditions, but something very similar to the “tenth of a second crisis” is going on today. I suspect our Great Weirding too involves some sort of limiting factor on human cognition that we haven’t yet properly wrapped our minds around. It isn’t reaction time, but something analogous.
Become a person who actually does things
An Article by Neel NandaIf there’s one thing you take from this post, let it be this: notice the next time you agonize over a choice, or pass up an opportunity. And ask yourself not “what is the right decision” but rather “which decision will get me closer to the kind of person I want to be”.
Four stages of competence
An IdeaIn psychology, the four stages of competence, or the "conscious competence" learning model, relates to the psychological states involved in the process of progressing from incompetence to competence in a skill.
- Unconscious incompetence
- Conscious incompetence
- Conscious competence
- Unconscious competence
Life-friendly design
An Article by Ralph AmmerI suggest that our industrial heritage has been an important preliminary stage. The next step is to carefully examine and implement design values that nurture our joy of life. Just like our “industrial design” illustrated our industrial values, a life-friendly design could express our biophilic values.
This optimistic design approach differs from naive nostalgia or fear of extinction. There is no way back to nature but only forward to nature.
In Praise of Shadows
- Things that shine and glitter
- A naked bulb
- The Japanese toilet
- Empty dreams
- Most important of all are the pauses
Things that shine and glitter
We find it hard to be really at home with things that shine and glitter. The Westerner uses silver and steel and nickel tableware, and polishes it to a fine brilliance, but we object to the practice. On the contrary we begin to enjoy it only when the luster has worn off, when it has begun to take on a dark, smoky, patina.
A naked bulb
The sight of a naked bulb beneath an ordinary milk glass shade seems simpler and more natural than any gratuitous attempt to hide it.
The Japanese toilet
The parlor may have its charms, but the Japanese toilet truly is a place of spiritual repose.
Empty dreams
But I know as well as anyone that these are empty dreams, and that having come this far, we cannot turn back.
Most important of all are the pauses
Japanese music is above all a music of reticence, of atmosphere. When recorded, or amplified by a loudspeaker, the greater part of its charm is lost. In conversation, too, we prefer the soft voice, the understatement. Most important of all are the pauses. Yet the phonograph and radio render these moments of silence utterly lifeless. And so we distort the arts themselves to curry favor for them with the machines.
The glow of grime
Of course this 'sheen of antiquity' of which we hear so much is in fact the glow of grime. In both Chinese and Japanese the words denoting this glow describe a polish that comes of being touched over and over again, a sheen produced by the oils that naturally permeate an object over long years of handling—which is to say grime. If indeed 'elegance is frigid', it can as well be described as filthy.
Lacquerware
There are good reasons why lacquer soup bowls are still used, qualities which ceramic bowls simply do not possess. Remove the lid from a ceramic bowl, and there lies the soup, every nuance of its substance and color revealed. With lacquerware there is a beauty in that moment between removing the lid and lifting the bowl to the mouth when one gazes at the still, silent liquid in the dark depths of the bowl, its color hardly different from that of the bowl itself.
To throw a shadow on the earth
In making for ourselves a place to live, we first spread a parasol to throw a shadow on the earth, and in the pale light of the shadow we put together a house.
The world of shadows
The 'mysterious Orient' of which Westerners speak probably refers to the uncanny silence of these dark places. And even we as children would feel an inexpressible chill as we peered into the depth of an alcove to which the sunlight never penetrated.
This was the genius of our ancestors, that by cutting off the light from this empty space they imparted to the world of shadows that formed there a quality of mystery and depth superior to that of any wall painting or ornament.
That one thing against another creates
Such is our way of thinking—we find beauty not in the thing itself but in the patterns of shadows, the light and the darkness, that one thing against another creates.
Wasting light
Yamamoto Sanehiko, president of the Kaizo publishing house, told me of something that happened when he escorted Dr. Einstein on a trip to Kyoto. As the train neared Ishiyama, Einstein looked out the window and remarked, "Now that is terribly wasteful." When asked what he meant, Einstein pointed to an electric lamp burning in broad daylight.
And the truth of the matter is that Japan wastes more electric light than any Western country except America.
- Poured
The eaves deep and the walls dark
I would call back at least for literature this world of shadows we are losing. In the mansion called literature I would have the eaves deep and the walls dark, I would push back into the shadows the things that come forward too clearly, I would strip away the the useless decoration. I do not ask that this be done everywhere, but perhaps we may be allowed at least one mansion where we can turn off the electric lights and see what it is like without them.
Follow the brush
One of the oldest and most deeply ingrained of Japanese attitudes to literary style holds that obvious structure is contrivance, that too orderly an exposition falsifies the ruminations of the heart, that the truest representation of the searching mind is just to 'follow the brush.'
I could never live in a house like that
Mrs. Tanizaki tells a story of when her late husband decided, as he frequently did, to build a new house. The architect arrived and announced with pride, "I've read your In Praise of Shadows, Mr. Tanizaki, and know exactly what you want."
To which Tanizaki replied, "But no, I could never live in a house like that."
There is perhaps as much resignation as humor in his answer.