What a sensational piece. As a full-time novelist in the US, and the only income producer in the family, I spend a lot of time considering all of the above. I love how you brought Brian Eno into it. For me, it is indeed about striking a balance. I need to stay in my lane to some degree, meaning I can't abruptly change genres or write something that doesn't have page-turning momentum without risking my income, but I can't simply fall into a cookie-cutter pattern or I risk casting my soul into the depths of Hades. In the end, I find I have to keep mixing it up, pushing myself, taking giant risks, so long as those risks are calculated in a way that I can continue to make a living as a writer. Thanks for sharing such eloquent thought, Henrik! Glad I found you.
Henrik, thank you for this exposition, the idea of 'mode collapse' so beautifully described. I love the implicit exposition of your inner process, appreciating the roots of interest, curiosity and desire as they reach into conceptual mapping, strategy and verbal expression, where they might just homogenize into the collective chorus. I rode along with you easily, and sure enough, in the last few paragraphs you referenced the promptings in your own experience that keep creativity robust and potent: the intuitive juice, the attraction and excitement, regardless of fear, that keeps you awake and alive. There's today's multicolored hedgehog with 47 legs! Wahoooooooo!
Thank you, I like this a lot. The idea of "mode collapse" I hadn't heard of before and really captured something I have been thinking about; the balance between making something to maximise a parameter versus creating something that is purely from your own perspective. Kids still just have their own perspective. Whereas once you are out in the commercial world it's hard not to chase profit maximising. Now with the internet, AI and analytics, that feedback loop becomes even tighter and gives loads of immediate metrics that can be chased after. As soon as you start chasing some metric is it even art anymore or is it just a product? But then we all need to pay the bills. It's a tricky balance and I am not sure how people escape that trap
I'd love to see some data on whether people who have a job take more creative risks and so does more interesting work. In entrepeneurship, in general, I know there are studies showing that there is a bigger success rate when people start companies on the side rather than quit their job to start something new. For similar reasons: the people with a job can afford to be more longtermist and openended in their search.
This reminds me of something David Graeber said once. When you write a successful book (Debt: The First 5,000 Years in his case), the world makes it really difficult to do anything worse. A hit means giving the same talk about the same book as many times as possible.
He made the opposite decision and cashed in his new cultural capital to write a book about bullshit jobs, something that was deeply transformative for me. It not only helped articulate my own struggles in pointless employment but sparked a growing interest in sociology, economics, and more. I’m incredibly grateful that he made that choice. And I’m excited you’re thinking the same way.
Selfishly, I think the Proust book club would be awesome and that essays the size of cathedrals, as a programming+writing project, would be really cool to see. Unselfishly, the last option is palpably the most intriguing to you, and it’s probably the most eno-esque in that it slightly scares you and is more for you than it would be for your readers. Feeling called to something even though you aren’t sure it will have tangible output is such a green flag.
I'm in for a reading club. Can be Proust, whos In Search of Lost Time I've already read, but would be open to revisit in a nice reading club situation (my former reading ended with me being invited to the 80th birthday of the German translator of the complete Tadie edition, for we where in contact about many of the footnotes and stuff like that).
But: what about Robert Musil and his Man with no Qualities, or, since that also lies around at home, what about James Joyce' Ulysses?
Some twenty years ago, when I went to film school in Brussels, I actually had no clue what I was doing. However, I made some of my best work during those days (at least that's what I thought). Later, we were of course taught to use a predefined film language and certain formulaic structures for writing. And yep, I then became trapped in that container, unable to work outside those boundaries. All the spontaneity and experimentation started to fade away.
I still believe I've never reached the same feeling I was able to create whilst I was still 'ignorant' of how a good film should be made. So now I at least try to let go of those stubborn conventions in my writing.
I think this whole discussion is about personality, too. Some of us, like Eno, need variety to stay alive creatively. And although I'm also more of an "Eno type," I do need to mention that I have immense admiration for artists who stubbornly pursue a singular vision. The photographer, always taking the same kind of image of a landscape. The entire oeuvre, then, becomes one big collection in the same catalogue. For me, that's a reminder that we don't always need to reinvent ourselves to remain authentic or even original.
As I've pointed out many times, it is far easier to make LLMs genuinely think out of the box than it is for humans:
1) Take many copies of an LLM
2) Modify the weights slightly using a random number generator thus injecting some true originality.
3) Ask them your question
4) Ask an unmodified LLM to rate the answers.
From this we see that creativity can be reduced to brute force and the judgement at step 4, which, I think we can all agree, LLMs are much better suited for.
I was about to write a comment pointing this out, in case you hadn't noticed it!
This is quite a random recommendation, but you might enjoy reading Unquiet Landscape by Christopher Neve. Partly for what he took from conversing with artists, partly for his approach to writing about painting by not writing about it.
Anyway, thanks for writing this. I could do with taking on this exercise of listing out possibilities, both now and repeatedly.
I just wrote about the parallels between human and model collapse, and my own life experience learning how to uncollapse myself. Once you see the parallel, it is clear. Society wants humans and machines to narrow our focus and be deterministic, that’s how we become value generators in this world. But what makes us human is knowing when and how to fight the collapse.
secret life is on constant loop for me no matter where in the world i travel. this is a beautiful way of putting together why creatives need to be making bigger bets, ty for sharing it!
Wow. Super cool that you have such a similar observation to Hayao Miyazaki (Studio Ghibli), given that he has made some of the greatest childhood films:
> They are trying to shorten childhood, which is the best time of one’s life. I’m afraid the world of children changes when they learn how to read and write. From what I saw of my own children, when they didn’t know how to read and write and didn’t yet have the ability to grasp abstract matters, they were so free in making wonderfully inventive clay figures. As they learned to read and write, they thought in more conceptual and abstract ways. And what they made became uninteresting.
> This may be a cliché, but I think young children can get used to anything. They gradually become more boring. Three-year-olds are more fun than five-year-olds. When you compare five-year-olds and schoolchildren, the older ones become more complex but in contrast they become easier to understand.
And if we are trying to prevent being mode collapsed, like children are, I think your instinct towards fear seems correct.
> For children, what is scary and eerie is mixed with what is cute and fun. Feeling excitement is a bit scary. I think it’s a mistake to separate out what is cute, like little birds, flowers, and butterflies, from what is creepy or what causes damage. The worlds of beer bottles, cider bottles, and butterflies are all connected in some way.
I think you can see this with Ghibli films, particularly Spirited Away and Totoro. They are both eerie and scary in important ways, and I think the films work not despite, but because of that.
What a sensational piece. As a full-time novelist in the US, and the only income producer in the family, I spend a lot of time considering all of the above. I love how you brought Brian Eno into it. For me, it is indeed about striking a balance. I need to stay in my lane to some degree, meaning I can't abruptly change genres or write something that doesn't have page-turning momentum without risking my income, but I can't simply fall into a cookie-cutter pattern or I risk casting my soul into the depths of Hades. In the end, I find I have to keep mixing it up, pushing myself, taking giant risks, so long as those risks are calculated in a way that I can continue to make a living as a writer. Thanks for sharing such eloquent thought, Henrik! Glad I found you.
Henrik, thank you for this exposition, the idea of 'mode collapse' so beautifully described. I love the implicit exposition of your inner process, appreciating the roots of interest, curiosity and desire as they reach into conceptual mapping, strategy and verbal expression, where they might just homogenize into the collective chorus. I rode along with you easily, and sure enough, in the last few paragraphs you referenced the promptings in your own experience that keep creativity robust and potent: the intuitive juice, the attraction and excitement, regardless of fear, that keeps you awake and alive. There's today's multicolored hedgehog with 47 legs! Wahoooooooo!
Thank you, I like this a lot. The idea of "mode collapse" I hadn't heard of before and really captured something I have been thinking about; the balance between making something to maximise a parameter versus creating something that is purely from your own perspective. Kids still just have their own perspective. Whereas once you are out in the commercial world it's hard not to chase profit maximising. Now with the internet, AI and analytics, that feedback loop becomes even tighter and gives loads of immediate metrics that can be chased after. As soon as you start chasing some metric is it even art anymore or is it just a product? But then we all need to pay the bills. It's a tricky balance and I am not sure how people escape that trap
I love your way of thinking. You’re going against the grain… full-time jobs allow for more risk in creative work? Thank you, happy new year!
I'd love to see some data on whether people who have a job take more creative risks and so does more interesting work. In entrepeneurship, in general, I know there are studies showing that there is a bigger success rate when people start companies on the side rather than quit their job to start something new. For similar reasons: the people with a job can afford to be more longtermist and openended in their search.
i love this way of thinking! for now it is best newsletter in my list
This reminds me of something David Graeber said once. When you write a successful book (Debt: The First 5,000 Years in his case), the world makes it really difficult to do anything worse. A hit means giving the same talk about the same book as many times as possible.
He made the opposite decision and cashed in his new cultural capital to write a book about bullshit jobs, something that was deeply transformative for me. It not only helped articulate my own struggles in pointless employment but sparked a growing interest in sociology, economics, and more. I’m incredibly grateful that he made that choice. And I’m excited you’re thinking the same way.
Selfishly, I think the Proust book club would be awesome and that essays the size of cathedrals, as a programming+writing project, would be really cool to see. Unselfishly, the last option is palpably the most intriguing to you, and it’s probably the most eno-esque in that it slightly scares you and is more for you than it would be for your readers. Feeling called to something even though you aren’t sure it will have tangible output is such a green flag.
I'm in for a reading club. Can be Proust, whos In Search of Lost Time I've already read, but would be open to revisit in a nice reading club situation (my former reading ended with me being invited to the 80th birthday of the German translator of the complete Tadie edition, for we where in contact about many of the footnotes and stuff like that).
But: what about Robert Musil and his Man with no Qualities, or, since that also lies around at home, what about James Joyce' Ulysses?
Proust bookclub!
Some twenty years ago, when I went to film school in Brussels, I actually had no clue what I was doing. However, I made some of my best work during those days (at least that's what I thought). Later, we were of course taught to use a predefined film language and certain formulaic structures for writing. And yep, I then became trapped in that container, unable to work outside those boundaries. All the spontaneity and experimentation started to fade away.
I still believe I've never reached the same feeling I was able to create whilst I was still 'ignorant' of how a good film should be made. So now I at least try to let go of those stubborn conventions in my writing.
I think this whole discussion is about personality, too. Some of us, like Eno, need variety to stay alive creatively. And although I'm also more of an "Eno type," I do need to mention that I have immense admiration for artists who stubbornly pursue a singular vision. The photographer, always taking the same kind of image of a landscape. The entire oeuvre, then, becomes one big collection in the same catalogue. For me, that's a reminder that we don't always need to reinvent ourselves to remain authentic or even original.
As I've pointed out many times, it is far easier to make LLMs genuinely think out of the box than it is for humans:
1) Take many copies of an LLM
2) Modify the weights slightly using a random number generator thus injecting some true originality.
3) Ask them your question
4) Ask an unmodified LLM to rate the answers.
From this we see that creativity can be reduced to brute force and the judgement at step 4, which, I think we can all agree, LLMs are much better suited for.
"I note that the last idea attracts me the most."
I was about to write a comment pointing this out, in case you hadn't noticed it!
This is quite a random recommendation, but you might enjoy reading Unquiet Landscape by Christopher Neve. Partly for what he took from conversing with artists, partly for his approach to writing about painting by not writing about it.
Anyway, thanks for writing this. I could do with taking on this exercise of listing out possibilities, both now and repeatedly.
Henrik, great piece.
I just wrote about the parallels between human and model collapse, and my own life experience learning how to uncollapse myself. Once you see the parallel, it is clear. Society wants humans and machines to narrow our focus and be deterministic, that’s how we become value generators in this world. But what makes us human is knowing when and how to fight the collapse.
https://open.substack.com/pub/manosai/p/fighting-the-collapse-is-a-form-of?r=2ip8t&utm_medium=ios
secret life is on constant loop for me no matter where in the world i travel. this is a beautiful way of putting together why creatives need to be making bigger bets, ty for sharing it!
Wow. Super cool that you have such a similar observation to Hayao Miyazaki (Studio Ghibli), given that he has made some of the greatest childhood films:
> They are trying to shorten childhood, which is the best time of one’s life. I’m afraid the world of children changes when they learn how to read and write. From what I saw of my own children, when they didn’t know how to read and write and didn’t yet have the ability to grasp abstract matters, they were so free in making wonderfully inventive clay figures. As they learned to read and write, they thought in more conceptual and abstract ways. And what they made became uninteresting.
> This may be a cliché, but I think young children can get used to anything. They gradually become more boring. Three-year-olds are more fun than five-year-olds. When you compare five-year-olds and schoolchildren, the older ones become more complex but in contrast they become easier to understand.
And if we are trying to prevent being mode collapsed, like children are, I think your instinct towards fear seems correct.
> For children, what is scary and eerie is mixed with what is cute and fun. Feeling excitement is a bit scary. I think it’s a mistake to separate out what is cute, like little birds, flowers, and butterflies, from what is creepy or what causes damage. The worlds of beer bottles, cider bottles, and butterflies are all connected in some way.
I think you can see this with Ghibli films, particularly Spirited Away and Totoro. They are both eerie and scary in important ways, and I think the films work not despite, but because of that.
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