Reading this post reminded me of someone whose work may be interesting to look into: Rufus Pollock, a former academic economist who founded the Open Knowledge Foundation. His short book (freely available here) makes the case for replacing traditional IP, like patents and copyright, with a novel kind of remuneration. The major benefits he mentions include increasing innovation and creativity in art, science, technology, etc.
For those particularly concerned with counterfactual impact, this is an argument to work on problems or in fields that are just beginning or don’t exist yet in which many of the wins haven’t been realized; this is not a novel argument. I think the bigger update is that “ideas get harder to find” indicates that you may not need to have Beethoven’s creativity or Newton’s math skills in order to make progress on hard problems which are relatively new or have received little attention. In particular, AI Safety seems like a key place where this rings true, in my opinion.
I vote for innovation as mining. I’ve visualized an abstract version of that starting on p. 14 (“Stagnation, Redux: Like diamonds, good ideas are not evenly distributed”) of this working paper, What economic growth and statistical semantics tell us about the structure of the world, piggy-backing on Romer’s 1992, Two Strategies for Economic Development.
I’ll talk exclusively about music (mostly the broader rock/pop realm), because that’s the area that I know the best (being a lifelong obsessive music lover who has played in bands and dabbled in music production and DJing). It seems pretty clear to me that what you describe is already the current state in the world of music—and perhaps that’s partly why we don’t see any more Beethovens?
Riffing on past work is, arguably, something every musician does, consciously, or unconsciously. They cover songs, “steal” riffs, sample, and combine ideas from other artists. It’s quite rare that you find someone even attempting to do something completely without precedent. (This seems so self-evident that I’m not going to provide examples, but I would be happy to, upon request.)
Population growth/demographics, but also technology (recording and distribution, not even AI) have already resulted in exponential growth of the amount of music being produced. You used to have to pay to go into a studio to record an album, and get a record contract to distribute it. As a consumer, you’d have to work harder too. If you read about some music, you’d have to go to a store to find it and buy it, sometimes without every hearing it. Now people record in their bedrooms, upload to Bandcamp, Soundcloud, Spotify, etc., and consumers can find it online immediately. (Certainly, it seems like the evolution of things like the OpenAi Jukebox will blow this up to absurd proportions.)
Why has this not resulted in more universally acclaimed music? Perhaps partly because of intense competition? These days, many more musicians can earn some income from their music, but it’s spread much more thin. Few can earn enough to make a living. This has resulted in a flourishing of many genres and sub-genres that appeal more narrowly, but may have a more consistent audience. When Beethoven was alive, you had his genius, but nowhere near the breadth and variety of music available today. It’s not surprising that no one is as universally acclaimed now.
As Oleg Eterevsky mentions above there is certainly also an element of “stood the test of time”, for Beethoven, which is not possible for contemporary works (though you could argue something like this for The Beatles or Led Zeppelin, for example).
Of course, in the idea that there is less “great art” “as judged by critical acclaim”, the “as judged by critical acclaim” is doing a lot of work. Another reason we may not have universally acclaimed musicians could be the decline in usefulness of critics in general. You can hear anything instantly online. Why do you even need anyone telling you what to like? You can use your ears! Just like it’s harder to make a living off of music these days, it’s probably even harder to make a living off music criticism (though there are certainly less people trying).
I would argue that we are already experiencing an explosion of innovation in music, it just doesn’t look like “great art” “as judged by critical acclaim”, primarily because critical acclaim is less relevant (universal acclaim as a concept may just no longer exist), and secondarily, as Oleg mentioned above, we are not judging it through the test of time. It looks like many interesting and innovative ideas amongst a staggering breadth of new genres and sub-genres. So much so, that, even for an enthusiast, it is overwhelming.
As far as mining vs. discovering, I think it’s definitely useful to think of the creative process in both ways, but that considering music exclusively a mining activity would be completely wrong. Musical ideas are expressed very different depending on who’s expressing them. Another way of putting this: Is it the idea that’s important or the expression of the idea (or some combination of both)?
In science, it’s clearly heavily weighted towards the idea, but in music I think it has to be pretty equally both. If Beyoncé had come up with the ideas from Beethoven’s 5th instead of Beethoven, it would have sounded a lot different (probably not like this, but maybe AI Jukebox will be able to show us some day soon). It’s possible for a brilliant idea to be poorly expressed, sound like garbage, and get completely ignored. Conversely, plenty of rehashed ideas are brilliantly executed and widely appreciated.
Veering away from music briefly, I agree that a modern-day Shakespeare might resemble Sorkin. Beyond ideas being harder to find, I think you also have to factor in that there are just many more people of that talent level working today, and we tend to judge things in context. If there are 50 Shakespeares out there making excellent TV shows and movies today, no single one of them is going to seem that special. Beethoven and Shakespeare were head and shoulders above their contemporaries, in part, because they had fewer contemporaries.
I largely agree with this comment, and I didn’t mean to say that different intellectual property norms would create more “Beethoven-like” figures critical-acclaim-wise. I more meant to say it would just be very beneficial to consumers. (And I do think music is in a noticeably better state (w/r/t the ease of finding a lot that one really likes) than film or books, though this could be for a number of reasons.)
One reason film may be in a worse state could be that it takes many more people to make a film—one person’s idea/vision almost always has to pass through many more filters. They cost more to make and there is more pressure to make it into something that will be widely successful to recoup those up front investments.
Books I’m not so sure. It seems harder to write a novel to me, but maybe that’s just because music comes more easily to me than writing. It strikes me that it’s a much bigger time commitment to read enough of a novel to decide if you actually like it than it does to listen to a song and do the same. Perhaps this leads to self-publishing not being as viable option. Consumers rely more on filters/gatekeepers because you could spend a lifetime trying to sift through self-published novels and not find many good ones.
Music may have the advantage of being able to be consumed somewhat passively—while driving, working, etc., while movies and books are a more immersive.
More basically, you can consume astronomically more songs in a lifetime than books or movies.
[Placeholder for Why it matters if “ideas are getting harder to find” comments]
Reading this post reminded me of someone whose work may be interesting to look into: Rufus Pollock, a former academic economist who founded the Open Knowledge Foundation. His short book (freely available here) makes the case for replacing traditional IP, like patents and copyright, with a novel kind of remuneration. The major benefits he mentions include increasing innovation and creativity in art, science, technology, etc.
For those particularly concerned with counterfactual impact, this is an argument to work on problems or in fields that are just beginning or don’t exist yet in which many of the wins haven’t been realized; this is not a novel argument. I think the bigger update is that “ideas get harder to find” indicates that you may not need to have Beethoven’s creativity or Newton’s math skills in order to make progress on hard problems which are relatively new or have received little attention. In particular, AI Safety seems like a key place where this rings true, in my opinion.
I vote for innovation as mining. I’ve visualized an abstract version of that starting on p. 14 (“Stagnation, Redux: Like diamonds, good ideas are not evenly distributed”) of this working paper, What economic growth and statistical semantics tell us about the structure of the world, piggy-backing on Romer’s 1992, Two Strategies for Economic Development.
I’ll talk exclusively about music (mostly the broader rock/pop realm), because that’s the area that I know the best (being a lifelong obsessive music lover who has played in bands and dabbled in music production and DJing). It seems pretty clear to me that what you describe is already the current state in the world of music—and perhaps that’s partly why we don’t see any more Beethovens?
Riffing on past work is, arguably, something every musician does, consciously, or unconsciously. They cover songs, “steal” riffs, sample, and combine ideas from other artists. It’s quite rare that you find someone even attempting to do something completely without precedent. (This seems so self-evident that I’m not going to provide examples, but I would be happy to, upon request.)
Population growth/demographics, but also technology (recording and distribution, not even AI) have already resulted in exponential growth of the amount of music being produced. You used to have to pay to go into a studio to record an album, and get a record contract to distribute it. As a consumer, you’d have to work harder too. If you read about some music, you’d have to go to a store to find it and buy it, sometimes without every hearing it. Now people record in their bedrooms, upload to Bandcamp, Soundcloud, Spotify, etc., and consumers can find it online immediately. (Certainly, it seems like the evolution of things like the OpenAi Jukebox will blow this up to absurd proportions.)
Why has this not resulted in more universally acclaimed music? Perhaps partly because of intense competition? These days, many more musicians can earn some income from their music, but it’s spread much more thin. Few can earn enough to make a living. This has resulted in a flourishing of many genres and sub-genres that appeal more narrowly, but may have a more consistent audience. When Beethoven was alive, you had his genius, but nowhere near the breadth and variety of music available today. It’s not surprising that no one is as universally acclaimed now.
As Oleg Eterevsky mentions above there is certainly also an element of “stood the test of time”, for Beethoven, which is not possible for contemporary works (though you could argue something like this for The Beatles or Led Zeppelin, for example).
Of course, in the idea that there is less “great art” “as judged by critical acclaim”, the “as judged by critical acclaim” is doing a lot of work. Another reason we may not have universally acclaimed musicians could be the decline in usefulness of critics in general. You can hear anything instantly online. Why do you even need anyone telling you what to like? You can use your ears! Just like it’s harder to make a living off of music these days, it’s probably even harder to make a living off music criticism (though there are certainly less people trying).
I would argue that we are already experiencing an explosion of innovation in music, it just doesn’t look like “great art” “as judged by critical acclaim”, primarily because critical acclaim is less relevant (universal acclaim as a concept may just no longer exist), and secondarily, as Oleg mentioned above, we are not judging it through the test of time. It looks like many interesting and innovative ideas amongst a staggering breadth of new genres and sub-genres. So much so, that, even for an enthusiast, it is overwhelming.
As far as mining vs. discovering, I think it’s definitely useful to think of the creative process in both ways, but that considering music exclusively a mining activity would be completely wrong. Musical ideas are expressed very different depending on who’s expressing them. Another way of putting this: Is it the idea that’s important or the expression of the idea (or some combination of both)?
In science, it’s clearly heavily weighted towards the idea, but in music I think it has to be pretty equally both. If Beyoncé had come up with the ideas from Beethoven’s 5th instead of Beethoven, it would have sounded a lot different (probably not like this, but maybe AI Jukebox will be able to show us some day soon). It’s possible for a brilliant idea to be poorly expressed, sound like garbage, and get completely ignored. Conversely, plenty of rehashed ideas are brilliantly executed and widely appreciated.
Veering away from music briefly, I agree that a modern-day Shakespeare might resemble Sorkin. Beyond ideas being harder to find, I think you also have to factor in that there are just many more people of that talent level working today, and we tend to judge things in context. If there are 50 Shakespeares out there making excellent TV shows and movies today, no single one of them is going to seem that special. Beethoven and Shakespeare were head and shoulders above their contemporaries, in part, because they had fewer contemporaries.
I largely agree with this comment, and I didn’t mean to say that different intellectual property norms would create more “Beethoven-like” figures critical-acclaim-wise. I more meant to say it would just be very beneficial to consumers. (And I do think music is in a noticeably better state (w/r/t the ease of finding a lot that one really likes) than film or books, though this could be for a number of reasons.)
One reason film may be in a worse state could be that it takes many more people to make a film—one person’s idea/vision almost always has to pass through many more filters. They cost more to make and there is more pressure to make it into something that will be widely successful to recoup those up front investments.
Books I’m not so sure. It seems harder to write a novel to me, but maybe that’s just because music comes more easily to me than writing. It strikes me that it’s a much bigger time commitment to read enough of a novel to decide if you actually like it than it does to listen to a song and do the same. Perhaps this leads to self-publishing not being as viable option. Consumers rely more on filters/gatekeepers because you could spend a lifetime trying to sift through self-published novels and not find many good ones.
Music may have the advantage of being able to be consumed somewhat passively—while driving, working, etc., while movies and books are a more immersive.
More basically, you can consume astronomically more songs in a lifetime than books or movies.