When Sir Isaac Newton said he stood on the shoulders of giants, he was using an analogy to give thanks to analogies.
As much as we think of science as the province of chalkboards filled with arcane mathematics, it is also the space of ideas and concepts. No calculus required.
Science and civilization owe a lot, if not everything, to analogies.
We could not function without analogies. We could not explain our present because, for that, we need things gleaned from our past.
Analogies are almost biological. They create more analogies which create even more analogies.
Analogies are the same as ideas and concepts. Each is like a miniature ladder that scales the ramparts of the unknown. When we arrive at a place that we can wrap our heads around we construct yet another ladder. Forever climbing upwards.
These increasing levels of thinking have been equated with intelligence. The idea is that the person with the most concepts in their head has the tools to solve the most problems.
Analogies are our reality hack. They make problem-solving easy and the highest reaches of creativity more accessible.
Art is one of the great beneficiaries of analogy.
Yet today many question the legitimacy of art created in collaboration with AI through the means of analogy.
When people say that prompts “in the style of Andy Warhol” or “like Cezanne” are stealing, they are denying the role of analogy in civilization.
Creating by example is what we have always done.
What has changed is we now have technology to do it faster.
If we didn’t draw on what came before us, we would go nowhere.
Is there any artist who wasn’t inspired by another? Any musician who didn’t imitate the style of her or her hero?
To suddenly disavow the idea of art through analogy seems to deny the process that got artists where they are in the first place.
We all stand on the shoulders of giants.
Welcome to Nextness. More than a newsletter, a mindset.
If AI can do all the grunt work. The repetitive tasks. The tedious BS.
What’s left for us?
The good stuff. Creativity.
But what exactly is creativity? There are probably as many definitions for creativity as there are people in the world. But the one I’m going with now is this: creativity is the production of new knowledge from already existing knowledge and is accomplished by problem-solving.
This definition comes from Arthur I. Miller in his fabulously researched book “The Artist in the Machine.” Miller's book jumps headfirst into the debate of whether AI is creative or not.
It depends who you are talking to.
Miller has isolated 7 traits that all creative thinkers possess. And two traits that, in their highest form, define genius.
Genius is what he calls big-C creative thinking, and the stuff we do, like advertising, small-c creative thinking.
But whatever the scale of the thinking, here are the things that define creatives.
Pablo Picasso
The need for introspection. “Looking inside your own mind, you can increase your own creativity and enhance your intellectual strengths.” When was the last time you just sat alone in silence?
Know your strengths. This is sometimes called your “Circle of Competence.” Find out what you are amazing at and don’t waste your time and talent on “hopeless pursuits.”
Focus, persevere, and don’t be afraid to make mistakes. “As the Danish physicist Niels Bohr said, ‘An expert is a person who has found out from his own painful experience all the mistakes we can make in a very narrow field.’”
Collaborate and compete. Yes, compete. Relentlessly. There us nothing like a pitch to help us find the outer limits of our imaginations. The best ad agencies have always pitched relentlessly, yet they are the ones who least need the business.
Beg, borrow and steal great ideas. This is fairly controversial, but there are a lot of best-sellers books about so it can’t be that repulsive. Then there’s always that Picasso quotes that grants blanket immunity: “Good artists copy, great artists steal.”
Thrive on ambiguity. This is probably the hardest for most people to embrace. We want certainty. But the best ideas don’t look certain and obvious when first presented. Quite the opposite.
The need for experience and suffering. Adversity frequently creates a commitment to one’s work that pushes creative past the conventional.
Bohr and Einstein, kicking it
While we can sometime do the next two things listed below at the little-c creative level, only the greats can do this at the big-C creative level. The type of thinking that made Einstein Einstein.
Finding the problem. Sure, we solve problems. But rarely do we find the problem. Big creative thinkers see past the little stuff to the big issue no one is yet talking about. They, in this way, bring the problem into existence. Einstein realized that science was too caught up in trying to figure out the details of the electron when they should have been looking at space and time – the big picture. So he went off and created the theory of relativity.
Spotting connections. Einstein again. He saw a connection between the structure of the laws of thermodynamics and the nature of space and time. What does heat have to do with time? No one could see it but Einstein.
Bohr, full throttle
Whether we are big-C thinkers or small-c thinkers, the beauty is that as creative people we are thinkers. AI provides with the luxury of doing more of it. This could be AI’s greatest gift.
We live in a polarized world. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the debate raging around the locus of work.
People have dug trenches deep on both sides.
But maybe we have it all wrong.
Instead of an A/B approach to work, Amina Moreau, the founder of Radious, sees a third way.
Radious is a company that outfits homes with workplace amenities, turning them into collaborative workplaces that companies can rent by the day.
The idea for Radious came mid-pandemic when we were still in lockdowns. Looking to replace the income she was no longer making from her Airbnb, she wondered if there was another form of hosting not requiring overnight stays:
“When the pandemic hit, we could no longer Airbnb the lower portion of our house. So overnight we lost a huge chunk of mortgage money.”
With people no longer going to the office, but wanting to get out of the house, she suddenly had the idea that people like her could rent portions of their homes as daily office space. So the idea of Radious was born. Your home office down the street.
“They are working parents, they are stuck at home with kids, how are you going to get any work done in an environment like that? What if we outfitted our Airbnb with better Wi-fi and invited the neighbors to come work there?”
The idea caught fire with people who were already using their homes as an Airbnb. In fact, it had many new upsides. The classic pain-point relief that is requisite for any start-up to solve. It required less work, was less disruptive, and, sweet salvation, NO LAUNDRY.
To have an idea is one thing, to make it happen is another. Fortunately, Amina has four successful start-ups behind her. She is that person we call a serial entrepreneur.
Yet, with 20 years of business experience behind her, she has a surprising response for where she learned to be a successful founder:
“85% of what I know about business I learned on the tennis court.”
Since the age of 7, the tennis court has been her dojo:
“Overcoming challenges, dealing with cheaters, how to push through the pain of an injury – tennis teaches you about resilience and problem-solving. You need to have a plan B, plan C, Plan D and when all those fail, you get creative and create a plan E and F.”
Creativity is also in her blood. Her previous startups were all in the creative services space: a music company, a production company, and her first company, a photography and video resource for brides and grooms that was hatched in her college dorm room.
“We liked doing photography, we liked filming stuff. And we thought let's just shoot some friends’ weddings and see if we make a little money to upgrade our equipment. Then it kind of surprised us because we were never really aiming to build a business, we were just doing more of what we loved.”
That last word is the crucial part, especially for creative founders:
“I think when you love what you're doing, that's what actually leads to success. If you love it, you do more of it, and you get better at it quickly. We found ourselves with a successful company even before we graduated from college.”
Creativity is often about zigging when everyone is zagging. And the most successful companies frequently turn whole industries on their heads.
Radious is no different. While a national debate rages over working from home or working from the office, Amina has an alternative that creates a win for both sides:
“The world is arguing about working from home versus working at the office. But those are not the only two options. In fact, both of those options have serious downsides. Not everyone has an ideal setup at home. There are distractions, isolation, people are starting to feel burnt out.”
She continues, painting the other side of the picture:
“But there are also downsides to the office. It's costly. It usually requires a longer commute. And some people feel way less productive in a traditional office. And I believe that Radious brings the best of both with none of the downsides.”
It’s a vision that completely transforms the idea of the workplace:
“In five years, I would like to see the script completely flipped. That instead of employees all commuting to one central office, every company has distributed workplaces, wherever their employees are. So we're turning the model entirely on its head.”
A man kisses a horse while simultaneously metamorphosing into a goat.
A draught animal in a fedora.
Then, night time…and an angry mob with torches and pikes.
Finally, it all makes sense.
The animals are watching the “Heidi” trailer in a movie theater. This is their world.
AI was created by hoofed beasts. Now. We. Know.
Of course, you may have your own interpretation after viewing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0A2-Af5JEWU
There is no such thing as the mind at rest. We are constantly building new analogies atop old ones. While being constantly bombarded with new experiences, we bring what we have learned in the past and mix it with the present to create new ways of seeing the world.
“Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and the Fire of Thinking” by Douglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander is built on the premise that analogy is the core of all thinking.
It’s not a word we use all that much. But everything is an analogy. A doorknob, for instance, is an analogy for something that is likely round, turns, and allows for things to be opened.
In “Surfaces and Essences”, the surfaces are the superficial things, the well-categorized things that we have come to understand. What we think of as being real and tangible.
"Essences", on the other hand, refer to the deeper, underlying principles or patterns that are abstracted from the surface details. Napoleon was famous for understanding the intricacies of battle in an an instant. Mozart’s didn’t compose symphonies one note at a time. By virtue of finding the essence of music entire scores exploded into his head fully baked.
It's a seemingly supernatural gift. Yet, in some form, every creative person engages in it:
“When one is deeply engrossed in an activity or is powerfully struck by a very unusual event, the intense level of interest may cause a swarm of analogies…a connection can give rise to one of those miracles of the human mind that we call ‘strokes of genius.’”
Through analogy we create surfaces. By way of surfaces, we unlock and uncover essences. Within essences new analogies wait to be created.
Rinse and repeat.
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