From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Thu Aug 29 2002 - 17:15:39 MDT
Ben Goertzel wrote:
>>3) Beethoven's internal processes for tweaking the melody to find one
>>that achieved the effect he wanted are not all known. But if you
>>name any
>>specific one, I will undertake to show how rationality underlies it.
>
>
> But it's not a matter of "tweaking"... it's a matter of an overwhelming
> experience of creative inspiration.
>
> Many creative people have experienced forms and ideas pouring out as if from
> some unknown inner source. Forms streaming, emanating, exploding -- so much
> faster and more elegantly fit together than if they were consciously
> reasoned out.
>
> I started with Beethoven, but I don't know that much about his creative
> process, so I'll shift to someone I'm more familiar with...
>
> The most striking description of the creative experience I have seen was
> given by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche in his autobiography, Ecce
> Homo:
I do not get what Nietzche or Phillip K. Dick speaks of as
often, but I have had similar experiences a few times in my
life. They are monstrously overpowering. Much of my own
technical creativity, why not of that kind, seems often to come
from a similar no-thought sort of place and come in a much more
rarified form that then has to be "stepped-down" to the level of
concepts, logic, engineering. It is exceedingly difficult to
describe.
> "March 20, 1974: It seized me entirely, lifting me from the limitations of
> the space-time matrix; it mastered me as, at the same instant, I knew that
> the world around me was cardboard, a fake. Through its power I saw suddenly
> the universe as it was; through its power and perception I saw what really
> existed, and through its power of no- thought decision, I acted to free
> myself...."
>
Yes. I know what that is like. During the one such I felt as
if so much information was instantaneously pumped into me that
it would take several lifetimes to downstep a small part of it
to human communicable form. It left me trembling in a deep
state of awe. It is very, very hard to not be somewhat mystical
when things like this occur.
>
>
> In no way is this sort of shit "tweaking", and in no way is it *consciously*
> experienced as any kind of rational calculation about how to create a great
> work.
>
> Is it rooted in unconscious inference operations? Partly, but also in a lot
> of other unconscious noninferential operations, including some damn mixed-up
> irrational emotional ones.
>
I will not even begin to attempt to "explain" some of the more
intense states I have experienced or have heard of in others. I
have made the attempt many, many times and none of my or other's
*explanations* seem remotely adequate. Some things I have to
grant that neither I nor anyone I know of is currently capable
of explaining. That is not an *happy* conclusion - not what I
would *prefer*. But there it is.
> Does this kind unconscious irrationality contribute to the overall
> effectiveness (what you call Rationality) of the person embodying it? Sure.
> Nietzsche wouldn't have created his philosophy, Dick wouldn't have created
> his novels, without these unconscious, wildly irrational processes.
>
Are you sure it makes sense to even measure such on the same
rationality scale at all? I'm not. Parts of them seem quite
orthogonal to a rational-irrational dimension. The Real flows
freely through the bars of our word category cages.
- samantha
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