Let’s stick to some unorthodox posting methods. Below is a conversation exchange we had after your last post. I think it can stand alone as an expansion on our discussion itself, but for the lazy reader(s) out there, here are a few highlights of some of the major points that we made:

1. Originality is valued and interpreted differently as the ‘do-er’ of the piece of work, versus how we judge other people’s final product. As the ‘do-er’, we should not be concerned about the perception of originality in it’s final work, and rather just focus on the journey and be true to your own “special sense” of your original thoughts along the way – whether significantly inspired by others or not.
2. Analogously, you can judge your own legacy from a third party perspective, similar to how we judge other’s work. However, this again falls to the same argument of not concerning yourself with the destination and perception of your work.
3. And finally, how this fits into the larger scope of balancing originality versus other ‘gains’ that factor into our overall decision making.

It’s a lengthy exchange, but definitely worth the re-read.

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 13:25]
post is up

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 13:25]
sorry for the delay

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 13:26]
I ended up talking much less about science than I thought I would

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 13:26]
I think this sets it up fairly well for the hipster angle actually

Rachit Chakerwarti, [05.04.15 13:30]
read it

Rachit Chakerwarti, [05.04.15 13:35]
One comment: feels like it lacks substance in the point. I get the academic corrollory you’ve made to add to the discussion, but where on the line are you actually dancing? Try your best to narrow in the answer to he ‘b’ word? What are examples of people who push on either? Where do you stand on it? I think it’s easy for us to just say “B word bro. Duh. End of discussion”, but what’s more interesting is actually trying to scope out that line, and see where you stand on it. For example, with vegetarianism, yes it’s a balance of practicality and moral utility, but instead of just highlighting that continuum, take a stance on where you think the dance should be drawn – whether it’s from your own perspective, or from a policy/society persepctive.

Rachit Chakerwarti, [05.04.15 13:38]
i think it’s a general point on how we should approach the whole ‘b’ word issue

Rachit Chakerwarti, [05.04.15 13:38]
we’re both guilty of it

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 13:38]
yeah i agree, this is more of that question back and forth that we talked about before

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 13:38]
take a stance, don’t just throw up a question

Rachit Chakerwarti, [05.04.15 13:39]
or just say ‘it’s somewhere in between’, where in between?

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 13:39]
I thought this post could tie in nicely the issues of culture and originality we talked about

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 13:40]
also simply identifying this trade off is not that trivial i think

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 13:40]
the main idea is that there isn’t a right spot to be on this spectrum

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 13:40]
but that culture greatly affects the range in which you can travel

Rachit Chakerwarti, [05.04.15 13:41]
but we did identify the trade off on originality earlier in the discussion, this is just another example of it specifically with academia

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 13:41]
no I dont think we talked about the legacy angle

Rachit Chakerwarti, [05.04.15 13:43]
that’s a specific take on how you judge your own products, versus how we judge other’s

Rachit Chakerwarti, [05.04.15 13:43]
taking intention of originality out of the picture

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 13:43]
i dont think so

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 13:43]
i think wes anderson intends to be original and intends to leave behind something that’s uniquely his

Rachit Chakerwarti, [05.04.15 13:44]
well, if ‘being original’ is tied with the legacy of his products, then sure

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 13:45]
i think it is, just like if you listen to the beatles now, it’s nothing particularly special

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 13:45]
but they created new genres of music, because they wanted to be original

Rachit Chakerwarti, [05.04.15 13:48]
right, but your point to that was that as an artist/decision maker on originality, that it shouldn’t matter what the result of the product is (original or not), it should be the intention of the pursuit. Then, I said, take intention out of the picture, and think about how we judge other people’s work and qualify originality as a variable of importance. Maybe we should give it less importance. Now, with legacy, it’s how someone would imagine they would judge their own work, ‘x’ years into the future. How much would they value that the work was original and not mainstream?

Rachit Chakerwarti, [05.04.15 13:48]
or perceived as original and not mainstream

Rachit Chakerwarti, [05.04.15 13:49]
my point is that it’s in the shell of the same point on judging originality and it’s importance, just shifting the perspective

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 13:50]
yepp, agreed. I think I’m coming at this in a more first person angle of the artist/scientist, whereas you’re looking at it more objectively in a cultural view

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 13:51]
so for me, originality becomes more of a bet of long term payoffs and it’s hard to separate it from intention

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 13:51]
because originality without intention is just accidental

Rachit Chakerwarti, [05.04.15 13:53]
right, but that goes back to your initial point you made, that from the perspective of the individual, it shouldn’t matter as much about the outcome for being original for originality’s sake, it should matter that you intended to try to add your own flavour to whatever it is you tried to do

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 13:54]
right but HOW MUCH flavour?

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 13:54]
a little? or should I start wearing pink pants and cheese blocks for hats like GaGa?

Rachit Chakerwarti, [05.04.15 13:54]
well that comes down to who you are as an individual

Rachit Chakerwarti, [05.04.15 13:54]
what speaks to you

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 13:55]
im not sure about that

Rachit Chakerwarti, [05.04.15 13:55]
this is your point bro

Rachit Chakerwarti, [05.04.15 13:55]
!

Rachit Chakerwarti, [05.04.15 13:55]
lol i’m devil’s advocating your own thesis

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 13:55]
what I mean is that it’s not genetics or bread into anyone

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 13:55]
it’s a conscious decision that depends on so many factors

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 13:56]
and lady gaga or wes anderson could have, in a parallel universe, just as easily become much less ‘original’ artists if they chose to

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 13:56]
with their own flavour still

Rachit Chakerwarti, [05.04.15 13:58]
Right, but i think it’s more purposefully vague when it comes down to the ‘do-er’ of the actions. I interpreted your perspective from, as an artist/researcher/contributor, the intent of contributing something unique should matter most to you, depending on the landscape of the field, what you find fun, what inspires you, etc. But, if the final product comes across as a revolutionary piece of work, or just a try hard trying to be ‘like Mike’, it shouldn’t matter to the individual. The pursuit of the journey should matter, and not the result

Rachit Chakerwarti, [05.04.15 13:59]
how we judge them or their art is a different perspective

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 13:59]
I agree with the last sentence, definitely. But there is still definitely this originality factor to consider.

Rachit Chakerwarti, [05.04.15 14:00]
that point actually kinda tells you that you shouldn’t be worried about your legacy

Rachit Chakerwarti, [05.04.15 14:00]
that’s as irrelevant as the individual desitinations of your pieces of work

Rachit Chakerwarti, [05.04.15 14:00]
it’s the collection of them

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 14:02]
Right, so even if legacy itself is not in the forefront of your thoughts, the long term vs. short term ‘gains’ certainly are

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 14:02]
and in the limit, long term gains are basically the way the world views you and your work

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 14:03]
Also, as a meta point, we’re basically art critics

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 14:03]
Who want to take sides for entertainment value

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 14:03]
Instead of just give in to the inevitable ‘balance’ of the world

Rachit Chakerwarti, [05.04.15 14:07]
‘gains’ is a completely different part of the equations to why you produce what you produce. If you’re isolating the variable of originality, then under that point, it shouldn’t matter how the world views you and your work – it should only matter to you.

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 14:09]
Interesting, so are you saying you’re not a Utilitarian anymore?

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 14:09]
replace the word ‘gains’ with the word ‘utility’

Rachit Chakerwarti, [05.04.15 14:09]
no

Rachit Chakerwarti, [05.04.15 14:09]
that’s when you isolate ‘originality’

Rachit Chakerwarti, [05.04.15 14:09]
as a variable

Rachit Chakerwarti, [05.04.15 14:09]
and base the discussion on that

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 14:10]
so how does originality work into utility then?

Rachit Chakerwarti, [05.04.15 14:10]
it’s in contrast to it

Rachit Chakerwarti, [05.04.15 14:10]
or it can be

Rachit Chakerwarti, [05.04.15 14:13]
Actually, it doesn’t necessairly have to be. Your individual pursuit of art for being the ‘original you’ should be for that persepctive alone. To put it into ‘utility’ perspective, i get the most self satisfaction and ‘happiness’ when i take that perspective of publishing any pieces of work attributed to my name. But, sometimes there can be arenas where ‘selling out’ and following the crowd makes more sense in terms of maslow’s lower pyramid gains, so the utils for my ego are diminished and the ones for my survival are replenished

Rachit Chakerwarti, [05.04.15 14:14]
i define utilitairianism differently than the classical interpretation

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 14:14]
I agree that it doesn’t have to be in contrast to it, that’s my point with the long term vs short term stuff

Rachit Chakerwarti, [05.04.15 14:16]
yeah, but if you are to isolate the originality point, based on the purity of the pursuit, you shouldn’t, hence the existence of the ‘starving artist’

Rachit Chakerwarti, [05.04.15 14:17]
so what i think this highlights is the balance is from this pure ideal and real world ‘survival constraints’, and not an originality spectrum —— all of this being from the ‘do-er”s perspective of course

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 14:17]
ok

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 14:18]
that’s an interesting meta point

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 14:18]
you break out of the spectrum

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 14:18]
and say no, the only way to live is in the ultra-original

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 14:18]
ultra-violet

Rachit Chakerwarti, [05.04.15 14:21]
not ‘ultra original’ that’s misleading, as vague and as cliche as it sounds, ‘as long as you’re true to your own orginal voice in your pursuit of your work’ —- which you may find your voice dances the inspiration/plagairism line, for example you are obsessed with The Beatles, and you end up in a cover band for them – it shouldn’t matter how ‘original’ or ‘unoriginal’ you’re perceived, but the fact that your intention of your work was as true to your original voice

Rachit Chakerwarti, [05.04.15 14:21]
(PS, this is all stemming from the point you made on your post)

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 14:21]
yeah I see how it is

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 14:22]
I don’t know if I fully agree with that because I think there is no ‘your original voice’

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 14:22]
p.s. I’m almost done season 2 of breaking bad now

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 14:22]
and I think I know where all of this is going

Rachit Chakerwarti, [05.04.15 14:23]
where?

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 14:23]
I think Walter White’s character is going to evolve

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 14:24]
they’ve already dropped the ‘you don’t know me’ line a few times

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 14:24]
and I think that’s my main point

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 14:24]
or main jist

Rachit Chakerwarti, [05.04.15 14:24]
evolve into what?

Rachit Chakerwarti, [05.04.15 14:24]
all characters evolve

Rachit Chakerwarti, [05.04.15 14:25]
well in the good shows at least

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 14:25]
so reconcile that then

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 14:25]
you say true original voice

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 14:25]
but then all characters evolve

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 14:25]
what is left of the true original voice?

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 14:25]
(p.s. this is like the basic Greek philosophical idea of how can change be possible)

Rachit Chakerwarti, [05.04.15 14:27]
i think it translates more to ‘for the sake of the pursuit’

Rachit Chakerwarti, [05.04.15 14:27]
why did you climb mount everest?

Rachit Chakerwarti, [05.04.15 14:27]
just cause vs. for the accalaides

Rachit Chakerwarti, [05.04.15 14:27]
accolades*

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 14:28]
that’s fundamentally not utilitarian

Rachit Chakerwarti, [05.04.15 14:28]
but i’d argue that there’s ‘utility’ / ‘happiness’ in that perspective

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 14:28]
that’s just another accolade

Rachit Chakerwarti, [05.04.15 14:28]
sure

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 14:28]
it’s not ‘just cause’

Rachit Chakerwarti, [05.04.15 14:29]
i mean, to some degree

Rachit Chakerwarti, [05.04.15 14:29]
you’re not aware of it

Rachit Chakerwarti, [05.04.15 14:29]
it’s whether you meta-analyze your decisions or not

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 14:30]
utilitarianism is about that analysis. if given two options, how should you decide?

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 14:30]
if you admit ‘sometimes you do things ‘just because” then you admit utility is clearly not the only way to reason

Rachit Chakerwarti, [05.04.15 14:32]
sure, so i made a decision about pursuing art for the sake of the pursuitearly on in life, and thinking about it rationally I realized i’m setting myself up for more satisfaction / utility in the future from having this perspective

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 14:33]
this is an interesting point, whether or not originality can be woven into a utilitarian perspective

Rachit Chakerwarti, [05.04.15 14:35]
also, i think there’s a difference in the pursuit of utility versus the reality of utility based on your decisions. You more often than not don’t make rational choices, but you are in pursuit of trying to simplify your world to gain u

Rachit Chakerwarti, [05.04.15 14:35]
‘utils’ from it

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 14:42]
I think the reality is that sometimes you make decisions based on some framework you’ve set up (based on utility, religion, family values or otherwise), sometimes you make decisions because they are the path of least resistance (i.e. ‘status quo’), and sometimes you make decisions because of your genetics. The third category is the ‘just because’ category and it may speak to our over-emphasis on consciousness and its role in

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 14:42]
‘rationality’

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 14:45]
Most of the time, it’s a combination of the three

Valentin Peretroukhin, [05.04.15 14:51]
you still in London?

Rachit Chakerwarti, [05.04.15 14:51]
agreed

Rachit Chakerwarti, [05.04.15 14:51]
yeah

Rachit,

You couldn’t get some better pictures of your chicken scratch? Throw an Instagram filter on them at least, or maybe spill some alcohol to add a real authentic grunge. I could barely read the entire thing, but I commend you for pushing the boundary of what a two person science, art, sports and philosophy blog can get away with. You took a known medium and altered it just slightly to make it interesting (maybe we can make it a bit more legible next time). This is the part of the originality spectrum where the majority of our favourite artists operate. They take a known medium, and give it a dash of original flavour. For every Wes Anderson, there are 10 David Fincher’s and Christopher Nolan’s who lack a completely novel style but make up for it with a few distinctive flairs and an overall solid understanding of their medium.

As a society, we understand and appreciate this style of art: take what we know and make it a bit better or present it in a way we haven’t seen before. Case in point: Christopher Nolan’s take on Batman. But if you ask yourself, in 50 years, whose movies will we be more likely to see studied in film school, Anderson’s or Nolan’s, you’d probably bet on Anderson. Being completely original doesn’t necessarily bring in the most dough, but it leaves a legacy: your own permanent stain on the cultural zeitgeist that is hard to wash out.

This is true in art, and I think it’s also true in science and academia. Academia is the only industry I know of that actually pays for novelty first and foremost. As a researcher, your job is to produce novel insights and conjectures that broaden the state-of-the-art. This novelty is not unbounded however – there are accepted research fields where the majority of researchers spend their times and where the majority of grant money is to be found.

As a researcher, much like as an artist, you have to ask yourself: how original do I want to be? Pushing the envelope may cost you research funding in the short term, but your work may turn out to be more important to the field in the long term. This is the originality spectrum, and it comes with the same dreaded ‘b’ word as all the other spectrums we’ve talked about. How original do you want to be? The answer clearly depends on the culture and society in which you operate.

Kim Jon-un may like basketball, but I doubt he’s too big of a Wes Anderson fan.

~V

Rachit,

Etymologies are always fascinating. The quote ‘good artists copy, great artists steal’ is interesting in and of itself and its history is particularly relevant to the topic you brought up. It’s gone through multiple metamorphoses, starting from a publication in the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine’ in 1892. The original quote (which was a much more straightforward jab at plagiarizers) was actually completely inverse in meaning to its contemporary cousin: ‘great poets imitate and improve, whereas small ones steal and spoil.’ In 1920, the poet T.S. Elliot presented his own take on this (his explanation is particularly salient here):

One of the surest of tests is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest.

After Eliot, both Igor Stravinsky and William Faulkner had very similar quotes (but now referring to musical composition and stage design, instead of poetry). Interestingly enough, Steve Jobs was also known for using the quote and attributing it to Pablo Picasso, though that attribution has not been verified. Nevertheless, several of the most influential artists of the 20th century all agreed on this major point.

It is ok to steal content from others, so long as you leave your own unique mark on whatever it is you stole. Does it matter that much of Martin Luther King’s famous ‘I have a dream’ speech was not based on original material? I would contend that, no, it doesn’t. Much like it doesn’t matter that ‘I will always love you’ was not originally a Whitney Houston song. Both of those artists left a mark on the work that made it distinctly their own, even if they outright stole some part of it.

I think this is a generalizable point, and one that can describe many parts of life. It is not a matter of blue collar vs white collar vs. no collar. It is a matter of whether your life amounts to an imitation of someone else, some vague idealized ghost of a person who has a ‘dream job’, ‘dream house’ or a ‘dream school.’ Of course this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t dream, but maybe that we should be careful to not let others subtly affect those dreams (Inception!?!?!). We should steal parts of life we like, and mold them into what is right for us.

Finally, note also that Elliot doesn’t use the adjectives ‘good’ or ‘great’. Instead he opts for ‘immature’ and ‘mature’. When we’re young, we imitate our parents, our siblings, and our heros. With time, I think the right thing to do is to take the best parts of all of those imperfect, complex humans and mold them into the person we want to be.

V

The lull between the podcast recording and the next post is the time you and I search for the next original topic. The new spin on free will, or droning on privacy – being original is kinda important to us, and sometimes kinda hard. But luckily enough, the search ended with the hunt this time around. So Valentin, let’s talk Originality and the Blue Collar Worker.

“Find your passion”, “be the unique you that you’re supposed to be”, “find your true voice” … the cliched words spewed in one form or another at every high school graduation ceremony. Individualism, the father of originality, is an ideal we love to preach. But for good reason – the uniqueness of individual thought has lead us to a spectrum of human achievement: the inventors of the first tools, explorers of the new world, the creative eruptions of the industrial revolution, the artists of the cinema, the new understanding of consciousness, and the list goes on. But, as in almost all of our discussions, there’s that B word that always gets brought up. So I’m going to cut right to the chase, what would we want to balance originality with? Is there even something?

“Be a follower”, “listen and don’t speak up”, “be a good role player” just don’t have the same spazazz to it. But the funny thing is though, most of the world ends up being an ‘unoriginal follower’, than an ‘original leader’. And there’s a problem there between the message and the reality. The world needs the blue collar workers to clean our drains, fix our roofs, pick up the roadkill from the streets, and more than that, we need to be able to recognize the people that do those ‘dirty’ deeds. Yes, the world does need inspiration & creative leadership, but the balance of the messaging needs some reweighing. The worker bees need some recognition. Or maybe, just sexier marketing.  But, that’s not the primary point I want to discuss. And since this worker bee movement does have some legs on it (Mike Rowe, from the television show,’Dirty Jobs‘, is making some headway for one), let’s move on to bigger and harder battles in shifting this originality balance.

Originality and art almost go hand in hand. The artist that produces the next piece of genre changing, revolutionary artwork receives recognition for the original thought that construed it to existence. But, when you ask artists, where they get their ideas, the use of the word “inspiration” often comes spilling out. Inspiration, as the most recent law suit dished out to Robin Thicke by the Gaye family, dances the line with plagiarism. And it is at this point, in the balance of the spectrum, where I raise a flag. Most artists dance this line and move it ever so incrementally. This dance does still require an original thought mixed in with the ‘inspiration/plagiarism’, but seldom gets recognized. The collective consciousness of hip hop artists of the late 80s moved the music genre into existence, mostly by ‘plagiarizing’ or ‘getting inspiration’ from each other. Yes, there were a few leaders of the movement that paved the way for the rest. But the rest, played an ever so crucial part to the movement as a hole. So I say, we recognize more of the less ‘original’ worker bee artists of the world, and maybe alter the quote, ‘great artists steal’ to ‘most artists steal, and that’s cool’.

What say you?