Determinism and Creativity and why we're so fuzzy
Human creation, like this very text, is the output of a complex network of chemicals, reactions, re-reactions, electrical signals, and whatever it is that compels me to write this sentence. I can't describe that force, it certainly doesn't feel correct to describe it as my will, but simultaneously, I know that I am not a puppet, controlled by forces non understood.
What I am, though, is an imperfect being. No matter how many times I sign my signature, or write the same word, each time will be slightly different.
Perfection isn't the point. It is imperfection and the variety that makes my signature special.
Could it be different ink used? A different pressure. More fatigue in my wrist. Less traction along the surface of the paper. A different temperature in the ball-point of the pen, impacting the flow of the ink.
I took a break from writing to pick up a pen. I wanted to write, for purpose. I happened to run out of ink while I was writing the word "determinism". This is my everyday hand writing, and each time, there is variation in the word I've written. My intent is to the write the same word (until the pen ran out of ink - a rare thing!)
You will observe the result is different everytime. There's no determinism at play. Well, other than the determination I had to fill the page. I am not using a "font" - I am using the muscles in my hand. I am using my brain to instruct those muscles to do stuff. I am determined to fill the page, yet, I failed.
And at that failure is where the intersection of determinism and creativity lie.
I am not even sure if free will exists in a formal stance - the arguments against it are pretty strong, but even if I don't have free will - I still have a compelling desire to create something, and to ponder on the creations made by others.
Have you ever listened to a chorus in a song, and wondered if each time it occurs during the song, if it is exactly the same? Have you gone to the concert and heard the singer have slight variations in the way the chorus is delivered? That's something that I ponder on, at marvel at. The variation.
On a recording, I can't tell. I could look at the waveform, slow it down, and analyse it. But I won't. It spoils the magic, and ruins the thought experiment. It leaves no time to dance. From the crowd, looking to the stage, I see them in a different place, a different pose, a different time, and I see and hear the difference in delivery.
My hand writing is the same. The pen is a tool. It is capable of deterministic creation if we remove all the variables, or control them to such an extent that the final output is reproducible apparently exactly.
When we put tools in our hands, or on a bench; we are introducing some more or less precision or imprecision. Great talent may limit that imprecision. I know that I am no great talent, but this brings me to think on those who might be.
The tolerances they may work within, given their starting conditions, the same as mine, in whatever repetitive exercise it may be, have less variation. That is a mastery, that is a skill. It is consistency. Precision. Whatever you want to call it. But it is still imprecise.
Why are we so fuzzy, then? Manufacturing fascinates me. (Well, everything does, but that's a story for another day.) I marvel at two things, apparently the same, like a juvenile Walter Benjamin, unable to articulate his Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction and understand not how two seperate objects appear to be identical. Why? Because even my tools of observation are imprecise.
Mechanical reproduction and the generation of items are one thing, but Benjamin's musings remain relevant today:
Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be. This unique existence of the work of art determined the history to which it was subject throughout the time of its existence
Digital files don't get this. Apart from some metadata, they stay the same when copied and transmitted. So when people wander around and say that AI will destroy human creativity, remember, that for a given input, with a given tool, a human will produce a slightly different result each time.
However, in an generative AI world, the same input, the same random seed, will reproduce to infinity the same output. Every time. For all time.
Until we understand all the hidden dice rolls of the determinism that acts upon the structures of our bodies, our minds, and our tools, we will always be fuzzy, and human content will always have an edge, for its ability to function beyond the known boundaries of its starting conditions.
"No man steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man."
-Heraclitus
I used that quote in one of my papers at university :) I guess I was trying to say exactly the same thing here. I just too so many more words to say it.
its an amazing subject , lets chat in discord
nothing in creation is the exactly the same, each has a unique code even if the eye see a perfect ressemblance.
it makes me think of the different languages, different accents with different vibrations.
same as the birds songs.
you must have been a very precious little boy.
It is not ever made of the very same atoms, therefore it cannot be the same. :)
Birds are incredible. I have a good, close friend who is obsessed with birds. He teaches me oh so much about the things I don't know.
I remember throwing dice at a brick wall, to try and break them apart, to try and get at the mechanism within them that gave a different number every time they were rolled. Well, one of the six sides of the cube.
🙂
When you speak of human creation in terms of art, ai kinda goes against the core purpose. To connect people.
I am fascinated by ai in the context of progress, leveraging it for a more scalable business, and love of the Terminator series of movies :) That being the case, I get s greasy feeling from ai art in visual and audio formats. The slop is piling up on the internet and making real art more appreciated.
With ai, we are less of an artist and more of a curator with our prompts. Though with the care and attention…and chemicals it takes to edit and evolve that output of the tools back into individual, random and unique art, that works.
There is room for ai in art but it is the artists that truly make the art and have to choose their tools carefully to make it authentic.
Well said.
Paul Delaroche was an incredible painter. On the invention of photography, he said "From this day, painting is dead." He was a French dude, so probably pretty dramatic. But here we are, still enjoying his paintings, and the paintings of others so many decades on. I'd argue that some of his renderings are completely unsurpassed by modern artists - he told the narratives of his time using the best skills he had. And they were nothing short of incredible. I have a print of his work in my hallway. I look at it everyday.
Yes, we can curate prompts. I've done that before, at length - and if you dig far enough into the blockchain, you'll find that creative process and my train of thought as I worked on stuff that I dedicated probably too much time into. It is laughable given how much progress the image models now have - but they are still highly deterministic with their outputs - new models such as Qwen more so, when even moving the random seed by millions of numbers, still produces a result very similar to the seeds that are numerically distant from it.
I have not heard any people at the local gallery openings I've visited despair about how AI art will destroy their creative practice. It hasn't destroyed mine, in fact, it has given me another series of tools to use - and knowing when and how to use them is an important element in understanding why the injection of our human imperfection into the process makes that human imperfection so special.
AI prompts go through a similar process - the prompt might be the same, but the results always vary. If you think about it, the Theory of Evolution is imbedded in this process - random mutation and natural selection. What appears as 'randomness' is firing at the speed of light, and gets filtered at similar speed to produce a result that seems to resemble a familiar template - will it stick? - the survival of the fittest.
With AI: The prompt can be the same, the default is that the random seed changes at run time. You can put in a certain random seed, and you'll get the same result each time, providing you use the same prompt and seed.
what would be an equivalent of a seed for our brain?
I have no clue. I think it is the sum total of all of our experiences, thoughts, and the precursor before the moment of creation. Since we can't re-run that moment more than once - I don't think we'll ever know. That's where it enters philosophy and physics, and time and starts to hurt my brain a little bit more.
I had to take my time so I could really understand. I have at one point thought about perfection and human standards. Especially when it comes to art. Right here, the flaws may just be the reason for the art. I did wonder how copies of things were produced in the days before technology and if one copy could have value over the other. What if the second production was way better than the first? Then does that make the second the original even if technically it is the copy?
There's an interesting story in A Canticle for Leibowitz - (a fictional story) where a monk is taking a copy, and an original document to the pope. The thief comes along to steal, and steals the copy, thinking that it is the original.
Walter Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction studies the idea of the copy in a huge amount of depth, but it is some pretty heavy philosophy text.
And yet, handwriting analysis determines the individual to a reasonable degree of accuracy. Like a fingerprint. Forensically, not as psychoanalysis, though the fact my ex used to write in capitals and capitals only should have been a red flag.
Especially if they used red pen, to write the word "flag".
Digital forensics is even easier than traditional forensics when it comes to fingerprinting. The way you can match data from different sources is a) super easy and b) enables you to derive insights and information that you wouldn't think would ordinarily be possible; given the two disconnected pieces of information.
That’s what we are - humans that can only exist when we accept the changes. Change is inevitable as humans because we are imperfect beings striving to be perfect and the way to that perfection is through those changes. But we also won’t forget that change also is in two ways - positive or negative.
Nice thoughts and thank you for sharing! ❤️
Change is of course, one of the many constants.
Yeah! That’s it.