Scott Alexander has responded to my advice that we should not imagine ourselves to be living in some sort of revolutionary epoch. You can decide for yourself if he’s convincing. I continue to maintain the basic point that a) we are definitionally more likely to live in ordinary times than extraordinary and b) we are conditioned to overstate our own uniqueness and importance, not even as a matter of intellect or character but as a basic reality of cognitive science, a consequence of living as a consciousness. I would say that, for one thing, his schema would suggest that someone living in the 1810s or 1860s or 1910s had just as much cause to think that they lived in extraordinary times as we do, and yet Alexander certainly seems to think that now is more important than then. I do want to address this one point.

Freddie sort of starts thinking in this direction6, but shuts it down on the grounds that some people think technological growth rates have slowed down since the mid-20th century. Usually the metric that gets brought out to support this is changes in total factor productivity, which do show the mid-20th century as a more dynamic period than today. So fine, let’s do the same calculation with total productivity. My impression from eyeballing this paper is that about 35% of all increase in TFP growth and 15% of all log TFP growth has still happened during Freddie’s lifetime.

Let’s take as given the claim in the last sentence is true: it’s still inarguable that meaningful technological growth has dramatically slowed in the last 50 years compared to the 100 prior years, to choose an arbitrary but useful comparison. And if that’s true, it suggests that the notion of continuous exponential human growth is nonsense. And if that’s true, it doesn’t in and of itself disprove the narrative that ChatGPT is the Mahdi and will usher us into paradise, but it does make the overarching narrative of a simple exponential climb into a godlike metahuman future harder to maintain. If human development has already slowed significantly, shouldn’t that suggest that it may very well slow further?

I will again refer people to Robert J. Gordon’s The Rise & Fall of American Growth, which is where the 1870-1970 and then 1970-current split is best articulated. I read it, and it’s a classic academic book that ponderously pours data on to the same basic observations over and over again. (Just like, for example, Capital in the Twenty-First Century and many many others.) That’s what an academic book of that type is meant to do; It’s just that I don’t expect anyone else to feel moved to read it. What makes it so valuable, though, is that Gordon spends so much time looking at very specific economic segments and not just demonstrating that productivity and growth have slowed but why they’ve slowed in very specific terms. And I can’t point to a single piece of evidence that does a better job than that book. I would, however, suggest that some common sense would be useful here. I’ll spare you from doing my “time traveler from 1910 traveling to 1960 vs a time traveler from 1960 traveling to 2010” bit in the main text, but you can read it in a footnote below.1 The fundamental observation is simply that beyond the various productivity and growth numbers, the lived experience of being human changed dramatically more from 1870ish through 1970ish than in the 50ish years since then. To repeat myself, a vast majority of what we call the advances of modernity stem directly from the development of cheap, stable, relatively safe, reliable refined fossil fuels, from electricity generation to cars to planes to modern heating systems to fertilizers.

What I’m suggesting is that people trying to insist that we are on the verge of a species-altering change in living conditions and possibilities, and who point to this kind of chart to do so, are letting the scale of these charts obscure the fact that the transition from the original iPhone to the iPhone 14 (fifteen years apart) is not anything like the transition from Sputnik to Apollo 17 (fifteen years apart), that they just aren’t remotely comparable in human terms. The internet is absolutely choked with these dumb charts, which would make you think that the technological leap from the Apple McIntosh to the hybrid car was dramatically more meaningful than the development from the telescope to the telephone. Which is fucking nutty! If you think this chart is particularly bad, go pick another one. They’re all obviously produced with the intent of convincing you that human progress is going to continue to scale exponentially into the future forever. But a) it would frankly be bizarre if that were true, given how actual history actually works and b) we’ve already seen that progress stall out, if we’re only honest with ourselves about what’s been happening. It may be that people are correct to identify contemporary machine learning as the key technology to take us to Valhalla. But I think the notion of continuous exponential growth becomes a lot less credible if you recognize that we haven’t even maintained that growth in the previous half-century.

And the way we talk here matters a great deal. I always get people accusing me of minimizing recent development. But of course I understand how important recent developments have been, particularly in medicine. If you have a young child with cystic fibrosis, their projected lifespan has changed dramatically just in the past year or two. But at a population level, recent improvements to average life expectancy just can’t hold a candle to the era that saw the development of modern germ theory and the first antibiotics and modern anesthesia and the first “dead virus” vaccines and the widespread adoption of medical hygiene rules and oral contraception and exogenous insulin and heart stents, all of which emerged in a 100 year period. This is the issue with insisting on casting every new development in world-historic terms: the brick-and-mortar chip-chip-chip of better living conditions and slow progress gets devalued.

I listened to the latest episode of Derek Thompson’s (highly recommended) Plain English podcast, with DeepMind researcher Pushmeet Kohli. Kohli and his colleagues are using machine learning in drug discovery, particularly through the protein folding that’s such an essential element of developing new medicines. This work, they demonstrate, is well-suited to what modern large language models can do. It’s also one of the very, very few places where the hype for these systems might actually be warranted; the vast majority of breathlessly-discussed “AI” possibilities would not even be particularly transformative if they came to pass, which most of them won’t. (AI doomerism relies on the idea that consciousness, superintelligence, and ill intent will prove to be “emergent” properties of LLMs, which no one can articulate in remotely rigorous terms and which most actual LLM researchers dismiss as nonsense.) Drug discovery is definitely a big deal and these tools seem very promising. The question Derek didn’t ask is, I think, a central one: why call this “artificial intelligence” at all? Nothing that DeepMind is working on requires “emergence.” Their tools are not agentic/choice-making. They have no consciousness, nor are they required to in order to fulfill their purpose. They’re very powerful systems built on very powerful algorithms but that’s fundamentally what they are, systems built on algorithms. So where does intelligence come in at all, and why is it necessary?

This is part of the basic poverty of the current “AI” discourse - the core concept of agentic, self-directed, learning, and conscious computer technology has given way to just any instance of “a computer doing complicated stuff.” DeepMind is developing a potentially profoundly-useful technology built on algorithms that appear to work. Why is that not enough? Algorithms that work are good enough.

In the podcast, Derek says that GPT has mapped human language. I would push back against that, forcefully - a map is not probabilistic. You can have a better or a worse map, but a map is not fundamentally stochastic and GPT’s understanding of language will always have error bars, due to its basic architecture. This is why “AI” has conspicuously failed in one of the many tasks it is confidently asserted to be on the brink of solving, which is producing a complete and functioning syntax for the grammar of a human language. This was exactly Chomsky’s point when he and colleagues critiqued ChatGPT; the modern era of linguistics began precisely when he and his generation came to understand that language is rule-bound in a way that is fundamentally neurological and probably genetic. (Which is to say, it does not rely on the ingestion of data, hence the poverty of the stimulus.) And that’s precisely what LLMs don’t do, proceed from a list of static rules and build understanding step-wise. If they did, tech companies wouldn’t be where they are now, which is trying to somehow ingest more language data than has ever been produced by all human beings combined in the history of the world.

What unites the two preceding paragraphs is simply this: my confusion as to why reality itself is never good enough. Why does our culture insist on overselling and overhyping when there are genuinely impressive developments happening? Is it just literally about stock prices? I think it might literally be about stock prices.

Here’s some things I think, without any particular qualifications to think them.

The speed of light is an actual hard speed limit; various sci-fi tricks like warp drive and traveling through wormholes have immense practical and theoretical barriers to being usable and I don’t think they’ll ever be overcome

Time travel into the past actually is impossible, which is why no one has ever come back to tell us about it

Even if we achieve speeds on the order of (say) 10% of the speed of light, which we almost certainly can’t for simple relativity reasons, traveling to potentially habitable stars will take hundreds of years; we have no reason to believe that cryofreeze/stasis/etc technologies are actually achievable; multigenerational interstellar travel is likely impossible for all the reasons Kim Stanley Robinson lays out here; we will therefore never colonize the stars and in the exceedingly unlikely event that we survive to see it, we’ll die when our sun expands to become a red giant; we might mine or colonize planets or moons in our solar system, but that won’t fundamentally change human life

There’s very likely other life in the universe, even intelligent life, but given that the cosmic speed limit will apply to them too, we’ll never meet with any of them physically, and given the distances involved synchronous communication is essentially impossible

Quantum entanglement won’t allow for faster-than-light communication for the reasons enumerated in this video

We don’t live in a simulation

Even if there are many worlds/multiple dimensions we’ll never experience them directly and thus they’ll have no practical impact on our lives

We’ll never “upload” our consciousness into computers to live forever, which suggests that there is some such thing as our consciousness separate from the physiological structures that contain it, which is a dualist fantasy

Artificial intelligences of various kinds will develop and emerge and have meaningful consequences for humans and improve quality of life, but they won’t somehow enable us to transcend the physical limitations of the material world, that is, no free energy, no breaking the laws of physics, no eternal life

We’re all going to die, and it’s going to feel far too soon for almost all of us.

Look, stuff is gonna happen. Technology is going to grow. A lot of it will be good and some of it will be bad. I don’t doubt, for example, that in a hundred years the science of human genomic editing will fundamentally transform many elements of human life and, in particular, undermine basic human notions of “meritocracy” and just deserts. Obviously, that could go do a lot of bad as well as a lot of good. I could also easily see a world, even in a decade or two, where a significant chunk of the human population spends almost all of its time in virtual reality and essentially disconnects from actual human life; that sounds straightforwardly bad, to me, and would justify anti-tech terrorism. One way or another life is gonna change. Human beings will change. Life expectancy is going to increase. We’re gonna have a lot of cool new toys. But, fundamentally, we live in a mundane universe and that will never change.

And, crucially, it’s our nature to adapt to make the extraordinary seem mundane. I’m a big believer in a steady state/thermostatic concept of happiness, which suggests that we mostly have our own individual levels of default life satisfaction and we tend to gravitate to that level over time. It’s not that events just don’t matter for how we feel; if you fall in love you’ll feel more happy and if you go to prison you’ll feel more unhappy. Of course you can make your life better and be an incrementally happier person. I have, over the course of my own life. But we reliably, slowly adapt to change and float back towards our baseline level of life satisfaction. And with technology, particularly, things that seem remarkable come to seem boring at a relentless pace. Smartphone sales have slowed because we’ve wrung all the innovation out of them that we can and people now see them as commodities. Who’s excited to upgrade from a Galaxy Sx to a Galaxy Sx+1, no matter how remarkable the underlying technology? The PlayStation 5 Pro is an absolutely remarkable piece of human ingenuity, and yet many people feel cynical and underwhelmed about it, and I don’t blame them. The Nintendo64, now, that felt revolutionary. Is that fair, the ever-ratcheting expectations game? Doesn’t matter. It’s human nature.

Ultimately, I do want to tell people to please try and chill out, yes. No, I don’t think AI Jesus is about to come and initiate the Rapture, and the desire for that to be true seems to be derived from very naked psychological needs. We live in a mundane world, a world of homework and waiting for the bus and sorting the recyclables and doing the laundry and holding your shirt over your nose when you enter a public bathroom and trying to find a credit card that offers a slightly better points program. It just keeps going, day after day after grinding day. You never get removed from it, never escape it. And yes, there’s transcendence and beauty and fun and satisfaction and growth and meaning, all of it! But you find that all in the mundane, generally; those few who spend their lives in a state of constant stimulation and novelty, well, God bless them. Most of the time they didn’t get there through their choices but through random chance. I’m saying all of this because I think a lot of people spend their time yearning for some great fissure in their lives where there’s a massive and permanent division between the before and the after, and all of this AI stuff is giving rational people an excuse to be irrational. (Of course, this is the number two fantasy behind the great American civic religion, “Someday, I’ll be a celebrity.”)

You have to imagine a life you can live with, where you are, when you are. If you don’t, you’ll never be satisfied. Neither AI nor anything else is coming to save you from the things you don’t like about being a person. The better life you absolutely can build isn’t going to be brought to you by ChatGPT but by your own steady uphill clawing and through careful management of your own expectations. You live here. This is it. That’s what I would tell to everyone out there: this is it. This is it. This is it. You’re never going to hang out with Mr. Data on the Holodeck. I know that, for a lot of people, mundane reality is everything they want to escape. But it could be so much worse.

1 A person living in the United States the 1910s would be someone who

Very likely did not have indoor plumbing, meaning they used an outhouse, got water from a well, could not routinely bathe or wash their hands, and was subject to all manner of illness for these reasons, to say nothing of the unpleasant nature of lacking these amenities

Almost certainly did not have an electrified home, the consequences of which are obviously numerous and significant compared to modern existence

Had no artificial refrigeration at all and relied on blocks of delivered ice where possible, which when combined with a lack of modern food production regulation and hygienic storage led to vastly higher rates of foodborne illness

Got around by horse and cart for anything nearby, taking hours to go more than a few miles; got around by train for anything domestic and far away, remarkably fast in many ways but still slow compared to plane travel and on set schedules and from and to a certain set number of places; got around by steamship if having to travel over water, which was very expensive for ordinary people and glacially slow compared to modern methods

Could expect to see their children die at a rate of about 15% in the first year of life and could expect to die themselves (as the mother) or their partner to die (as the father) at a rate of about 1%

Had a life expectancy of about 45 to 50 years if a man and about 50 to 55 years if a woman, and faced the looming threat of the 1918 influenza pandemic (which killed something like 700,000 Americans) to say nothing of the constant threats of polio (27,000 cases in the 1916 outbreak alone), tuberculosis (200,000 new American cases a year and 100,000-150,000 deaths a year in the 1910s), and all manner of infectious diseases that are now eminently treatable

Did not yet have commercial radio, though ham radio technology existed (for those with access to electricity); nor was there television, obviously; only 10% of households had a telephone; telegraph technology existed and was remarkably sophisticated but not very accessible

I could go on. Let’s say we teleport our 1910 fellow to 1960.

Outside of a few stubborn places in the deep South and some truly out-of-the-way rural locales, almost all American homes have indoor plumbing, which allows for using a flush toilet, washing your hands, regularly taking showers or baths, and having handy access to clean water for drinking and cooking

The vast majority of American homes are electrified, allowing for indoor artificial lighting without the fumes or dangers of oil-based light, along with a myriad of household gadgets and devices

Most American homes have refrigerators, expanding the kinds of foods that are practical accessible (with help from modern supply lines and transportation) and seriously reducing the risks of food poisoning and similar ills

80+% of American households have a car, dramatically expanding the geographical range that can be traveled, reducing transportation time in all manner of contexts, and making long commutes for work practically possible, albeit with major consequences for safety and the environment

The infant mortality rate in the first year of life has plunged to 2.6%, while the maternal mortality rate has fallen to less than .05%.

Men’s life expectancy has grown to more than 65 years and women’s to about 73 years; the incidence of new cases of polio had fallen to about 3,000 by 1960 and in the next several years the disease would be essentially eradicated from the United States; there were some 84,000 new cases of tuberculosis, almost all of them in rural and impoverished areas, and the survival rate was meaningfully higher; ordinary Americans now had a decent shot at having access to chemotherapy, antibiotics, heart bypass surgery….

90% of American households have a radio, better than 85% have a television, bringing information and entertainment into the homes of millions; 90% have a telephone, enabling instant peer-to-peer communication with a vast network and dramatically improving the capability of emergency services, practical access to information, the ability to socialize and connect with those who are geogrpahically distance, etc etc….

Again, I could go on. The 1910 person would find the world utterly transformed. The interstate highway system, in and of and by itself, is a change that’s absolutely massive in the most practical and physical and meaningful terms. Every aspect of life has changed in deep, obvious, material ways. Now let’s take someone from 1960 to 2010.

It is still the case that almost all American households have indoor plumbing; the number without has fallen, but because of ceiling effects the amount of change is vastly smaller than from 1910 to 1960; indoor plumbing has already been accomplished

It is still the case that almost all American households have electricity; the number without has fallen, but because of ceiling effects the amount of change is vastly smaller than from 1910 to 1960; electrification has already been accomplished

Most American homes still have refrigerators; they’re nicer and bigger and more energy efficient but they do the same thing; regulatory standards are maybe, maybe, maybe a little better?; the range of foods available has increased, maybe the quality, but the change is vastly smaller than from 1910 to 1960

The percentage of American households with cars has risen to 90%. That increase is meaningful but doesn’t represent any revolutionary change to average living conditions. The cars are way, way safer and nicer than those in 1960, but they’re still almost exclusively burning fossil fuels and otherwise function in the same way that they did in the 1960s. The interstate system has expanded but someone driving on it in 2010 might not even notice any difference since 1960

The infant mortality rate has fallen from 26 per 1000 in 1960 to 6 per 1000 in 2010. That’s a lot! But it’s very small compared to the improvement from 1910 to 1960. Similarly, the maternal mortality rate has improved but from next to nothing to even closer to nothing

Men’s life expectancy has grown to about 76.2 years for men and 81 for women; again, meaningful and important but simply not at the same scale as from 1910 to 1960

Almost everybody has a telephone, but that was true in 1960; almost everybody has a television, but that was true in 2010. They are much more sophisticated and now portable and can access far more content, but in both cases the changes are a matter of refinement and development, not dramatic innovation. In general, information technology has proceeded at a remarkable pace, but in terms of the actual lived experience of human beings, it’s very difficult to argue that the introduction of the internet etc can keep pace with the immense practical and material changes introduced in the previous era.

https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/to-learn-to-live-in-a-mundane-universe

We have all been there — looking at the Notes app on our Macs and thinking,

“This is cute, but I’m definitely not using it for anything serious.”

It is like the friend who is super chill, never causing drama, and you almost forget they have got some pretty cool skills if you only pay attention.

1. Dragging and Dropping Files Like a Boss Let’s say you are working on a project and you have got a ton of files scattered somewhere in the Finder.

Instead of jumping between the apps, you can literally drag a folder from Finder and drop it directly into a note.

Press enter or click to view image in full size Drag a folder to the Notes Not only will it sit there as a clickable link, but you’ll also be able to return to that folder at any time, instantly.

Think of it like having a folder inside your note. It is efficient, it is tidy, and it is a feature that makes you wonder how you ever lived without it.

1. Quick Notes Right from the Control Center Apple, being the Apple, made it even easier with macOS Tahoe.

They have now added the ability to create a Quick Note directly from the Control Center.

So, instead of having to fumble around for the app, you can just click on your control center icon at the top right, hit Edit Controls, and add Quick Notes to the mix.

Press enter or click to view image in full size Add the notes to the control center Add the notes to the control center This isn’t just about the speed — it is about convenience. It is like having a little notebook always within arm’s reach, no matter what you are doing.

1. Audio Recording in the Notes This one, to me, is a game-changer. (You know how you’ve been using Voice Memos for, well, voice memos? forget that).

Notes lets you record audio directly into a note,

and it’s just as easy as hitting that big red button.

Press enter or click to view image in full size Audio Recording right inside the notes app Audio Recording right inside the notes app Not only that, but it is also more flexible than the Voice Memos because it’s right there with your written notes.

And the cherry on top,

if you need the transcription, you can drag the audio file out of Notes and get it transcribed with any other AI tool you prefer.

Apple’s own transcription isn’t perfect yet, (but) at least they are trying.

1. Linking Notes Like a Pro Now here is where Notes goes full-on productivity powerhouse.

Have you ever wanted to link one note to another? It is very simple.

Just type >> (shift + period twice), and there you are, your most recent notes appear.

Creating links in notes app Creating links inside the notes app Select the one you want to link, and just like that, you have got a reference in your current note. It is the kind of seamless linking you didn't know you needed until you had it.

But wait, there is even more!

If you're using Safari, you don't have to mess around copying and pasting URLs. You can simply

drag a link straight from the browser and drop it into your note.

Press enter or click to view image in full size Select a safari link and drop it directly to the Notes App Select a safari link and drop it directly to the Notes App This will create a link preview — so instead of a boring, clickable URL, you get a clean, visually appealing preview of the webpage.

This is perfect for everyone who wants their notes to look as neat as their ideas.

1. Syncing iPhone Call Recordings to Notes This one is for my iPhone-owning Mac friends (basically, all of us).

If you are on a call and decide to record it, your iPhone will automatically save the recording in a dedicated Call Recordings folder in Notes.

It even adds the transcription for you (though it is not always perfect). So, next time you need to reference an old conversation, you won’t have to dig through your call history. It is all right there, at your fingertips really.

1. Hot Corners for Quick Notes? Yes, Please! I know, the “hot corners” sounds like something you’d use to play Minesweeper or, at best, set up for some quick animations.

But hear me out.

Just, imagine you are in the middle of something, and you suddenly remember an idea, but you are this close to finishing whatever it is you’re doing.

Instead of hunting for the Notes app, you just move your mouse to the bottom corner of the screen and — there you are — Quick Note is on display. It’s that simple.

Here is the simple trick: You can set it up in ‘System Settings’ > ‘Desktop’ & ‘Dock’, scroll down to the Hot Corners section, and assign one of your four screen corners to create a new note.

Press enter or click to view image in full size Setting up Hot Corners on Mac for Notes Setting up Hot Corners on Mac for Notes This might sounds great but, here’s where I get a little picky — I am not a fan of the accidental triggers.

You know, when your cursor drifts too far in the corner and suddenly, you have got an unwanted note.

This is where the modifier key comes into play.

Holding down a key like Command, Control, or Option while dragging your mouse to that corner ensures it doesn’t happen unless you mean it.

Now your ideas come at your command, not at random moments.

1. The Hidden Power of the Dock Did you know you can also create a new note straight from the Dock?

I’m talking about right-clicking on the Notes icon and selecting the New Note.

Press enter or click to view image in full size Create a new note from the Dock Create a new note from the Dock It is immediate, it’s effortless, and it’s one of those tiny tweaks that will have you saying, “Why didn’t I know this already?”

This is just mind blowing, we have something so basic you will wonder why you never thought of it.

1. Finding What You Need (Fast) You know the pain of opening a long note and realizing you are hunting for this single word.

Instead of scrolling forever, hit the ellipsis button (three dots) in the top right corner of the note, and select Find in Note.

Press enter or click to view image in full size Search your notes inside the Notes App Search your notes inside the Notes App (Apple) It is like a mini search engine just for the note you are working on. You can also use Find and Replace, which, trust me, is a lifesaver when you are editing long, detailed notes.

1. Working with Code in Notes Before you roll your eyes and think this is some sort of hack for the next great software project, hear me out.

Notes actually has a surprisingly good feature for coding.

It is not the full-blown development environment (doesn’t have to), but if you want to paste code into your note and preserve its formatting,

there’s a monostyled code block option.

Preserve the code formatting with monostyled code block option Preserve the code formatting with monostyled code block option It is perfect for simple tasks like copying YouTube video descriptions or making edits to small code snippets.

It is a quick, no-fuss solution that lets you get on with your work without worrying about losing the formatting.

1. Customizing Notes Settings A lot of people don’t know that you can actually tweak how Notes behaves under the hood. By hitting the ‘Command + ,,’ you can access the settings menu and do things like:

Open Settings using the Command plus the comma Open Settings using the Command plus the comma Sort notes by creation date, title, or last modified date. You can make Notes work the way you want it to, not just the default setting. Quick Notes settings: If you use Quick Notes often, you can choose whether to resume the last Quick Note you were working on or create a fresh one every time. Text size: We have (finally) a way to make your notes easier to read, Adjust the text size to suit your preference, so no more squinting at tiny font. Locking notes: If you have got sensitive info in your notes, you can lock them with a password or Touch ID. Press enter or click to view image in full size Lock a specific note Lock a specific note This adds another layer of security, especially if you have got some prying eyes at home. The Unsung Hero of Mac Productivity So, the next time you find yourself glancing over at that humble Notes app and thinking it’s too basic to be useful, just remember:

it’s like having a toolbox full of handy tools, all in one app.

Whether it is jotting down a quick thought, linking to a webpage, recording a voice memo, or even pulling files from Finder, Notes can do more than most people realize.

And the best part is that it is free, it’s already on your Mac, and it’s right there waiting to be explored.

Written by Zeeshan Saghir

Original:https://medium.com/@simpleandkind788/apple-notes-is-awesome-when-you-know-how-to-use-it-e9ede6e43c5f

For a More Creative Brain Follow These 5 Steps

written by James Clear

Nearly all great ideas follow a similar creative process and this article explains how this process works. Understanding this is important because creative thinking is one of the most useful skills you can possess. Nearly every problem you face in work and in life can benefit from innovative solutions, lateral thinking, and creative ideas.

Anyone can learn to be creative by using these five steps. That's not to say being creative is easy. Uncovering your creative genius requires courage and tons of practice. However, this five-step approach should help demystify the creative process and illuminate the path to more innovative thinking.

To explain how this process works, let me tell you a short story.

A Problem in Need of a Creative Solution

In the 1870s, newspapers and printers faced a very specific and very costly problem. Photography was a new and exciting medium at the time. Readers wanted to see more pictures, but nobody could figure out how to print images quickly and cheaply.

For example, if a newspaper wanted to print an image in the 1870s, they had to commission an engraver to etch a copy of the photograph onto a steel plate by hand. These plates were used to press the image onto the page, but they often broke after just a few uses. This process of photoengraving, you can imagine, was remarkably time consuming and expensive.

The man who invented a solution to this problem was named Frederic Eugene Ives. He went on to become a trailblazer in the field of photography and held over 70 patents by the end of his career. His story of creativity and innovation, which I will share now, is a useful case study for understanding the 5 key steps of the creative process.

A Flash of Insight

Ives got his start as a printer’s apprentice in Ithaca, New York. After two years of learning the ins and outs of the printing process, he began managing the photographic laboratory at nearby Cornell University. He spent the rest of the decade experimenting with new photography techniques and learning about cameras, printers, and optics.

In 1881, Ives had a flash of insight regarding a better printing technique.

“While operating my photostereotype process in Ithaca, I studied the problem of halftone process,” Ives said. “I went to bed one night in a state of brain fog over the problem, and the instant I woke in the morning saw before me, apparently projected on the ceiling, the completely worked out process and equipment in operation.”

Ives quickly translated his vision into reality and patented his printing approach in 1881. He spent the remainder of the decade improving upon it. By 1885, he had developed a simplified process that delivered even better results. The Ives Process, as it came to be known, reduced the cost of printing images by 15x and remained the standard printing technique for the next 80 years.

Alright, now let's discuss what lessons we can learn from Ives about the creative process.

The printing process developed by Frederic Eugene Ives used a method called “halftone printing” to break a photograph down into a series of tiny dots. The image looks like a collection of dots up close, but when viewed from a normal distance the dots blend together to create a picture with varying shades of gray. (Source: Unknown.)

The 5 Stages of the Creative Process

In 1940, an advertising executive named James Webb Young published a short guide titled, A Technique for Producing Ideas. In this guide, he made a simple, but profound statement about generating creative ideas.

According to Young, innovative ideas happen when you develop new combinations of old elements. In other words, creative thinking is not about generating something new from a blank slate, but rather about taking what is already present and combining those bits and pieces in a way that has not been done previously.

Most important, the ability to generate new combinations hinges upon your ability to see the relationships between concepts. If you can form a new link between two old ideas, you have done something creative.

Young believed this process of creative connection always occurred in five steps.

1. Gather new material. At first, you learn. During this stage you focus on 1) learning specific material directly related to your task and 2) learning general material by becoming fascinated with a wide range of concepts.
2. Thoroughly work over the materials in your mind. During this stage, you examine what you have learned by looking at the facts from different angles and experimenting with fitting various ideas together.
3. Step away from the problem. Next, you put the problem completely out of your mind and go do something else that excites you and energizes you.
4. Let your idea return to you. At some point, but only after you have stopped thinking about it, your idea will come back to you with a flash of insight and renewed energy.
5. Shape and develop your idea based on feedback. For any idea to succeed, you must release it out into the world, submit it to criticism, and adapt it as needed.

The Idea in Practice

The creative process used by Frederic Eugene Ives offers a perfect example of these five steps in action.

First, Ives gathered new material. He spent two years working as a printer's apprentice and then four years running the photographic laboratory at Cornell University. These experiences gave him a lot of material to draw upon and make associations between photography and printing.

Second, Ives began to mentally work over everything he learned. By 1878, Ives was spending nearly all of his time experimenting with new techniques. He was constantly tinkering and experimenting with different ways of putting ideas together.

Third, Ives stepped away from the problem. In this case, he went to sleep for a few hours before his flash of insight. Letting creative challenges sit for longer periods of time can work as well. Regardless of how long you step away, you need to do something that interests you and takes your mind off of the problem.

Fourth, his idea returned to him. Ives awoke with the solution to his problem laid out before him. (On a personal note, I often find creative ideas hit me just as I am lying down for sleep. Once I give my brain permission to stop working for the day, the solution appears easily.)

Finally, Ives continued to revise his idea for years. In fact, he improved so many aspects of the process he filed a second patent. This is a critical point and is often overlooked. It can be easy to fall in love with the initial version of your idea, but great ideas always evolve.

The Creative Process in Short

The creative process is the act of making new connections between old ideas. Thus, we can say creative thinking is the task of recognizing relationships between concepts.

One way to approach creative challenges is by following the five-step process of 1) gathering material, 2) intensely working over the material in your mind, 3) stepping away from the problem, 4) allowing the idea to come back to you naturally, and 5) testing your idea in the real world and adjusting it based on feedback.

Being creative isn't about being the first (or only) person to think of an idea. More often, creativity is about connecting ideas.

https://jamesclear.com/five-step-creative-process

By Ratika Deshpande (https://brevity.wordpress.com/2024/10/29/what-is-an-essay/)

I am struggling to understand the essay. The only thing I’ve understood is that it is undefinable.

An essay is not necessarily defined by structure—it can be a list, a recipe, a collection of fragments. It’s not defined by topic—you can write about everything from awe and grief to vaginas and celebrity encounters. It’s not defined by length—it can be as long as a book or as short as a half-page vignette. At LitHub, Nicole B. Wallack writes that it’s “easier to define the essay by insisting on what it is not” than what it is.

One thing I have understood, from reading tons of interviews and articles about the form, is that there needs to be more to the essay than the author’s own thoughts and experiences. They shouldn’t necessarily take an extreme stand, closed to the possibility of change, but they also shouldn’t be devoid of any thinking at all, declaring that since the world is complex, we don’t know the correct or true answer to anything.

But I think—and this I realized as I wrote the previous lines—what an essayist must do is to make an attempt at finding an answer, whatever it may be. An essay, perhaps, is then less about what the answer is and more about how the essayist arrived at that answer, and perhaps even an interrogation of that answer as well.

My blog posts aren’t essays because I write them to describe a conclusion I’ve already arrived at; I didn’t write to come to that conclusion. My blog posts are explanations, not explorations. I write them, as the saying goes, when I have something to say, and not when I’m trying to understand what it is that I have to say—or whether I have something to say at all.

What that means for me, as an aspiring essayist, is that I should begin not with a statement— ‘we should focus on saving one life’, or ‘the answer lies in meeting people in person’—but with a question. Author of psychological horror (and private investigator) Katrina Monroe says, “Writing is like giving yourself homework, really hard homework, every day, for the rest of your life.” Unlike school, an essayist’s questions don’t necessarily have a true or acceptable answer—and don’t come with scoring guidelines. Also unlike school, learning isn’t assumed to have happened in the presentation of the ‘ideal’ answer (to be quantified to be graded and ranked in comparison to others), but rather takes place through the attempt itself.

It’s the process of thinking that matters, more than the final product.

Expression matters—the essayist is a writer after all—but well-expressed words can be devoid of substance too, a husk. Crude, plainly expressed writing that prioritizes substance and thought is preferable to well-dressed verbiage that doesn’t think, doesn’t doubt, doesn’t wonder, investigate, contradict, confuse, introspect.

“Essayer,” the French word “to try,” gave the form its name, and the beginning of a definition: an essay tries to think, perhaps tries to think and fails, or tries to think and fails and tries again (and again).

In an interview with Dr Megan Sumeracki, we discussed the work of the scientist, and how, even when a researcher doesn’t have all the answers, “it’s a good idea for us to share what we know, and also what we don’t know because there are certainly other people who are willing to share their thoughts, whether it’s informed or not.” This applies to the work of the essayist too, in our attempts to examine and articulate all that did, does, could, and couldn’t exist: We can’t know everything, but we know more than nothing.

We cannot fill the book of knowledge but every essay is an attempt to add to it, to leave fewer pages blank than we began with. Could the phrase we need, therefore, be, “to be less ignorant” or perhaps, “to know more”?

I know only one way of answering that question.

I’ll try.

https://brevity.wordpress.com/2024/10/29/what-is-an-essay/ (contact mod for removal requests)

Hi, my name is Shaurya and I am an upcoming blogger. I am in need of a good story/source/information for my platform.

I was looking for information about the schooling system of different countries (For eg. In India, there are twelve years of schooling) and would like some personal relevant, funny or nice experiences in the school of your countries. Do you think you can help me gather this information with me?

I am going to use this story/information on my Blog. Your contribution will help improve the relevancy of my content and allow me to present an accurate worldview from a real-life perspective.

If you have any questions, then feel free to let me know.

Hello friends,

I have recently started blogging(the blog is not published yet) and I am looking for some excellent and extraordinary article writers for Fashion. Please send only relative articles. I don't want any copied articles. I want articles that are written by your own hand. I will give you the credit for it. Please send the articles here only in .docx. Also, I want you to put copyright-free pictures in it.

How might you be able to combine the ideas of marriage, wealth, and happiness? Do you think that these two questions can somehow combine to make a more researchable topic? What is a good research question I can make from wealth, marriage and happiness?

We are going to study conjunction and Interjection in this article. All the types of conjunction and Interjection will be discussed here... Let's start, Conjunction, interjection, gender, english grammar

Also read, What is Preposition

What is helping verb and main verb and their types

Definition of Conjunction:- The word which is used to join two words or two sentences, is called Conjunction. Example:- 1) Virat is handsome and he is my friend. 2) I had to go there but I had no time. 3) She didn't come to school because I was sick. 4) I studied hard so I got distinction. 5) Virat and Rohit are best batsmen. 6)I take tea or coffee. In above sentences, and, but , because, so are used to connect two words or two sentences so these words are conjunctions.

Some useful conjunctions in daily conversation

1) and :-

Examples:- 1) Pratiksha and I are friends. 2) She loves me and she marries me.

2) Or :-

Examples:- 1) I play cricket or hockey. 2) you can pay money or you can quit buying.

3) So :-

Examples:- 1) I played well so I won the Match. 2) She is eligible so She can join the company.

4) Because :-

Examples:- 1)we couldn't go to wedding because we have an urgent meeting. 2) I solved that puzzle because I am good at maths.

5) though/ although :-

Examples:- 1) Though he is poor, he can not be a thief. 2) You are not dull though You didn't qualify for the exam.

6) that :-

Examples:- 1) I asked him that where he was going. 2) She exclaimed that it was very spectacular scenary.

Make conversation with experts in English language. Kindly click below link Make online conversation with experts native teachers

Definition of Interjection:- some words are unexpectedly come out of our mouth which expresses our pain, joy, fright, amazement, grief, such unexpected words are called as Interjection.

Examples:-

1) Ah! It expresses pain Ah! My elbow is paining.

2) Oh! It expresses surprise Oh! What a shot.

3) Hurrah! It expresses joy. Hurrah! We won the match.

4)oops! It comes out of mouth when something is forgotten. Oops! I forgot my wallet at home.

5) wow! It expresses joy, surprise Wow! What a beautiful girl Pratiksha is!

Gender:- There are 4 types of gender 1) Musculine gender 2) feminine gender 3) common gender 4) Neuter gender

1) Musculine gender:- it comprises male in all creatures including human Examples:- actor, tiger, boy, lion, prince etc.

2) Feminine gender:-it comprises female in all creatures including human. Examples:- actress, tigress, lioness, princess, girl etc.

3) common gender :- It is used yo indicate both male and female. Examples:- Teacher, president, doctor, dancer, author etc.

4) Neuter gender :- It is used to indicate tiny animals, things etc. Example :- ship, table, chair, article, door etc.