Pipeline for Friday, January 23, 2026

By definition, art is human. A machine can't create art, because the intent matters. It's much more likely to be art if you do it on purpose.

These limbic structures are regulated by higher-order brain areas, like the prefrontal cortex. And so, if you have an appraisal, a thought, a belief--whatever you want to call it,--that says "wait a minute! I can do something about this" or "This really isn't so bad!" or whatever, then these inhibiting structures in the cortex are activated. They send a message "cool it down there! don't get so activated. There's something we can do!"

Past a certain point, more effort doesn't produce better performance. It sabotages our performance.

Systemic analysis of the career trajectory of people labeled geniuses show that their output tends to be highly uneven, with a few good ideas mixed in with many more false starts. While consistency may be the key to expertise, the secret to creative greatness appears to be doing things differently--even when that was failing.

Dear Jerry-The way to do a piece of writing is 3 or 4 times, never one. For me, the hardest part comes first, getting something--anything--out in front of me. Sometimes in a nervous frenzy I just fling words as if I were flinging mud at a wall. Blurt out, heave out, babble out something--anything--as a first draft. With that, you have achieved a sort of nucleus. et seq.

Fahrenheit 451 author Ray Bradbury even insisted that a writer ought to avoid developing his rational thinking skills, for fear that they'd get in the way of his intuition.
College wasn't a suitable plan for writers, Bradbury said, because learning to overintellectualize things threatened to crush to intuitive mind with reason and analysis. The writer himself kept a sign above his typewriter for 25 years that read "Don't Think." As Bradbury explained in a 1974 interview, "The intellect is a great danger to creativity--because you begin to rationalize and make up reasons for things, instead of staying with your own basic truth--who you are, what you are, what you want to be."

Remember you're just an actor in a play. The playwright gave you a role. Why this role and not another> You will never know. Your role may be brief, it may be extended. Maybe the playwright wants you to play a beggar, or a cripple, or a junior clerk, or a slave, or a man of high stature. It is in your power to play your part magnificently, but the choice of role is not yours.
Epictetus.

Compared to other scientists, Nobel laureates are at least 22 times more likely to partake as an amateur actor, dancer, magician, or other type of performer. Nationally recognized scientists are more likely than other scientists to be musicians, sculptors, painters, printmakers, woodworkers, mechanics, electronics tinkerers, glassblowers, poets, or writers of both fiction and nonfiction. And again, Nobel laureates are far more likely still.