> Why this word, this scene, this character, and not some other one?
The "why this not that, even when it looks like that would do just fine" style of differential analysis is an exquisitely powerful analytical tool. Asking this question is probably the single most powerful method I know of to generate deep thought, in absolutely any aspect of life. If you haven't tried it... go for it!
(Sample question: why'd I choose the word "exquisitely" in the above sentence?)
> In the short term, thinness prevails. ... The real question is not “which of these things looks nicer when you look at them for two seconds?” but “which of these things will stand the test of time?”
That tracks with another thing I've noticed I approach differently. I've recently joined a book club and everyone loves to talk about how many "stars" they gave a book. I've never really been able to rank things like that. Aside from there being no such thing as a total ordering of books (or movies or ...), who's to say what five stars from you means, compared to five stars from me? Instead I've started thinking about books in terms of "book of the month", "book of the year", "book of the decade", "book of the century", et cetera. Is this going to be the best thing I read all month or all decade? Am I going to remember this for a year or forget most of it next week? Is everyone still going to be talking about this one in 80 years? I think that's a much better scale than "one to five stars (but actually three to five stars)", and much more interesting. It also bakes in both the inherent subjectivity and inherent fuzziness really well.
(Yes, some things... plenty of things... are thin enough to be candidates for "book of the day" or "book of the hour". Few things are forgettable enough to go below that, though there have been some attempts; mostly at that level things underflow and you get in to Mystery Science Theater 3000 territory, which is its own special kind of thing.)
Really loved this essay, loved the irreverent style. I had a similar literary journey as this guy.
I think I would take it a step further though. It's not just that great literature has details and motifs that line up perfectly, it's not just that it took great effort to produce, or has some musicality or rhythm that is beautiful to take in experientially. It's that the thing that is communicated is truthful. Great fiction wipes away the noise of one's day-to-day thinking into some deep and essential truth about the human experience.
Which is difficult, because that type of truth is not mathematical, it cannot be arrived at through some standalone logical path. I think students suffer because instruction by its nature is framed as teaching a path to get to some destination. The author mentions this with the egg cracking metaphor. The reason that fiction can produce this type of truth and non-fiction cannot is that fiction relays a human experience, it's relational and personal and that is the whole point of it. And you get that transcendental truth out of it because our life experience is fundamentally relational, it is how we see ourselves in relation to others or god or nature or what have you.
Seeing fiction that way is the main difference between myself at 16 and myself today.
The best thing about gaining an appreciation of this aspect of life is it opens up so many extra pleasures. I can spend an entire day at the (free entry!) V&A in London and never be bored. Likewise with a great book (when my 11-year-old isn't around!)
I have to say, this guy should teach English to high-schoolers.
Great piece. Seeing that depth and context is one of the best parts of gaining intellectual maturity.
I’ve long held the opinion that humans ‘over’-value complexity. It’s why we can spend so much time tasting, analyzing, and enjoying fancy coffee or whisky - despite the fact that almost everyone is repulsed by them the first time they try them. Literature might be the same?
To be clear, I enjoy all three!
Good writing isn't complex for complexity's sake though. Mistaking complexity for quality is the most common mistake when it comes to writing — and I allege one central reason why many people like and trust LLM output.
I'd argue that complexity is not even the right word to describe what the author describes. Thickness or depth is more accurate.
To add on - complexity itself is a perceptual feature introduced by language - we treat and describe things as though they are made of an unimaginable number of tiny parts. So this also increases the fun of the wordy wine/coffee/whisky descriptions!
Don't forget software engineering
I get your idea but I wonder about the construction of this argument:
Is it the complexity itself people value, or the rewards of things that are complex? IME, the most valuable things are complex. Maybe that's because there is not enough capacity in simplicity to contain exceptional value (speaking very generally and loosely - we really need to define terms).
Also, I certainly think people value complex things, but I strongly disagree that they are over-valued. All the best things in my life seem complex.
I could imagine that complexity stimulates the brain in a different way and that adds to reward.
> The slop-acalypse that so many of us fear,
> when people will stop looking at anything
> made by humans and only look at things made
> by machines—why hasn’t that happened yet?
Are you an artist? A woodworker? Metalsmith? ... start recording your work and post it to youtube. I guarantee people will be willing to pay extra for the thing you built (I certainly would).
(edit: formatting)
This is also true in science; some things reward depth of study in a way that just isn't apparent from the outside.
There's a lot of great things about this piece, but I'm kind of stuck on the "Hieronymus Bosch Butt Music". Listened to it a bunch of times now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnrICy3Bc2U
Maybe that's the point?
Really enjoyed how thick this essay was.
> The slop-acalypse that so many of us fear, when people will stop looking at anything made by humans and only look at things made by machines—why hasn’t that happened yet?
Unfortunately, I'm pessimistic here. I don't think the slop-acalypse is held back by taste or an appreciation for "thickness". I think there's already very successful slop media in the world (e.g. see microdramas). In other words, it is happening, but like anything else, it's happening in a non-evenly distributed way.
Although I appreciate the article, what's the deal with calling depth thickness? Is it because it looks like the meme word 'thicc'?
> If you allow for the existence of secret treasures that can only be accessed with effort and analysis, then you empower the elitists and the snobs. “Buddy, don’t even talk to me until you’ve been in the cave!”
I don't agree with this statement. Being a snob and/or elitist means looking down upon others. If you appreciate these 'secret treasures' without being a dick about it, everybody wins.
I don't think the author is claiming you HAVE to be a dick about it. But that the pursuit of "thickness" does in reality give ammunition to a lot of people who are inevitably dicks about it seems observably true to me.
I imagine the word thickness represents the great number of (metaphorical) layers of a painting, since paintings are the reoccurring symbol to talk about art in this essay.
> what's the deal with calling depth thickness
It's almost as though the author thought about and cared about the content and exact words he chose. "Thick or Treat" and "Thickening agents" and "Slim pickings" even immediately evoking imagery of a thin slop gruel in my own head.
By using an unexpected word I think I thought more critically about it, in fact. Had the author used depth I would've immediately had more superficial imagery in my own head.
I think I like the term "thickness" over "depth" here because thickness implies a sort of solidity, an ability to stand up to being held and examined, turned over and and handled. Depth can feel unapproachable (the ocean is pretty deep and it is famously challenging to explore) while something which has thickness intuitively feels like you can walk right up to it and try to learn something.
This doesn't hold for all things - I would, for example, describe a wine as having "depth" but probably not "thickness" because in the case of potables "thickness" also implies a particular sort of textural feel, but I do like the idea of a piece of art as being thick with meaning as opposed to deep. A book which is deep can be reread multiple times, but a book which has thickness just sounds like a book that can live on your bookshelf and be paged through year after year for decades, with not only the content to support it but also the sturdiness to hold up to the use.
There's a lot of truth to this, but....... fuck they did a great job disincentivizing it.
In high school we had to read and annotate this 900p Greek mythology book during our summer break. Our grade reflected how well we annotated it. I didn't do any of it (thanks Ultima Online).
The very first in-class assignment we had that year took about an hour and had about a 25% bigger impact on our grade than annotating did.
Not saying that grades are the end goal but it felt like a slap in the face that the exploration of such a deep topic just.. didn't matter.
Something I learned recently and which this article sort of hints at - look at the three drafts of Under The Wave Off Kanagawa. The composition is different, but also the colours are much more muted. In the first draft, the only colours highlighted are the people in the corner; in the second, the cliffs. The third draft finally colours the wave, but it's a sedate grey-blue. It's not until the fourth draft that everybody recognizes that we get this brilliant dark blue wave rising up over the the boat, dwarfing the mountain in the background.
And that's because when Hokusai sat down to print that fourth draft, people had recently started exporting prussian blue dye to Japan; prior to that point, he just straight up didn't have access to that striking blue colour that dominates the print.
I really enjoyed reading this and I've been thinking along similar lines when I imagine viable careers of the future. No one will care if code is "thick" but why would anyone buy a novel written by AI? What does the reader get out of it? It seems like the humanities might be the most stable career path available.
i’m working on a little ios widget display currently. even a tiny little one view box has hundreds of nuanced design and structure decisions behind it.
That reasoning is the thickness not the amount of code that powers it though they are somewhat interrelated.
By rejecting postmodernism and even the Enlightenment (due to the overwhelming reactionary messaging) most people have unilaterally disarmed themselves, or so I hypothesize. It's hard to talk about these things in any specific, evidence-based way, but here is the idea:
Without the ultimate postmodern truth that there is none, that deep skepticism of power especially and always of oneself, how do people decide what to embrace? Whatever is effectively sold to them, no questions asked. There isn't an instinctive worry about but an almost survival-level embrace of mass messaging - the way is to be safe in the crowd, not to doubt it or to worry about its power in society and its effect on you.
And without believing in the Enlightenment vision of the transformative power of our minds to make a better humanity, expressed especially in art as the pinnacle of human expression and acheivement, art is ruled out and actually threatens your worldview (and that reactionary messaging) of powerlessness and survival.
> ... and I was like ...
And you'll need to add an apology for using that phrase too.
I'm confused; why is this hitting #2 on HN? I don't see the H or the N in this.
Diving deep into something is a core aspect of hacking.
Because it's thick.
Because it's about AI
As you delve further into the article, and (ironically, based on the topic) consider the ideas presented, it becomes more clear. Or skip to near the end to see.
TLDR: AI and generic pop culture artifacts have something in common - a lack of a certain type of depth that makes art great.
> Instead I've started thinking about books in terms of "book of the month", "book of the year", "book of the decade", "book of the century", et cetera. Is this going to be the best thing I read all month or all decade? Am I going to remember this for a year or forget most of it next week?
This is a wonderful thought, I thank you for it