[FRIAM] sui generis

[Prof David West]

Ancient Greek notions of "creativity" lacked any sense of egocentric novelty. To 'create' was to 'remember'. This was grounded in the more general philosophy that denied the possibility of "something-from-nothing."

In my Design Thinking book, there is a large section about this and about who "creation" is akin to midwifery, assisting something to express itself.

Just as a midwife lacks "authorship" of a baby, so too do all "intellectuals" lack authorship of novel, innovative, or creative work— despite the boilerplate prefacing every Ph.D. thesis.

davew

On Tue, Jan 9, 2024, at 10:28 AM, glen wrote:
> https://www.science.org/content/article/billionaire-launches-plagiarism-detection-effort-against-mit-president-and-all-its
>
> https://thehill.com/policy/technology/4392624-new-york-times-chatgpt-lawsuit-poses-new-legal-threats-to-artificial-intelligence/
>
> I just can't help but analogize between Intelligent Design and these 
> arguments of ownership/novelty of [ahem] "content". It all feels like 
> the argument from design to me. For a paywalled for-profit like the NYT 
> to go after a for-profit like OpenAI and a rapacious 
> <https://www.thenation.com/article/society/william-ackman-harvard-donor/> 
> billionaire to go after prestige-mongering elite institutions seems 
> like a clear instance of elite overproduction 
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_overproduction>. And to have it 
> all leveraged on the fantasy fulcrum of novelty and ownership is making 
> my head spin.
>
> But deep down, there's something to be said about intuitionism. At our 
> last salon, someone asked how much ontological status we might give to 
> stories about the Astral Plane. My answer derives entirely from what 
> little I know about intersubjectivity and cross-species mind reading. 
> If there is a commonality to nootropic or psychonaut experience, it 
> derives from our common *structure*, including whatever deeply 
> historical things like genetic memory that may (not) exist.
>
> It's fine to give lip service to intellectual humility. But such 
> rhetoric can't persuade ... uh ... "people" like Ackman. Surely ... 
> surely people like that are smart enough to grok things like gen-phen 
> maps, robustness and polyphenism, etc. Right? And if they do get it, 
> then we grass tufts can go on about our work, trying to be open, accept 
> and apply credit and blame to the best of our abilities and ignore 
> these fighting elephants. Right?
>
> -- 
> ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
>
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