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Sans money, it's arrogant because we know talent is god-given. You are basically betting again that your natural given trajectory has more leg room for more incredible output. It's not a bad bet at all, but it is a bet. Some talent is so incredible that it takes a while for the ego to accept its limits. Jordan tried to come back at 40 and Einstein fought quantum mechanics unto death. Accepting the limits has nothing to do with mediocrity, and everything to do with humility. You can still have an incredible trajectory beyond belief (which I believe this person has and will have).




Thinking about this again, what I was arguing is that I think artists focusing too much on (soon-ish) positive feedback can very easily fall into a trap and forget to explore their own possibilities because of that.

It's kind of similar to NN model collapse maybe? But I didn't want to switch to this topic. I deleted my original answer to your comment, because the philosophical (theological?) aspect invites very broad discussion and I tend to engage with things like this.

What I wanted to say might be along these lines:

Of course feedback with and the listener (or more general, the audience) is also required for art. In art itself, there is a spectrum between focusing on the self and focusing on the audience-or even, more generally, the "other".

And both halves of the spectrum harbour potential for good and bad art, respectively. It is a common topic in all kinds of art critique as well: idiosyncrasy vs kitsch for example are not synonyms for innovation vs stagnation, unpleasant vs. pleasant, complex vs. simple, etc etc.

It is especially interesting in this context to consider how the cultural consensus on appreciation of certain styles always has shifted. Yet, however inevitable this feels, cultural line of ideas and tastes at least used to be somewhat arbitrary until globalization slowly started to take hold: there are different languages, different standard forms and tropes, even different musical scales among the world.


Einstein also got his nobel prize for basically discovering quanta. I'm not sure he fought it so much as tried to figure what's going on with it which is still kind of unknown.

You know people get bored right? A person doesn’t have to have delusions of grandeur to get bored of something.

Alternatively, if anything it could be the exact opposite of what you’re describing. Maybe he sees an ecosystem based on hype that provides little value compared to the cost and wants to distance himself from it, like the Keurig inventor.




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