If You Work in a Creative Industry, You Should Steal Other People's Ideas (II):

If You Work in a Creative Industry, You Should Steal Other People's Ideas
John Cleese (2016)

Just as Shakespeare lifted plots from his predecessors, young performers today ought to focus on emulating those artists they like most. That's not to say plagiarism is excusable; it's not. It just means that artists who are just getting started should seek to model themselves after those who have gone before.

Take it from John Cleese of Monty Python fame: "You say, 'I'm going to write something completely new and original and very funny.' You can't do it. It's like trying to fly a plane without having any lessons. You've got to start somewhere and the best way to start is by copying something that is really good."

TRANSCRIPT

John Cleese: I think if any young writer or someone who wants to become a writer or a performer is listening, then what I would say is it is so difficult at the beginning, particularly as a writer, to do good written comedy, that I suggest at the start that you steal or borrow or, as the artist would say, "are influenced by" anything that you think that is really good and really funny and which appeals to you. And if you study that and try to reproduce it in someway, then it will have your own stamp on it, but you have a chance of getting off the ground with something like that. But if you sit down one day never having written before with a pencil or a computer — but I write with a pencil — and you say, "I'm going to write something completely new and original and very funny," you can't do it. It's like trying to fly a plane without having any lessons. You've got to start somewhere and the best way to start is by copying something that is really good.

But people seem to think I was advocating stealing in general. No. Once you've got off the ground, you develop your own style; you don't need to steal. Better if you don't. But at the beginning, as I say, find something. And a wonderful lesson my friend William Goldman, a wonderful screenwriter, and I both teach the same thing — we discovered independently — and that is we say to someone find an actor or a scene that you absolutely love and just watch that actor in a movie, say, or watch that scene again and again and again so that it no longer has an emotional impact on you; you no longer find it dramatic or funny; you just watch it. And in a sense, emotionally speaking, you're bored with it. At that the point when you're not affected emotionally anymore you can begin to see how it's done and how it's constructed. So that's the advice I would give at the beginning: Model yourself on someone you really like.

Moral:

Das moralische Bestreben ließe sich als ein Versuch bzw. als eine Absicht verstehen, im Denken, im Wahrnehmen, im Handeln und im affektiven Bereich gewisse Standards einzuhalten.

Fraglich ist nur ob der Term "Standard" den Kern des moralischen Verhaltens treffen kann, oder ob es sich hierbei primär um eine negative Definition handelt.

Übung:

Man könnte es sich hin und wieder zur Übungsaufgabe machen, ein Buch // einen Film // ein Gespräch aus dem Gedächtnis bestmöglich zu rekonstruieren.

The inner genetic compass (II):

"Our inner genetic compass is the core of our individuality ... it quietly but incessantly inclines us to take some paths rather than others, be attracted to or repelled by certain activities, seize different opportunities, respond differently to the same environments, and create different social niches for ourselves when given a choice."

Linda S. Gottfredson

Effortful Recall:

"Effortful recall of learning, as happens in spaced practice, requires that you "reload" or reconstruct the components of the skill or material anew from long-term memory rather than mindlessly repeating them from short-term memory."

...

"Massed practice gives us the warm sensation of mastery because we're looping information through short-term memory without having to reconstruct the learning from long-term memory. But just as with rereading as a study strategy, the fluency gained through massed practice is transitory, and our sense of mastery illusory. It's the effortful process of reconstructing the knowledge that triggers reconsolidation and deeper learning."

make it stick - Brown, Roediger, McDaniel

On Retrieval Practice:

"[There is] a curious inverse relationship between the ease of retrieval practice and the power of that practice to entrench learning: the easier knowledge or a skill is for you to retrieve, the less your retrieval practice will benefit your retention of it. Conversely, the more effort you have to expend to retrieve knowledge or skill, the more the practice of retrieval will entrench it."

make it stick - Brown, Roediger, McDaniel

On Keeping Track:

"Because your brain is always figuring out how well situated are you in the world: how much do you not know compared to how much have you mastered. And you can tell that you have mastered things, because when you go somewhere and you act they just turn out the way you want them. That's an indication of mastering. And your brain is sort of keeping track across your whole life of how many places you have been where things haven't worked out compared to how many places you have been where they have worked out. And all those places in your past where things haven't worked out you need to map and master."

Jordan Peterson