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	<title>Comments on: A hedgehog and a fox walk into a bar&#8230;</title>
	<link>http://www.ibiblio.org/bascha/blog/2006/05/29/a-hedgehog-and-a-fox-walk-into-a-bar/</link>
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	<pubDate>Sun, 27 May 2012 04:39:59 +0000</pubDate>
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		<title>by: brian</title>
		<link>http://www.ibiblio.org/bascha/blog/2006/05/29/a-hedgehog-and-a-fox-walk-into-a-bar/#comment-1665</link>
		<pubDate>Fri, 02 Jun 2006 00:20:47 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid>http://www.ibiblio.org/bascha/blog/2006/05/29/a-hedgehog-and-a-fox-walk-into-a-bar/#comment-1665</guid>
					<description>I need to get that newfangled trackback thingermabob working.

ok, true enough and I think we're in vehement agreement on substantial parts about the application of the words &quot;genius&quot; and &quot;pack&quot; and &quot;neccessity&quot;.

I think, and have actually thought for quite a while (meaning it's possibly time for change), that the perception of empowerment^w societal privilege is a large part of what changes, and hence what can be openly displayed without controversy.  Perhaps that's an underlying current that affects things like fashion and politics; I'm a bit daft at spotting those trends easily, though.  So, ahem,

The internets are so competitive, and the skills required so conformist, that the truly stimulating mental experience for some folks is more rapidly becoming the way of the hedgehog.  Hedgehogs are really feeling the crunch to get smarter, in the places where it affects daily life.  Beyond that, I'm not going to bother commenting and just let the thread die (at least here).</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I need to get that newfangled trackback thingermabob working.</p>
<p>ok, true enough and I think we&#8217;re in vehement agreement on substantial parts about the application of the words &#8220;genius&#8221; and &#8220;pack&#8221; and &#8220;neccessity&#8221;.</p>
<p>I think, and have actually thought for quite a while (meaning it&#8217;s possibly time for change), that the perception of empowerment^w societal privilege is a large part of what changes, and hence what can be openly displayed without controversy.  Perhaps that&#8217;s an underlying current that affects things like fashion and politics; I&#8217;m a bit daft at spotting those trends easily, though.  So, ahem,</p>
<p>The internets are so competitive, and the skills required so conformist, that the truly stimulating mental experience for some folks is more rapidly becoming the way of the hedgehog.  Hedgehogs are really feeling the crunch to get smarter, in the places where it affects daily life.  Beyond that, I&#8217;m not going to bother commenting and just let the thread die (at least here).
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		<title>by: bascha</title>
		<link>http://www.ibiblio.org/bascha/blog/2006/05/29/a-hedgehog-and-a-fox-walk-into-a-bar/#comment-1590</link>
		<pubDate>Wed, 31 May 2006 04:06:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid>http://www.ibiblio.org/bascha/blog/2006/05/29/a-hedgehog-and-a-fox-walk-into-a-bar/#comment-1590</guid>
					<description>You're still dividing to conquer. You seem to think all ideas come from genius and are carried out by members of the 'least common denominator pack.' I say geniuses, too, are members of the pack. Genius is merely a state of mind, a fortunate and timely idea. Any moron can come up with something truly great--monkeys and typewriters, etc.

Also, this is why we chose the more neutral stand-ins:  hedgehogs and foxes. There's no... elitest ring to it. Hedgehogs aren't the source of all wisdom in the world.  They're simply single-minded pursuers of it. Foxes are just as likely to stumble upon it, in their wandering. It's all about depth vs. breadth. Not who starts the fires. 

The question also wasn't about who is necessary--every type is necessary. It's more about what are we tending towards, and what role technology / communications / notions of copyright and fair use play in it.</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>You&#8217;re still dividing to conquer. You seem to think all ideas come from genius and are carried out by members of the &#8216;least common denominator pack.&#8217; I say geniuses, too, are members of the pack. Genius is merely a state of mind, a fortunate and timely idea. Any moron can come up with something truly great&#8211;monkeys and typewriters, etc.</p>
<p>Also, this is why we chose the more neutral stand-ins:  hedgehogs and foxes. There&#8217;s no&#8230; elitest ring to it. Hedgehogs aren&#8217;t the source of all wisdom in the world.  They&#8217;re simply single-minded pursuers of it. Foxes are just as likely to stumble upon it, in their wandering. It&#8217;s all about depth vs. breadth. Not who starts the fires. </p>
<p>The question also wasn&#8217;t about who is necessary&#8211;every type is necessary. It&#8217;s more about what are we tending towards, and what role technology / communications / notions of copyright and fair use play in it.
</p>
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		<title>by: brian</title>
		<link>http://www.ibiblio.org/bascha/blog/2006/05/29/a-hedgehog-and-a-fox-walk-into-a-bar/#comment-1588</link>
		<pubDate>Wed, 31 May 2006 03:24:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid>http://www.ibiblio.org/bascha/blog/2006/05/29/a-hedgehog-and-a-fox-walk-into-a-bar/#comment-1588</guid>
					<description>People have never operated in a vacuum.  Almost every example of the lone genius, if the term isn't solely a strawman, is an individual who worked with others.  Artists work in schools, even Frank Lloyd Wright - held up as the sole example - worked with other people to build his houses.  Those houses didn't exist in a vacuum either.

My point is that rather than create a strawman in a vacuum, consider the real-life folks who approximate what is meant by &quot;lone genius&quot; and consider how they work in comparison to the least-common denominator pack mentality.  I'd epitomize the group with real-life bastions of groupthink like IBM (legendary even among C.S. majors for squashing individuality), burger franchises, and the pre-reformation Roman Catholic church.  Those are practical examples.  They survive, they even spread and become hegemonies.  But they don't do anything progressive within the fields that they claim.  They all declined sharply in the face of relatively ingenius competitors, fewer in individual numbers per competitor, who all behaved in a relatively independent way and played with that advantage for enormous gain.

Also, a good deal of my point is that the world is fuzzy.  Saying &quot;lone genius is dead&quot; is just not true.  You have to define a &quot;lone genius&quot; in a useful way, and my point is that once you've got practical distinguishing examples fitting the description, there's nothing indicating that they're on the decline.  Saying they are dead borders on a theoretical religious belief, not a practical scientific one.</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>People have never operated in a vacuum.  Almost every example of the lone genius, if the term isn&#8217;t solely a strawman, is an individual who worked with others.  Artists work in schools, even Frank Lloyd Wright - held up as the sole example - worked with other people to build his houses.  Those houses didn&#8217;t exist in a vacuum either.</p>
<p>My point is that rather than create a strawman in a vacuum, consider the real-life folks who approximate what is meant by &#8220;lone genius&#8221; and consider how they work in comparison to the least-common denominator pack mentality.  I&#8217;d epitomize the group with real-life bastions of groupthink like IBM (legendary even among C.S. majors for squashing individuality), burger franchises, and the pre-reformation Roman Catholic church.  Those are practical examples.  They survive, they even spread and become hegemonies.  But they don&#8217;t do anything progressive within the fields that they claim.  They all declined sharply in the face of relatively ingenius competitors, fewer in individual numbers per competitor, who all behaved in a relatively independent way and played with that advantage for enormous gain.</p>
<p>Also, a good deal of my point is that the world is fuzzy.  Saying &#8220;lone genius is dead&#8221; is just not true.  You have to define a &#8220;lone genius&#8221; in a useful way, and my point is that once you&#8217;ve got practical distinguishing examples fitting the description, there&#8217;s nothing indicating that they&#8217;re on the decline.  Saying they are dead borders on a theoretical religious belief, not a practical scientific one.
</p>
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		<title>by: bascha</title>
		<link>http://www.ibiblio.org/bascha/blog/2006/05/29/a-hedgehog-and-a-fox-walk-into-a-bar/#comment-1585</link>
		<pubDate>Wed, 31 May 2006 03:00:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid>http://www.ibiblio.org/bascha/blog/2006/05/29/a-hedgehog-and-a-fox-walk-into-a-bar/#comment-1585</guid>
					<description>Sorry, dude, it doesn't matter where or how the genuises interact.  The very facet of splitting up the work, saying &quot;You do this piece and I'll do that one&quot; is happy collaboration.

Yeah, Gehry is alive.  But what's he up to?  He's working with Brad Pitt and Bono to build new, different, interesting stuff and reduce world hunger/poverty. (The One campaign?)  

And how can you say that musical works are &quot;much more likely&quot; to be constructed by one person? I concede, of course, that technology makes the whole one-man-band a bit easier than it was before (buying all those instruments got expensive quick), but on the same hand, technology has made it far easier to send a few tracks to your buddy to add on to, or to crack open even the Beatles' storied catalog and make your own remix (Grey album, anyone?). Those are not pieces of lone genius. There are geniuses, sure--collaborative work doesn't discount the sheer temerity and brilliance of some folks.

The quality in the spotlight is the &lt;em&gt;lone&lt;/em&gt; portion of this equation, and none of your examples seem to me to be people operating in a vacuum. To the contrary, people are always operating in society, influenced by other hands, and producing work that they'd of course love to call their own entirely... but I'm not so sure it ever really is.</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Sorry, dude, it doesn&#8217;t matter where or how the genuises interact.  The very facet of splitting up the work, saying &#8220;You do this piece and I&#8217;ll do that one&#8221; is happy collaboration.</p>
<p>Yeah, Gehry is alive.  But what&#8217;s he up to?  He&#8217;s working with Brad Pitt and Bono to build new, different, interesting stuff and reduce world hunger/poverty. (The One campaign?)  </p>
<p>And how can you say that musical works are &#8220;much more likely&#8221; to be constructed by one person? I concede, of course, that technology makes the whole one-man-band a bit easier than it was before (buying all those instruments got expensive quick), but on the same hand, technology has made it far easier to send a few tracks to your buddy to add on to, or to crack open even the Beatles&#8217; storied catalog and make your own remix (Grey album, anyone?). Those are not pieces of lone genius. There are geniuses, sure&#8211;collaborative work doesn&#8217;t discount the sheer temerity and brilliance of some folks.</p>
<p>The quality in the spotlight is the <em>lone</em> portion of this equation, and none of your examples seem to me to be people operating in a vacuum. To the contrary, people are always operating in society, influenced by other hands, and producing work that they&#8217;d of course love to call their own entirely&#8230; but I&#8217;m not so sure it ever really is.
</p>
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		<title>by: brian</title>
		<link>http://www.ibiblio.org/bascha/blog/2006/05/29/a-hedgehog-and-a-fox-walk-into-a-bar/#comment-1583</link>
		<pubDate>Wed, 31 May 2006 02:36:04 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid>http://www.ibiblio.org/bascha/blog/2006/05/29/a-hedgehog-and-a-fox-walk-into-a-bar/#comment-1583</guid>
					<description>As a final coffin nail, consider where this discussion is taking place online now, as opposed to where it would have taken place online 10 years ago.

Punk is dead, long live punk.</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>As a final coffin nail, consider where this discussion is taking place online now, as opposed to where it would have taken place online 10 years ago.</p>
<p>Punk is dead, long live punk.
</p>
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		<title>by: brian</title>
		<link>http://www.ibiblio.org/bascha/blog/2006/05/29/a-hedgehog-and-a-fox-walk-into-a-bar/#comment-1580</link>
		<pubDate>Wed, 31 May 2006 02:14:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid>http://www.ibiblio.org/bascha/blog/2006/05/29/a-hedgehog-and-a-fox-walk-into-a-bar/#comment-1580</guid>
					<description>But there is a very important distinction in this vein that can be made, as real life isn't as black and white as some might wish.  You can have a group of people who divide an conquer the problems, or you can have a group of people who hash out all the problems only when they have quorom.  No oxymoron, but it isn't very hard to see which group behaves as highly independent lone geniuses.

The lone geniuses may not do everything, but they are vital.  Just as vital as the (allegedly) un-named people who clean up the body of work for presentation to the masses who could care less about the aesthetic of the ragged bleeding edge.  As has been pointed out, Frank Lloyd Wright is dead.  Gehri is not.  A flock of renowned artists, if not most of them, in any field basically behave as lone geniuses.  Musical works are much more likely to be an assembly constructed by one person than ever before.  Most successful computer programs start out as one person's idea, who then convinces several other people to help out by handing them a chunk of the work, wholesale.  In politics, it's starting to look much better to be independent than part of a conspiracy - at least often enough to disprove the idea that only oligarchies are successful while individual leaders universally languish.  Any chef on television (a genre growing in popularity against sitcoms and dramas) must both lead a group and indepently produce creative work, pointing to the value of each role.

Being in a group means being able to survive, nothing more, now just as it was 2 million years ago.  Survival is very, very important.  But being independant has historically been absolutely essential to changing society.  One cannot deviate from the status quo when one must convince a larger group to conduct all the experiments.</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>But there is a very important distinction in this vein that can be made, as real life isn&#8217;t as black and white as some might wish.  You can have a group of people who divide an conquer the problems, or you can have a group of people who hash out all the problems only when they have quorom.  No oxymoron, but it isn&#8217;t very hard to see which group behaves as highly independent lone geniuses.</p>
<p>The lone geniuses may not do everything, but they are vital.  Just as vital as the (allegedly) un-named people who clean up the body of work for presentation to the masses who could care less about the aesthetic of the ragged bleeding edge.  As has been pointed out, Frank Lloyd Wright is dead.  Gehri is not.  A flock of renowned artists, if not most of them, in any field basically behave as lone geniuses.  Musical works are much more likely to be an assembly constructed by one person than ever before.  Most successful computer programs start out as one person&#8217;s idea, who then convinces several other people to help out by handing them a chunk of the work, wholesale.  In politics, it&#8217;s starting to look much better to be independent than part of a conspiracy - at least often enough to disprove the idea that only oligarchies are successful while individual leaders universally languish.  Any chef on television (a genre growing in popularity against sitcoms and dramas) must both lead a group and indepently produce creative work, pointing to the value of each role.</p>
<p>Being in a group means being able to survive, nothing more, now just as it was 2 million years ago.  Survival is very, very important.  But being independant has historically been absolutely essential to changing society.  One cannot deviate from the status quo when one must convince a larger group to conduct all the experiments.
</p>
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		<title>by: bascha</title>
		<link>http://www.ibiblio.org/bascha/blog/2006/05/29/a-hedgehog-and-a-fox-walk-into-a-bar/#comment-1554</link>
		<pubDate>Tue, 30 May 2006 04:00:03 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid>http://www.ibiblio.org/bascha/blog/2006/05/29/a-hedgehog-and-a-fox-walk-into-a-bar/#comment-1554</guid>
					<description>And, see--there's the rub. By definition, a 'group of lone genuises' is an oxymoron.  You're either lone or a group, not both, regardless of size or frequency/depth of contact.</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>And, see&#8211;there&#8217;s the rub. By definition, a &#8216;group of lone genuises&#8217; is an oxymoron.  You&#8217;re either lone or a group, not both, regardless of size or frequency/depth of contact.
</p>
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		<title>by: brian</title>
		<link>http://www.ibiblio.org/bascha/blog/2006/05/29/a-hedgehog-and-a-fox-walk-into-a-bar/#comment-1551</link>
		<pubDate>Tue, 30 May 2006 02:43:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid>http://www.ibiblio.org/bascha/blog/2006/05/29/a-hedgehog-and-a-fox-walk-into-a-bar/#comment-1551</guid>
					<description>Collaboration among idiots is still just a bland, boring committee.  If you really want a diverse group, you need a group  of lone geniuses willing to quickly look over each other's work just long enough for proofreading.</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Collaboration among idiots is still just a bland, boring committee.  If you really want a diverse group, you need a group  of lone geniuses willing to quickly look over each other&#8217;s work just long enough for proofreading.
</p>
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