Ralph Ammer

Drawing on the recent article about Kant [1], if a concept is a mental categorisation of patterns within our sensory inputs, and reason is the mixing of such concepts according to some rules, and arriving at novel concepts that we have yet to experience as sensory inputs, then philosophy is a discipline that is in danger of a combinatorial explosion of concepts. While adhering to the general rules of reasoning, such higher order concepts are far removed from the real world because they are built up on multiple layers of abstractions. And it never need to stop because one can keep building abstractions on top of each other, and one has people to talk with who speak the same abstractions. I suspect this is is what has happened to philosophy. I think past philosophers drew more from history and their own experiences (closer to the "metal" as it were) than the writings of other philosophers. On that note, it is interesting that we've not seen any contribution from modern philosophy to alleviating some of the greatest existential crises the world is facing today: e.g. "How much inequality is acceptable, if so, why? What are the ethics of damaging public goods such as the atmosphere? To what extent should citizens be held accountable for the war actions of their representatives? How far back can a historical claim to land go? Should the law view natural persons (who possess a conscience) and artificial persons such as corporations (who do not) in the same way?" [1]…

The most recent article on the blog likely holds the answer to your question. (Disclaimer: I did not read it.) https://ralphammer.com/a-quick-beginners-guide-to-animation/

They actually link an article they wrote on some drawing exercises. https://ralphammer.com/a-quick-beginners-guide-to-drawing/ Remind me of a lot of what we did in some of my old beginner art classes.

The link is only a teaser, the actual guide is here: https://ralphammer.com/a-quick-beginners-guide-to-drawing/

I think you might enjoy reading Ralph Ammer's work: - https://ralphammer.com/how-to-get-started/ - https://ralphammer.com/the-creative-switch/ I wrote about a related subject here: https://sonnet.io/posts/hummingbirds/ Also, the difference between children and adults when it comes to creativity is a bit deeper. I agree that it's bread out of us. Two semi-random examples: - shaming kids for making mistakes or just doing things differently, but also - just the mere fact that they're starting to learn how the world around them operates and responds to their actions,. At the same time it's likely that children achieve it through different internal processes, without a strict split between divergent and convergent thinking demonstrated by CT scans. https://www.hubermanlab.com/episode/the-science-of-creativity-and-how-… (I can't find a better source atm, so posting YT video, sorry! also, check his sources)

I started out being rather afraid I'd taken this article & Clifford seriously, but it was a good talk, with strong values in it, & that resonated with me. I continue to feel like computing is a deep rich pool, but that consumerization has us all splashing around in the kiddy pool. There's a lack of candor, dishonestly, that we work so hard to hide complexity. There was a neandering & fun diatrabe I ran into called "Make Me Think"[1], that has gorgeous & beautiful simple pictures of how we've tackled complexity over the years: making the user juggle it all, now with user-centered design we try to pre-plan & take on the complexity from a design level so to users everything "just works." But we've kind of robbed the world of learning, of mastery, of adaptability. Stroll portrays computing as shallow, as an activity akin to a slideshow, and happening upon this post feels serendipitous similar. Having watched the talk, the knowledge versus information aspect seems like the core axis though, the push for deepness in our cybermedias. It loops quickly back around to my other comment in this thread, on expecting more overlays, more peer-based context building, more wayposting to have emerged[2], and instead, a tyranny of flatness having become utterly dominating. [1] https://ralphammer.com/make-me-think/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30269350 (67 points, 3 months, 24comments) (and previously with less success…