The Disjunction Between Fame & Creativity In Art

Our social structural theory of fame departs from prior work on fame which argues that fame is driven by creativity. (Banerjee & Ingram)

§.00 Fame and creativity have a instinctive association. It is thought that, for artists, as a general rule, the more creative they are, the more famous they will be. Evidence, however, does not bare this preconception out.

§.01 In the lengthy, richly detailed 2018 paper, Fame as an Illusion of Creativity: Evidence from the Pioneers of Abstract Art, researchers Banerjee & Ingram delve into the correlation between fame (large scale public attention) and creativity by studying the social networks of 90 artists from Europe and the US during the 20th Century (1910-1925) whose work radically departed from the norms of representational art of the time. The researchers used two measures for creativity: an expert measure of an artist’s creativity and a computational measure of an artist’s novelty. They found that the social networks of the artists in question played a significantly larger role than their creativity (as measured by the two metrics listed above) and no statistical linkage for positive correlation between creativity and fame.

Surprisingly given previous theory, we do not find statistical support for a positive
relationship between an artist’s creativity and fame. (Banerjee & Ingram, Fame as an Illusion of Creativity, p.6)

§.02 Rather than creativity, Banerjee and Ingram find that identity is the crucial determining factor for domain-transcendent success.

-our evidence reveals identity as the link between peer network and fame. (Banerjee & Ingram, p. 6)

§.03 Identity here being, not simply one’s self-conception, but one’s public image (whether authentic or inauthentic).

In effect, the outsider identity of such [aforementioned artistic] producers might contribute to others’ perception of them as rebels who are authentically creative. Audiences may reject or embrace such a challenging creative identity, but it is more likely to garner attention. (Banerjee & Ingram, p. 11)

§.04 In summation, networking and identity (branding) are more important to fame in the arts than creativity. In conclusion, it is important to note that personal fame is extremely tenuous; consider how many past social media stars are now completely forgotten. This need not be so for an artist’s works, which can endure long after their creator has passed into eternal slumber. For this reason, it is unwise for any serious artist whose goal is the upward development of his or her craft to chiefly prize fame, for in doing so, one will have, of necessity, deprioritized one’s art—when the muse is eschewed for the socialite, the fires of creation abate.

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Sources

1. Annaliese Griffin. (2019) For Artists Fame Is More About Social Networks Than Creativity. Quartzy. Available at: https://qz.com/quartzy/1564122/for-artists-fame-is-more-about-social-networks-than-creativity/
2. Casey Lesser. (2019) Artists Become Famous Through Their Friends, Not The Originality of their Work. Artsy. Available at: https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-artists-famous-friends-originality-work
3. Mark B. Turner & Gilles Fauconnier. (1999) A Mechanism of Creativity. Poetics Today, Vol. 20, No. 3, pp. 397-418, Fall 1999. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1416435
4. Mitali Banerjee & Paul Ingram. (2018) Fame as an Illusion of Creativity: Evidence from the Pioneers of Abstract Art. HEC Paris Research Paper No. SPE-2018-1305; Columbia Business School Research Paper No. 18-74. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3258318 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3258318

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Reversing Time’s Arrow: Qubit Simulated Particle Regression

In 1927, British plumian professor of astronomy at the University of Cambridge, Arthur Stanley Eddington, developed the concept of time’s arrow, which he sought to use to better explicate the asymmetry or mono-directionality of time.

Sir Arthur S. Eddington (1882-1944).

One year later, in 1928, Eddington described the concept in his book, The Nature of the Physical World,

“Let us draw an arrow arbitrarily. If as we follow the arrow we find more and more of the random element in the state of the world, then the arrow is pointing towards the future; if the random element decreases the arrow points towards the past. That is the only distinction known to physics. This follows at once if our fundamental contention is admitted that the introduction of randomness is the only thing which cannot be undone. I shall use the phrase ‘time’s arrow’ to express this one-way property of time which has no analogue in space.”

Researchers led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory were, however, able to reverse Eddington’s “one-way property,” through the utilization of a cloud-accessible IBM 4-qubit quantum computer and send a simulated elementary particle back in time 1/1,000,000^th of a second. Given that the researchers were working within the confines of a simulation, they obviously did not send a real particle back in time, rather, the computer mapped the dispersal and reversal of a wave.

The authors clarify the process:

“Here we show that, while in nature the complex conjugation needed for time reversal is exponentially improbable, one can design a quantum algorithm that includes complex conjugation and thus reverses a given quantum state. Using this algorithm on an IBM quantum computer enables us to experimentally demonstrate a backward time dynamics for an electron scattered on a two-level impurity.” (G. B. Lesovik, I. A. Sadovskyy, M. V. Suslov, A. V. Lebedev, & V. M. Vinokur, 2019)

This is to say, the qubits were set to function as particles which were then transformed into a wave and then they discerned a function by which the dispersal of the wave could be reversed, thereby violating the ‘simulated’ laws of physics.

Dr. Jerry Chow, Senior Manager of IBM Q Technology, remarked on the program:

“This particular research fits a category of known research that proves you can reverse operations in quantum mechanics…”

Whilst the researchers themselves waxed ambivalent on the practical, real world possibility of time reversal, it seems, at present, theoretically plausible. Whilst popular consciousness turns immediately to thoughts of time travel, in considerations of potential practical applications of time reversal, my own thoughts moved in less flashy directions.

Given that the IBM experiment reversed the flow of time one particle-wave at a time, the effects of this process on a macro level object could prove fatal for a carbon based lifeform, as, unless there was profound sychronicity of particle reversal, one could expect subatomic shredding of the test subject (depending, of course, on the scale of the reversal process). In light of these considerations, a better initial use for time reversal technology would be in space defense. Though asteroid-to-earth impacts are rare, they are regular (along cosmic, not civilizational, timescales). According to Robert Marcus, H. Jay Melosh & Gareth Collins, one asteroid the size of 99942 Apophis (370-meters in diameter) will impact the earth once every 80,000 years. It should also be noted that a asteroid does not have to directly impact earth to pose a threat to human settlements; for example, Apophis is predicted to pass 19,400 miles (31,200 kilometres) from earth, April 13, 2029; no direct impact will be made, but there is potential for indirect impact if a chuck of the object breaks off and makes it through the atmosphere. Further, the deeper our species presses into space, the greater the threat of asteroid impact, thus, space detection and defense systems are indispensable and will become only more so. Thus, if a sufficiently large apparatus generating time reversal fields could be strategically deployed, then, theoretically, future civilizations would be able to loop asteroids by throwing them back in time to just before contact with the field whereupon they would promptly re-strike the field, engendering object-stasis so long as the theoretical apparatus remained properly maintained. If the reversal process proves uneven, such that whole object transition is (then-yet) impossible, then it can still be used to tear a potentially threatening asteroid to pieces by ‘punching’ backward holes in the hazardous object thereby stretching it out along its owner previous trajectory (the arrow’s wake) and thus leaving the portion of the asteroid still tumbling along with our arrow, significantly degraded in mass and momentum so as to be rendered harmless to human habitation.

Four-qubit superconducting square circuit of a IBM quantum computer.

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Sources

1. A. S. Eddington. (1928) The Nature of the Physical World. NY; The Macmillan Company.
2. Dennis Overbye. (2019) For a Split Second, a Quantum Computer Made History Go Backward. The New York Times.
3. G. B. Lesovik et al. (2019) Arrow of time and its reversal on the IBM quantum computer. Nautre.
4. Robert Marcus; H. Jay Melosh & Gareth Collins. (2010) Earth Impact Effects Program. Imperial College London / Purdue University.
5. Tristan Greene. (2019) See you earlier: Physicists sent a (simulated) particle back in time. The Next Web. 

Book Review: Hate Crime Hoax, by Wilfred Reilly

SYNOPSIS

Hate Crime Hoax: The Left’s Campaign To Sell A Fake Race War by Dr. Wilfrid Reilly (The $50,000,000 Question) is an absorbing and well-detailed account of the prevalence of American hate crime hoaxes and the glaringly negative results of their perpetration. Dr. Reilly is quite forthright in laying out the fundamental purpose and aim for penning the book at the onset, writing,

‘Hoax’ attempts to do for American race relations what Glassner did for American consumer advocacy: use hard data to penetrate an intentionally created fog of exaggerations and lies, and by doing so expose a surprisingly positive reality. To an astonishing degree, many Americans today, especially on the activist Left, seem to believe that the USA is a racist hell-hole on the brink of civil war. In the mainstream media, we hear almost constant talk about scary new forms of racism: “white privilege” and “cultural appropriation” and “subtle bigotry.” —Hoax, Reilly, p. 4.

Dr. Reilly makes good on his attempt to use hard data to penetrate the fog of exaggerations and lies surrounding his subject through the deployment of personal research, independent scholars such as Laird Wilcox, FBI and BJS statistics and a bevvy of other sources.

One of the most interesting aspects about the book is the way it unearths the reasons behind the culture of fear which permeates America as pertains to hate crimes and racial animus; in contrast to being merely a few hoaxes taken out of context, Reilly advances the notion that hate, like anything else, is highly profitable, citing, NGOs (such as the NAACP and SPLC), corporate diversity initiatives, affirmative action and minority business “set asides” as examples of a broad, series of vested interest groups who would lose out if it ever became widely known that the bulk of their narratives concerning hate and racism in the US were either completely fabricated or blown out of all reasonable proportion.

In many situations where a reasonable person might well conclude that no actual racism at all exists today – Hollywood’s Oscars ceremony? – it often proves very profitable and rewarding to invent some. —Hoax, Reilly, p. 7.

The author also makes the distinction between the harmless organizations and initiatives whose work is based off the presumption of America-as-hideous-bigoted-nation and those whose effects have a potent and overwhelmingly negative effect on the populace, in part or at large. Reilly at one point notes that one of the things he has witnessed in a personal capacity working a historically black college that most holds black students back is not some great edifice of anti-black restriction but rather, those very same black students’ belief in such a edifice, despite its nonexistence.

It is not a minor and justifiable quirk that a quarter of Black people think that their government is attempting to kill them. If this were true, it would indisputably be one of the greatest crimes against humanity in history. If this were true, I myself would currently be in armed rebellion against the United States of America. But, this is not true. — Hoax, Reilly, P. 8.

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STRUCTURE

The book is structured in nine chapters; Chapter 1 deals with the outline of the book itself and the main argument. Chapter 2 deals with details the broader social context in which the arguments are being made and recounts the specifics of numerous fake hate crimes which rolls over into Chapter 3 which looks at the issue as it has developed on college campuses. Chapter 4 details what Reilly amusingly refers to as the “Klan Springs Eternal” narrative, wherein minority groups continuously push the idea that some KKK-esque group is not only out to get them, but also on the political rise. Chapter 5 takes a look at the supposed hate crime cases surrounding the election of Donald Trump and his supporters. Chapter 6 documents false reporting on fake hate crime allegations. Chapter 7 takes a look back through the annals of hate crime allegation history and what it can tell us about the present. Chapter 8, diverts from its focus on the American Left and looks to one of the fastest growing trends in fake hate crimes, white Americans falsely claiming to have been the victims of acts of racial and political discrimination or violence. The book closes out at Chapter 9, which offers up advice and policy on how to detect hate crime hoaxes and bad reporting.

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METHODOLOGY

Given the topic, it is important to clearly and concisely lay out what one means by “hate crime,” this Reilly does at the beginning of the book by noting that he utilized the official FBI designation: a felony or misdemeanor offense based on or caused by bias against the victim’s “race, color, religion, national origin, gender/sex, sexual orientation (real or perceived), gender identity, or disability.” With his terms firmly laid out, Dr. Reilly then compiled a detailed list of 346 different hate crime allegations across America. After combing through the specifics of each case with a fine-toothed comb Dr. Reilly discovered that only 100 of those 346 cases were either unverified, unverifiable or outright untrue hoaxes. Somewhat later, in 2017, Dr. Reilly, compiles a base data-set of 409 different confirmed hate crime hoaxes, hyperlinks to which, the author graciously offers to any who ask for them. What is important to note is that Hoax is a principally a qualitative work and the author says quite explicitly that statistical number-crunching – while important – was not the main purpose of the book. He stresses however, that it is indisputable to know that the actual number of hate crime hoaxes is very large, which can be deduced from his own data set of over 400 hate crime allegations, along with a fellow researcher’s list of 333 recent allegations, which were both coupled with Laird Wilcox’s 1994 research on around 400 allegations and then stacking those over 1100 different hate crime allegations against the FBI total of 5,850 (2015). This compilation of information is then compared with 2016 study information from the ‘Hate Response Team’ of the University of Wisconsin (LaCrosse) who discovered that 28 of 192 different reports of negative bias campus incidents either were hoaxes or had not occurred at all. Dr. Reilly then judiciously works through all the potential or outright stated motivations of the hoaxers throughout the various different cases, motivations which range from malevolence, to a desire for insurance money to wanting sympathetic attention. Reilly’s total case-study period ranged from 2013 to 2017.

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STYLE & CONTENT

Outside of the subject matter and the methodology used to obtain all pertinent information, another important consideration of any book is the distillation of that information. Dr. Reilly has a unique style of voice which avoids a lot of the problems common to most contemporary academic writing, chiefly a proclivity towards colleague referentialism and in-house vocabulary (ie. anthropocene, Raven’s Progressive Matrices, Lacanian, etc) that is utterly impenetrable to the general public. Dr. Reilly’s book is straightforward and exhibits a clarity of explanation even when tackling fairly complex topics which confounding dates and expansive data-sets, which makes it not just informative, but often, highly amusing. It also bears noting that in addition to just examining in detail various different hate crime hoaxes, Dr. Reilly looks also to the broader socio-political context in which they occurred and pays specific attention for what he terms “the continuing oppression narrative,” which he believes to be a strong driver of hate crimes hoaxes among minority communities and, more recently, among white Americans as well. This is, in our estimation, one of the most interesting aspects about the book, as it isn’t just a list of different things that have happened and why – that is descriptive – it is also a highly prescriptive work, which suggests various way to better handle such situations moving forward.

There are certainly viable solutions to the problem of widespread false reporting of hate

crimes. Probably the two most critical are (1) Prosecutors must put political correctness aside and enforce the law, seeking at minimum jail sentences for anyone convicted of falsely reporting a hate offense or similar serious crime; and (2) we must all begin to challenge the narrative, pointing out as often as possible from the highest possible podiums the ACTUAL rates of real hate crime, fake hate crime, and for that matter inter-racial crime and police violence against Blacks and others. Interestingly, success in achieving Objective (2) – removing the unnecessary veil of tears created by false perceptions of oppression – would be the best possible thing for minority Americans, and the widespread proliferation of non-MSM new media may make this achievable in the near future. — Hoax, Reilly, p. 29-30.

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CONCLUSION

If you are at all interested in hate crime hoaxes as well as the politics of US race relations and how they are often artificially strained, then we’d highly recommend Hate Crime Hoax.

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Note: Hate Crime Hoax is currently available only for pre-order from Amazon or Barnes & Noble with a release date of Feb 26, 2019. Furthermore, we should like to thank Dr. Reilly for the advance draft-copy of his excellent book which he so graciously gifted to Logos before its public release.
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Nihil Futurum (PDF)

Nihil Futurum

Site Update: Articles Will Be Sparser As TLC ramps up production on new e-book

Greetings and salutations, dear reader. If you have been following the site for some time you will know that I have published one e-book previously (which you can obtain free, here) with the intention of releasing more in the future. Our first original content ebook, Defamation Factory: The Sordid History of the ADL, will shortly be released here on the site. Naturally, the work has required a substantial amount of research and contemplation and has subsequently eaten up a good deal of time. Therefore, articles will be published with slightly diminished frequency until the book is released.

Thank you, as always, for your patronage and readership.

Cheers.

K.E. – administrator