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I agree with the author that it's probably best to learn rules before you break them, but is there any inherent value in things produced by breaking rules you k

by mnutt 16y ago

I agree with the author that it's probably best to learn rules before you break them, but is there any inherent value in things produced by breaking rules you know over breaking rules you don't know? Or is it merely that by knowing the rules you'll be able to break them to better effect? Would a work of Shakespeare be less great if it were written by 1 of infinity monkeys?

chc 16y ago
There is inherent value in the process, not the product. If bad process ends in a good product, that's nice, but about as likely as a million dollars suddenly materializing in front of you. There are an almost limitless number of permutations of any idea that break the rules. By understanding the rules and their function, you can intelligently choose to disregard some of them but still have a good idea which of those infinite ideas are good. To return to the monkeys: If you have infinite monkeys, you're never going to find Shakespeare even I'd one of them wrote it. You have to have a decent idea what a Shakespearean sonnet looks like or you are never going to find the right monkey, it and would certainly help if you had some way to organize the monkeys so that you had a finite search space for Monkey Shakespeare.
- thwarted 16y ago
  Not challenging, just clarifying, because I agree. In "given an infinite number of monkeys at an infinite number of typewriters, eventually one of them will produce the script to Hamlet", the key word is "eventually", and speaks to nothing about the quality of the monkeys or of their writing. It's a rephrasing of Bogosort. If you try to optimize the bogosort process in some way so it finishes in less than infinite time in the average case, it's not bogosort anymore. And bogosort is exactly what you don't want when you break the rules. Being able to break the rules is about knowing which rules to break and how to break them, not trying things randomly hoping it gets better. But one also has to watch out for being too knowledgeable and not being able to, uh, "think outside the box" when looking for new things to try. To quote Web Dude, "did you restart it three times?"
- noonespecial 16y ago
  In real life, its even harder than that. The monkey has to realize he's typed the sonnet.
- mnutt 16y ago
  I agree with you completely that the most likely chance of success comes from knowing the rules before breaking them. But I don't think it's unheard of for someone to bypass the rule-learning and figure out some new way of looking at things. Granted, maybe had they been forced to learn the rules they would have ended up breaking them anyway. Many people are content to just learn the rules. But given two works of art, can you actually say "that one is amazing because the artist learned the rules and that one is not because the artist was making up his/her own new rules or merely guessing" ? And quite a bit is possible given infinite monkeys. :)

by mnutt 16y ago

chc 16y ago

There is inherent value in the process, not the product. If bad process ends in a good product, that's nice, but about as likely as a million dollars suddenly materializing in front of you. There are an almost limitless number of permutations of any idea that break the rules. By understanding the rules and their function, you can intelligently choose to disregard some of them but still have a good idea which of those infinite ideas are good. To return to the monkeys: If you have infinite monkeys, you're never going to find Shakespeare even I'd one of them wrote it. You have to have a decent idea what a Shakespearean sonnet looks like or you are never going to find the right monkey, it and would certainly help if you had some way to organize the monkeys so that you had a finite search space for Monkey Shakespeare.

thwarted 16y ago
Not challenging, just clarifying, because I agree. In "given an infinite number of monkeys at an infinite number of typewriters, eventually one of them will produce the script to Hamlet", the key word is "eventually", and speaks to nothing about the quality of the monkeys or of their writing. It's a rephrasing of Bogosort. If you try to optimize the bogosort process in some way so it finishes in less than infinite time in the average case, it's not bogosort anymore. And bogosort is exactly what you don't want when you break the rules. Being able to break the rules is about knowing which rules to break and how to break them, not trying things randomly hoping it gets better. But one also has to watch out for being too knowledgeable and not being able to, uh, "think outside the box" when looking for new things to try. To quote Web Dude, "did you restart it three times?"
noonespecial 16y ago
In real life, its even harder than that. The monkey has to realize he's typed the sonnet.
mnutt 16y ago
I agree with you completely that the most likely chance of success comes from knowing the rules before breaking them. But I don't think it's unheard of for someone to bypass the rule-learning and figure out some new way of looking at things. Granted, maybe had they been forced to learn the rules they would have ended up breaking them anyway. Many people are content to just learn the rules. But given two works of art, can you actually say "that one is amazing because the artist learned the rules and that one is not because the artist was making up his/her own new rules or merely guessing" ? And quite a bit is possible given infinite monkeys. :)