Music…

Magic

Xanadu Soundtrack

Olivia Newton-John

and Words

Come take my hand
You should know me
I’ve always been in your mind
You know I will be kind
I’ll be guiding you

Building your dream has to start now
There’s no other road to take
You won’t make a mistake
I’ll be guiding you
You have to believe we are magic

Lyric excerpts from Musixmatch.

A dear friend is a physicist, though I’m not sure that he technically finished his degree.  We have spent many hours debating the merits of a great wealth of topics.  One such topic was the merits of a natural scientist versus an applied scientist.  Natural scientist seeks knowledge for the pure sake of knowledge; physicist are natural scientists.  Applied scientists seek knowledge that may be applied to some use; engineers are applied scientists.  By schooling (and profession), I’m an engineer.

To illustrate the point, we talked about the lunar landing.  It was a great feat of engineering, impossible to do without the science and math from natural scientists.  While I am fascinated by our aspirations to land on the moon, I also wonder what we’ve learned from landing in the moon.  Specifically, did we discover anything from physically being there that has greatly impacted our lives?  Did the samples of moondust lead us to a great invention?  Are computers faster?  Did we minimize CO₂ emissions?  To be clear, I’m not criticizing anyone for the raw pursuit of knowledge; it’s simply that I find useful discoveries far more intriguing.

An oversimplification is that natural scientists discover things; applied scientists create things.  Naturally, oftentimes they closely work together and neither one strays strictly in their respective lanes.  I choose to believe that engineers are a balance of analytics and creativity; we’re both left and right brained.  You may assert that fits the ‘jack-of-all-traits and master-of-one’, and that’s a fair characterization.  I will neither deny it, nor be shamed by it.

While engineers are indeed creative, they’re also different from other creative types like writers or illustrators.  Engineers are constrained by the laws of nature, which we cannot change.  We cannot completely eliminate friction, gravity, or change the speed of light.  However, we accept these restrictions and happily create new inventions.  It’s in the nature of how we’re wired.

However, creativity is often wondrous and elusive.  Consulting with engineering colleagues sometimes helps, but it is not foolproof.  There have been moments where I’ve come upon the solution to a problem while shampooing my hair in the shower.  I’ll occasionally joke about keeping a notepad next to the shower.  Looking at the solution afterwards often seems obvious but trying to replicate the conditions by which we achieved it is frustratingly difficult.

If creativity is so darn useful, how do we package it and replicate it?

The left-brained part of me believes that there’s a logical explanation and that it may be achieved.  I’ve looked upon other’s code with fascination and wonder, but they explained how they reached that conclusion through a mere process of elimination.  We can reason that once we accumulate enough information, getting the right answer is simply methodically working through the combinations.  What may seem magical is merely mechanical.  It’s much like getting to that final guess in Wordle because you’ve eliminated literally everything else; there’s no mystery to it.

There’s a rule of thumb that you gain proficiency upon spending 10,000 hours doing something, this translates to roughly five years.  Is what we often refer to as ‘intuition’ merely a latent memory that guides us in one direction?  People have often told me that I have a natural intuition when it comes to programming.  I’ve had teammates curse me with, “I’ve been looking at this for 30 minutes, how did you see it in 15 seconds?”  I may respond with, “It just looked off.”  However, that is closer to the truth is that I’ve made that same mistake before and my natural inclination is to not make the same mistakes again.  It’s not my voice per se, it’s the thousands of hours I’ve spend often stepping on that same figurative land mine.

Is creativity and intuition merely a function of elimination and experience?

The right-brained part of me believes that there’s something indeed wondrous about it.  There are some solutions that I may have eventually come to on my own; I won’t deny that.  However, there are other inspirations that I really can’t hope to explain.  No, you don’t violate the laws of physics if you land a hole-in-one upon your very first round of golf, but it does lack a reasonable explanation.  Naturally, there are no formulas to follow or figurative muscles to build in order to achieve this.  Can we simply make our peace with these being simply random or lucky?

Many years ago, I had given up writing a personal journal; it was a function of having respect for the privacy of the people in my life.  I still yearned to write but resisted the urge.  Years later, on an otherwise ordinary ride on the bus, I got the inspiration for this blog.  This particular bus ride was no different from those that preceded it.  This particular day was no different, nor was the music.  I can’t tell you how it led me here, except that it did.  We can rack our brains for an explanation and find nothing.