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It's Ok to Copy Others - Steal Like an Artist

1,015 views Wait, is this logic right? • Apr 14, 2023
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Slog Reference: In Praise of Copying and Imitation

Description

Is copying bad? Or is it a good way to learn? This FutureIQ episode begins with a question: "Is copying a bad thing?" and introduces the idea that while copying may seem like cheating or unoriginal, it can actually lead to innovation and improvement. The episode then explores various examples from literature, art, and real life to demonstrate this point.

Moving on to technology, the episode shows how Apple's computer was not innovative, but rather it was an improvement on existing ideas that ultimately revolutionized the industry. Similarly, Microsoft's produces improved on the previous versions of other companies to become the most widely used office suite.

The video also presents real-life examples, such as how artists and designers often use existing works as inspiration for their own creations. The episode then argues that by copying and improving upon what came before, we can create more innovative and interesting things.

The episode concludes with the idea that copying and improving is not only a good thing, but also an essential part of progress and creativity. It encourages viewers to be open to new ideas, to build upon the work of others, and to use these as a stepping stone for their own creations.

Hope you enjoyed FutureIQ by Navin Kabra and Shrikant Joshi. Do hit us up on Twitter:
@ngkabra http://twitter.com/ngkabra
@shrikant https://twitter.com/shrikant

Listen it on the podcast provider of your choice: https://tapthe.link/FutureIQRSS

Learn more interesting concepts:
Why Superstition is Smarter Than Science: https://youtu.be/LYdXruXmlng
Sensitivity vs selectivity: https://youtu.be/joF5dHhF3s0
Thinking like a VC: https://youtu.be/OAAYnb9LUsU

Links mentioned in the video:
The Secret of Our Success: https://tapthe.link/SuccessSecret
Steal Like an Artist: https://tapthe.link/StealArtistSteal
Seven Habits of Highly Effective People: https://tapthe.link/7Habits
Copycats: https://tapthe.link/CopyCats

The mother of all demos: https://youtu.be/yJDv-zdhzMY

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
01:30 Research
03:38 Creativity
04:48 Culture
09:33 Chesterton's fence
08:49 Unlearning the dogma change maybe
09:30 Career & businesses
12:00 The Lindy effect
13:07 Copying tips
15:20 Virat's dance
18:08 The inevitability of imitation
19:25 When to copy?
20:55 When not to copy?
20:40 References

#futureIQ #imitation

Related Slog Matches

In Praise of Copying and Imitation

Date Proximity

62.00

Transcript

do you have a time machine can I take you back to my school days and get you to meet my teachers Bill Gates is by Sweden nobody told me Sweden take me before he buys it is Our Lives we are told that copying is a Bad Thing imitation is like you know a low status thing my ears remember it really well yeah but I think that advice is really bad right copying and imitation are the most important skills for anybody in fact I would argue that copying an imitation are the secret of success of all humans do you have a time machine can I take you back to my school days and get you to meet my
teachers every episode you are going to ask me right please go back to school with this information that's why we do this show yes yes and by the way before but the life actually comes out there before we begin the rest of this episode I did manage to get the 12 digits if you don't know what I'm talking about check out the episode on improving your memory through chunking so um in fact uh the secret of our success is the name of a book which we'll be referencing through the episode okay also this episode will finally explain to you why we'll listen to Virat Kohli on which insurance to buy right because he does the dance yes so you know
copying your limitation is a secret to Our Success right yeah a lot of yeah yeah so um and when I say our I mean all humans uh what do you what does that even mean right yeah what there is research okay which uh was done in say we took human Toddlers and compared them to chimpanzees and orangutans okay okay and all three were given similar tasks and uh they checked the performance right so total is one yeah um not necessarily right so there were four different things okay one is quantities okay right another is causality which means you know what causes what right thinking of that a third is spatial reasoning um Space special not special not special
reasoning about regarding space fourth was social learning learning from others okay on the first three spatial reasoning quantities and causality they were roughly similar to each other so chimpsan orangutans were similar to human toddlers okay in social learning learning from others it was not even close right we were like eight or nine times better the toddlers were okay it worries me that the first three were close to chimpanzees chimpan chip I'll get this chimpanzees and orangutans let's see if I'll get it yeah so the point is that we have always been told that humans are so much better than apes and we took over the world because we are so much more intelligent big brains it's not too real
our big brain the most important function is that we can learn from other humans right and that is why copying and imitation is so important right that is the secret to Our Success I mean you are from the creative field srikant right I copy a lot of people is in fact every creative person is taught at the beginning of their career that you know don't try to be original right away first copy the Masters copy the grades in fact copy multiple of them and then only after you have mastered that then you start developing your own style does it sound familiar why do you think I'm sitting here Naveen why do you think who do you
think I'm trying to copy here Naveen who do you think so you know I I mean that there's a funny way of saying it which is really flushed when you get flattered and embarrassed I love watching it go on so uh um a funny way of saying it huh is that to steal ideas from one person is plagiarism to steal ideas from many people is research [Laughter] so but it's true right that is true it is true it is true I mean I I remember reading a book by this author called Austin Cleon that was called steel like an artist it's a it's a great book it's a great book you should probably check it out when you guys yeah yeah yeah yeah
easily so um I mean another thing that you keep hearing about right all these like management gurus uh will talk about the most important thing in a company is the culture right if you go to your grandmother your grandmother will also be like oh our culture our culture is so important for us right yes what is culture culture is just copying from dead people right with me funny and you know enlightening at the same time and it's it's a little worrying right now let me put it the same thing right basically tradition and culture are peer pressure from dead people right but different way of saying it is that when you put the word peer and dead
in the same sentence it means something pretty different so the point is that a different way of saying it is the Traditions are things somebody tried they worked out well right and now they are telling you copy me the excellent tradition is and all the Traditions all the things that you are supposed to do or you do without even thinking about right is your culture because those are the things you copy from your parents and your friends and your uncles and they copied from their parents and friends and uncles and so on right I mean and ninety percent of our learning 90 of our behavior is copying of this type you have just opened a can
of worms that I am not even sure where to begin I mean I understand uh the concept of culture being uh tried and tested things over the years but then again a lot of those things keep getting tried again and again and there are different results sometimes I'm not saying that you never change anything right all I'm simply saying is that modern world puts way too much emphasis on originality and creativity and let's do it differently and do it in a new way and so on right uh I'm saying yes I mean you do need all of those things but you know in a small amount I mean 90 imitation and 10 percent originality that's what
you should be doing I mean too much too many times people just change things because they want to change things people do new things because new things are like supposed to be good there is a concept called Chester transference Chesterton is GK Chesterton the great uh English author yeah and he says that if you see offense in the road right I mean one of these modern guys is going to say oh this fence I have never used this fence I don't know anybody uses this fence let's get rid of it yeah that's the wrong way of looking at it right do not get rid of the fence until you find out why it was there in the first place
okay the fence here is a metaphor for this Edition the copying that you were doing I mean I mean don't say I'm not going to copy yeah find out why those things are there in the first place and take the ones that make sense discard the ones that don't like I'm not saying that Satish we should keep copying that okay it's discarded so uh what is this Satish satishness we should not copy him don't copy Satish either Satish is an idiot okay so all the Satish is out there seriously sorry we don't mean you we mean the others that this guy who's listening okay with me okay no but uh I I do agree with you in
in a lot of things because uh one of the first things that we learn as people in the creative industry is that we have to unlearn this not copying um Dogma that is passed down to us in school that copying is essentially a great way to improve yourself in fact I remember uh during the Renaissance the Masters would make their students copy their paintings millimeter by millimeter and until they got that right the students weren't allowed to uh start off new paintings of their own because that's that's basically how they were taught all of the basic techniques of painting the brush Strokes the colors and all of that right and I mean you might argue that
okay that's fine in like regular life but if you want to succeed in business you want to do a startup then you have to be original I don't know okay let's take the example of Microsoft okay okay nothing they have ever done is original okay Microsoft Word wasn't the first word processor so okay Word Perfect was much before that Microsoft PowerPoint wasn't the first presentation software right there were many before that Microsoft Excel isn't the first spreadsheet right uh Lotus one two three was way before that right yeah what Microsoft did was they copied good stuff that they saw around them right and had a personality right and that's why Bill Gates can buy Sweden and you cannot even though you
are original It Is by Sweden nobody told me Sweden take me before he buys it so the point is that even in business most of business is actually copying only there has to be just you know some amount of originality but not everything but then there are there are uh there are occasional moments where something entirely new comes into being like for example when the iPhone first launched yeah uh it was it was okay let's set the example of apple right forget iPhone just go all the way back to Apple uh the first computers right and I mean especially compared to Microsoft we see apple as a very creative as a renegade brand as like this screen if you go and
look at Apple what all Apple introduced right most of that is copied from Xerox park right there is something called the mother of all demos uh in the 1960s if you look at that just Steve Jobs just took those put them in apple and just productize them much better we put a link to the mother of all Demos in the show notes in the description he's right I when he said that it suddenly struck me that yeah it wasn't Innovation yeah he was just I mean the thinking different I mean no no I'm not saying apple is not Innovative it's very Innovative what I'm saying is it's not all Innovation it's not 100 it's that 90
plus 10 percent that we that Naveen spoke about a little earlier so uh what what I hear you saying is innovation for the sake of innovation and modernization never really works out yeah exactly okay um in fact uh you know uh there is two ways of looking at it right one is that just in things like business and so on don't completely discount what has already always been working but even regularly in our lives we have a tendency to just you know anything new and modern and it's a fashion is uh we want to pick up right and that's not necessarily always a good idea uh there is another concept called uh the Lindy Prince okay which basically says that if
an idea has been around for a long time it will continue to be around for a long time if it has been around for a short time there's a good chance that you disappear after a short time right as in how long an idea or a concept or a tradition will survive in the future is roughly proportional to how long it has survived so far right so something that has been around for 5000 years will probably be around for another 5000 years there are something that started three years ago might not be there three years from now okay so that brings up the question when do you go with which of them as in when do I take something new that has
come out and when do I choose to stay with what has already been tried and tested so um I mean there isn't an easy answer okay uh in fact uh I'm going to answer by saying you know referencing one more episode we will do an episode on something called uh paste layers okay it's a complex concept but I want to really do that episode on that space layers yeah or pay Slayers layers basically the idea is that there are different layers to anything in life the outermost layer is fashion which moves very fast and the innermost layer is culture and tradition which is like very slow to change heavy enough and we need both of them and we're going to
talk about you know what things should be in the outer fast changing layer and what things should be in the okay so how does the space layer correlate to the question that I was so what it does is that it tells you that what things should be in the outermost layer where you are you know picking up new things and trying out new things at the same time right the outermost layer the latest new fashionable things those uh keep us fresh and prevent us from getting you know stuck in bad situations and old ways and stuck in a rut but the innermost layers give us stability right and you have to be careful about those so we'll talk about
that all right basically the point of this episode is that don't go just for the outermost layer of everything new everything uh right there is important thing uh uh in copying what works this this the the only thing that I'm worried about is that this sounds perilously close to uh What uh what people say but it has been working for thousands of years how can you suddenly decide it is not working one of these days and you know what I'm talking about um so yeah we have to it has to be a combination but I did promise that I will explain what this has to do with Virat Kohli yes you should dance right so
I said that the secret to Our Success is that we copy from other humans right correct what I did say is how do you choose what to copy and from which humans right again Evolution has given us an easy answer that what we want to do is we want to copy from successful people the ones copying from losers are going to become losers right that is the ones copying from successful people have a higher chance of succeeding make sense yeah and success I mean how do you decide who's successful of course that just comes from visibility that explains celebrities yes the third part and this is the important part is what traits or habits of successful
people should you copy seven of them no the that life is complicated right you don't know which of Virat kohli's behaviors ultimately contributed to his success right you copy all of them so you copy everything so then if Virat Kohli does the digit dance you also were going to do the digit dance right this is I mean I know that your system to brain is saying this is stupid okay but system two brain is not in charge system one brain has already decided we are going to do the digit dance and later on system 1 brain is going to come up with a very convincing and logical reason why that particular insurance company is a good company
right this explains a lot of uh fans and Fanatics suddenly it all became clear why there are so many fans and Fanatics not knocking the fans out there uh but I think you now understand why you are at Max probably I mean your system one system two is strong enough to not get influenced by Virat Kohli on insurance right but I can bet you there is something else where you are making the same mistake no uh yeah all of us that has made me go out and check uh the insurance provider not affiliated with them they are not paying us for this video there is absolutely no money being exchanged all of you would love it if
there is so if anybody from which it is watching feel free to contact us we will take a bucket load of money from you and do that thank you okay so that explains why a lot of people do the dance or whatever else uh uh copying comes into mind copying animation comes into mind but uh that also gives you a great idea about how to progress because uh the seven habits that I mentioned was actually a book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and the book was written with this intent in mind that these are the seven habits of highly effective people and they should probably look to copy them imitate them so okay in fact I will put it a little
differently okay right uh not only is uh imitation necessary but also it is unavoidable okay okay in fact everything you even want in life everything you desire in life uh comes from uh you know what you see around you uh it's a theory called magnetic Desire by a philosopher called Gerald which we will talk about in another episode another episode again if we've already done this episode by the time you're watching this or hearing this then you'll find the link to the episode in the show notes and description you know explains a lot of things uh where you think oh I want this because x y z but in reality it is because you saw
someone else doing it also but I'm sure a lot of students out there are going to take this video straight to their teachers and say look Naveen says we should copy your yeah so you have to understand where uh this makes sense right so one is that of course copy only legally there are some kinds of copies which are illegal do not because without saying that we are not we don't we don't condone that at all second is that that some amount of innovation which is there on top of the copying that is also necessary otherwise you will not succeed but specifically for students right if you are going to copy mindlessly you know there is a question and somebody
else answered it and you just copy the answer without even it going to your brain then you are not learning anything right I mean if you are going to copy and see the example you gave of the great Masters who made their students copy the painting exactly I mean they had to do the actual painting so they learned techniques while doing it right correct if you copy in a way where you are learning those things internalizing those things that sort of copying is okay but if you are doing a copy in a way where you know it is just happening mechanically and you're not learning anything then that is bad I mean even if you get a Mr
Miyagi you still have to paint the fencer it the copying I mean another reason for uh you know copying if it is resulting in practice right that uh is good because you know we have another episode where we talked about what practice does for you what repetition does for you okay so when is it ideal to not copy then because now what you've said so far seems like everything that you see interesting should be copied and assimilated into yours so see the context is always important right uh the world keeps changing I mean again I would go back to 90 10. 90 of the world remains same ten percent changes but that 10 percent can make all the
difference so when you are copying something you try to understand what is the context in which that happened what is the new context is it still does it still make sense or not right and only copy those things which still makes sense in the new context right like vastu shastra I mean 5000 years ago people were living in gangetic Planes Rivers coming in One Direction wind coming in another Direction and there was no indoor plumbing right things that make sense at that time might not make sense today where we are living in the plateau yeah and there is plumbing and uh so on right but something still makes sense the sun still rises in the East uh
right so some things make sense some things don't you have to know which ones to keep and which ones to throw away essentially like all shastra is like all science the vastu shastra has also gotten updated because there are certain new practices and principles that have come in and that updating needs to get done so yeah don't copy mindlessly like exactly said mindless copying does not make sense but copying and imitation are not just the greatest form of flattery they also seem to be the greatest form of educating yourself and that under secret to our success that's the secret to his success and pretty soon yeah my success yeah so I mean just to mention
this is a very deep topic we just covered a little bit of it uh there's an entire book called the secret to Our Success which gives the uh cognitive evolutionary background to this a different book called copycats by ODed Shankar uh says how smart companies use imitation to gain a strategic Edge and there are a bunch of uh articles uh so just check out the links managers and leaders out there go on to your Amazon accounts and order we are not affiliated with Amazon although again we'd love to be sneak on nothing thank you thank you thank you