A Paradox

A stupid conversation emerged on twitter. Someone, a middle-aged white dude, took exception to the idea an artist's best work is done when young. Then a bunch of other middle aged white men agreed desperately. It was like looking in a mirror after a stroke.

Anyways, anyone who spent any time being a mathematician knows that there are changes in our mental capabilities as we age. The hard truth is that if you, as a mathematician, are going to make some dizzying leap, are going to see some vital connection between two wildly differing things, are going to break some terrifying new ground, you are going to do it before your 30th birthday.

This does not mean that you become immediately at age 30. As our minds evolve, we trade in that (potential) lightning in a bottle for a steadiness, for experience, for both depth and breadth. Older mathematicians publish valuable papers, but those papers expand existing work, finish things up, clarify things, and generally steady the foundations of what has been built. Almost without exception there are no tremendous, startling, strides made by mathematicians over 50. I do not mean here only 1 in a 100 or so I mean like maybe 3 people total have made substantive creative leaps in mathematics after their 50th birthday, and I can't name any.

The young creative strives to pack enough material into their brain — barely, there's not much time — to do some explosive work before mental arthritis sets in. Later, in the fullness of maturity, they find other things to do.

Art, interestingly, reveals here a paradox.

We evaluate Art in part on the work itself, and in part on the stature and character of the Artist. This can range from a cynical well, he's in the pantheon, so if he shits in a bucket, that's Great Art to more generous greater willingness to take time with an artist you recognize. Regardless of where you fit in the spectrum of cynicism, you will find it difficult to disentangle the artist's stature from the quality of the work.

The consequence here is that as a known artist ages, and their stature rises, their Art tends to "improve" at least in the sense that it is evaluated more and more positively.

Paul Graham, aged 55, can show up with 18 substantially identical snapshots of him mum napping in a chair and get a book deal. Reviewers will scramble around muttering about the subtle differences between the frames, and how important they are, and so on. People will mumble about view cameras, despite the fact that Graham might as well have used his phone to take these things.

Objectively, Graham is lazily phoning it in. Whether he has no ideas, or whether he's simply not willing to put his ideas into a book for Micheal Mack I dunno, but his latest book is certainly pretty thin.

But his latest is nevertheless judged to be superb, because Paul Graham is in the pantheon, and he's aging and therefore getting wiser and better, right? Right?

This is what a friend of mine calls a self-licking ice cream cone. The actual work is free to vanish up it's own ass as far as anyone cares. As long as the work is not visibly the result of advanced dementia, Paul Graham (and legions of other members of the pantheon) can do pretty much whatever the hell strikes their fancy. The arc of their career is set, subject to minor in-flight adjustments.

This doesn't mean that 50 year olds are all doomed and ought to hang it up. We oughtn't. Indeed, if we didn't do anything worth a shit in our 20s, it is indeed possible that our best work is ahead of us still.

But whatever we do, it is wildly unlikely to be anything earth-shattering. Our shot at making something wildly new, something remarkable, of making some insane new synthesis of ideas that, somehow, Just Works, that's gone. That was 2 decades ago, we missed it.

Now, we can make good work ringing the changes on things we've already done, that others have done. We can clear away underbrush, we can steady the foundations.

There's plenty of excellent work to do. Just not that work.