Comment by markusstrasser

Author here. Somehow the worst thing I ever wrote is on the front page of HN.

I wrote this fast so there's jargon and bad prose. The title is deliberately dry and bland so I wasn't expecting anyone to click it. Also I slightly changed my mind on some of the claims .. might write up later.

The main reason I like to think of creative work in a more abstract/formal/geometric way (acceptance volume, latency, sampling) is it's easier for me categorize tasks, modalities and domains and know how to design or work around it. It's very much biased by more own experiences making things.

Also, abstract technical concept often come with nice guarantees/properties/utils to build on .. some would say that's their raison d'être.

Re comments: * "this is just diminishing returns" -- ok and this is a framework for why: the non-worsening region collapses, so most micro-edits fail

* "bands record bangers in an hour" –– practice tax was prepaid. The recording session is exploitation/search riding on cached heuristics imo (and it still takes hours of repeated recording/mixing/producing to actually produce a single album track).

* music key example –– yes I should've picked a different one. Main point was that some choices create wider tolerance (arrangement/range/timbre) even if keys are symmetric in equal temperament