[dyukqu]

This reminds me of my all-time-favourite HN comment[0] (and a life lesson too):

This idea is captured nicely in the book "Art and Fear" with the following anecdote: "The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality.

His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot – albeit a perfect one – to get an “A”.

Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work – and learning from their mistakes – the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay."

[0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22105478

[nixpulvis]

This works if there's no cost of failure in the meantime.

If we're putting humans into rockets into space, I'd like to think we adopt a balanced approach.

[taeric]

No. This works if you are able to tell a work of fiction and don't have to provide evidence.

And it works because we all know that repetition and practice are, in fact, important. So it feels believable that having people just repeat something over and over is the answer.

Similarly, people can be swayed by the master coming in and producing a single artifact that blows away everyone. You see this archetype story as often as the student that learns by just repeating a motion over and over. (Indeed.... this is literally the Karate Kid plot...)

The truth is far more mundane. Yes, you have to repeat things. But also yes, you have to give thought to what you are doing. This is why actual art classes aren't just "lets build things", but also "lets learn how to critique things that you build."

[distortionfield]

Isn't this a non-sequitur though? Artemis presumably doesn't have to actually load up humans on the rockets to flight test them.

[danw1979]

It works perfectly well when you’ve got deep pockets and unmanned test vehicles though.

[gamblor956]

The actual real world result is the opposite. When you score on quantity you get James Patterson, not F Scott Fitzgerald.

[NetMageSCW]

And F Scott Fitzgerald died in poverty essentially unknown, while James Patterson is worth over $800 million.

[ajam1507]

I would think that it's just as likely that the quantity group would sit around philosophizing about what constitutes a "pot" so that they could get away with doing the least amount of work and still earning an A.

[ahoka]

Now tell the fake story about the moneys and the ladder too.

[linehedonist]

If I was being graded solely on quantity, why would I bother caring at all to make anything good? Make the minimum quality necessary to be counted as a pot and move on with your life. That was basically my real world approach to ceramics back in HS, and I still feel good about my B+.

[dweinus]

I'll take Things That Never Happened for 500 please.