Michael Levin

I don't care if anybody thinks it's stupid.

This is what I think and give it space to sort of grow, right?

And if you try to mush them together, I found that impossible.

Because the practical stuff poisons the other stuff.

If you're too much on the creative end, you can be an amazing thinker.

It just nothing ever materializes.

But if you're very practical, it tends to poison the other stuff because the more you think about how to present things so that other people get it, it constrains and it bends how you start to think.

And, you know, what I tell my students and others is there's two kinds of advice.

There's very practical, specific things.

Like somebody says, well, you forgot this control or this isn't the right method or you shouldn't be.

That stuff is gold and you should take that very seriously and you should use it to improve your craft.

Right.

And that's like super important.

But then there's the meta advice.

Where people are like, that's not a good way to think about it.

Don't work on this.

That stuff is garbage.

And even very successful people often give very constraining, terrible advice.

Like one of my reviewers in a paper years ago said, I love this Freudian slip.

He said he's going to give me constrictive criticism, right?