NLP modelling of good Second Life content creators?

That there is the point of NLP. You can't, so they are using a model to tease out the things you do that you aren't aware of and cannot teach. I don't understand how they do this modeling, but I do understand the goal. This sounds to me like one of those "nice idea, can't be done" kinda things.

If anybody wants my secret its that little counter clockwise swirl manoever at the end.

LOL! That's my maneuver, you thief!

I'm not sure that NLP can be applied to creative endeavors; running a thriving and successful business is more appropriate behavior to model since there are certain traits that most who have done it have in common.

I've said this before, but I genuinely think of creativity as a series of choices, each of which leads down a different road. So much of it really boils down to what the creator finds pleasing and compelling to their own eye. It isn't a paint-by-numbers endeavor where you can always place these prim shapes and those textures and come up with something fabulous. For example, I was building a gazebo this weekend and needed to add some kind of architectural treatment to a column to hid a junction point between prims that was messy. I played around with a dozen or more shapes and textures until I came up with one that looked right TO ME. Another builder might have gone a different direction and come up with something equally nifty that worked for them - and both of us made the right choice.

A lot building in SL happens by "happy accident" and started out as something completely different. All it takes is one decision to go in direction C instead of direction A and suddenly you are no longer building what you started out building, but you see a new path that leads you someplace equally interesting.

I think I have to agree, Isablan.

Imitation goes back a long way - pre-civilization, probably (cf: Toynbee's A Study of History). And chimpanzees have been shown to be able to imitate each other on useful things like poking a stick into a termite nest to pull out "snacks." So maybe, imitation is even pre-human. And some doctors had success with inmates of mental institutions when they got the patients to "act like" they were normal - to the point where some could be released! (This goes way back, to before the era of psychotropic drugs).

So one shouldn't knock the usefulness of imitation - or of finding out how to imitate a behavior that the successful practitioner is not entirely conscious about.

But there is a danger of deteriorating into "cargo cult" behavior - certain Pacific Islanders, finding themselves under colonial overlords who ruled because of the supplies (like bullets) they received from cargo vessels, would exactingly imitate the motions of said overlords in hopes of getting the cargo vessels to deliver the goods to them, so they could rid themselves of the overlords. See, they missed a little something.

In the end, imitation by definition means repeating formulaic, predictable behavior. If the behavior is one of "discovery," such as you describe, Isablan, or one which is otherwise not "formulaic," imitation will probably fail.

I mean, go ahead, watch the tapes of Bruce Springsteen, attend his concerts and take notes, learn the songs, learn the moves, practice in front of the mirror, maybe even write your own songs based on the "formula." Cool, now go out and see if you succeed like Bruce Springsteen. Or, copy every move ever made by Stan Musial. If that were imitatable, I guarantee you the average batting average in professional baseball would be around .400, which it most definitely is not. 'Nuff said? (And feel free to substitute the artist - or original scientist like Einstein - or sports star - or author - or whatever - of your choice.)

It will be interesting to see just how far up the food chain one can go with imitation, however fancily named or elaborated. I suspect the originals will always have the last laugh.

IMHO...

-you can learn to play piano.

-you can learn how to write music

-but you cannot learn how to create a musical masterpiece

I don't know in past I have seen alternative doctors who used these pressure points and body movements called it NLP and said they were getting rid of allergies.
I still have the allergies.
Creating sometimes is medative thing for me.
Other times it brings up all my insecurities and fears of failure, not being smart enough, yet my real life partner pointed out to me that sometimes when I am freaking out saying how I can't do something he said he often seen me do the thing I said I couldn't do.
Lot of times in order to change believes is facing the thing we think we can't create and do it until we can do well or totally sick and tired of it.

Well foo. I saw the title of this thread and got all excited thinking it was "Natural Language Parsing"... for example: for chatbots to try to learn from conversation and communicate sensibly with humans.

Oh well. Someone wake me if anyone is serious about tackling that instead.

When I was pretty new I went to this place who had bot that could communicate or appeared too. I forgot where it was though.

There still is a lot of talk here about imitation and that isn't really what this is about.

There *is* already actually an NLP book about modelling the general creative process:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0916990265/

As I understand it's based on Walt Disney, but it's not about copying the things that Walt Disney made - in other words, you won't duplicate Mickey Mouse. Instead, it's about thinking in the same way that Walt did when he *thought of* Mickey Mouse - but possibly actually coming up with something else.

Could it be Eliza?

http://www-ai.ijs.si/eliza/eliza.html

(Boy, I'll be glad when we can format posts again.)

Yumi, most of us aren’t talking about imitation, we are talking about that mystical process by which creativity happens. Anyone can pick up a paint set and fill in the numbers, but not everyone can compose a painting. I am a huge believer in NLP, having been exposed to its concepts through Tony Robbins (yeah, yeah, I know…) and dammit, that sh*t does work. I own my home today and have a successful career through modeling those who had achieved things I wanted to achieve, so I’m not pooh-poohing the concept at all. I also create content here in SL and it is really not at all the same process. Creativity is an ability that has to be nurtured, it has to be able to leave the box and go off exploring in the woods where there are no models and no roads to follow. Creativity is about bravery, accepting that you are speaking in your own voice and not everyone is going to like your work. Nobody makes anything in SL or RL that is universally loved by all. Making content is something you do for yourself first, you make things that you love, and you accept that out of 10 people there will be some that think its ugly as hell, some that are underwhelmed by it and some that love it as much as you do and want to buy it.



There are lots of ways to nourish the creative process; I just don’t see NLP as being one of them. A better choice would books along the lines of “Jump Start Your Brain” but even that won’t necessarily help a new content creator find their voice and style, and finding your own voice is critical. I understand where you are coming from, I went through the same thing when I first started building and kept trying to figure out “how do you know whether the square is better or the cylinder?” The answer is that you don’t know. Sometimes you have to do both and then step back and look at which one is more pleasing to your eye. If you want to build boring stuff, then just copy RL. If you want to do creative and original stuff, you have to go off the traveled road and listen to your inner voice. You have to try things, decide if you want to keep them and if not, try something else until it feels right.

It was something similar except there was prim of very lovely lady who said hello,etc.

so....

you want to wire up my brain, and see how the electrical impulses run around the neurons while i create, then download the impulses into other people's brains, and give them my creative genius?

um... no. sorry, NOT interested! ;)

yeah, im selfish, but dangit, its MY brain, and about the only thing i really truly own and can never be parted from.


besides, dont the building classes in sl do this already? most of them go 'now rez prim A and enter size X Y Z...' they just skip all the in-between steps like 'rez prim Z and twist to X and Y... note how that looks just WRONG, so change to prim A. stretch and rotate around. notice how that isn't right, so delete it all and start over....'

you can try this. when the teacher says to rez shape A, and apply parameters XYZ, try changing the shape before the next step. then you can see why shape A looks right, and shapes B, C, D, and E don't. or... you could find a shape you like better for the particular task you are doing.
then you could learn why some people use some shapes and not others.

but if you go around asking them, you won't get any meaningful response. just 'because it looks right.'

Can someone learn or imitate ADD / ADHD? Probably not. That's why "normal" persons are usually not altoo creative. Neurologists assume that ADD / ADHD (attention deficit disorder, sometimes combined with a hyperactivity disorder) is closely connected to creative thought processes.

A completely sane and healthy person can be highly intelligent, but not creative. Creativity is more or less a mental disorder. Normal behvaiour is to learn something, and then to continue repeating it in the way that has been proven to work. It's not "normal" for a homo sapiens to waste time with things like cave paintings instead of engaging in social interaction in order to procreate a lot or hunting mammoths in order to get food onto the table, things that have proven to be successful survival strategies.

Only those who rather live in their own heads instead of the real world can invent things like the wheel, create works of art or think up something like religion (well, everything has a downside). Leonardo DaVinci is the best example: guy paints the Mona Lisa today, designs the first helicopter tomorrow and comes up with the first theory about plate tectonics a day later. DaVinci had the attention span of a fly, that's why he was (hyper-)active in so many fields.

If you're a creative person it's quite likely that you can be very enthusiastic and playful, have a difficult temperament at times and / or mood swings, tend to daydream and / or are often restless, sometimes have problems to concentrate on boring RL necessities and perhaps are a shy person or lack a few social skills. If at least 3 points of that list are true, you probably have a mild case of ADD which explains your creative talent. It's nothing negative you're just not normal.

The captain of your high school football team was a normal person; standard model homo sapiens with all the characteristics needed to successfully hunt mammoths, who would never draw pictures of animals on cave walls or invent useless things like a wheel, useless because it cannot be used to fill one's stomach. People like him are the reason our ancestors survived the last ice age, but without people like us they wouldn't have electric light, central heating and air condition today.

Btw, among the abnormal specimen who expressed typical ADD characteristics are Albert Einstein (bad school grades, solitary and absent-minded), Mozart (can you say hyperactive?), Beethoven, Walt Disney, Robert Frost, Frank Lloyd Wright, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Virginia Woolf, Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla, only to name a few. People with a creative disorder are in good company.

I highly doubt that the completely sane, socially skilled "mammoth hunter" phenotype can successfully imitate the sometimes weird behaviour and the often chaotic thought processes of the less sane and stable, less socially functional "cave painter / wheel inventor" phenotype. Or if it would even be desireable for the former to turn from a fully functional human specimen into a disordered and therefore highly creative and out-of-the-box thinking specimen like Einstein or Mozart. Learning "how it's done" is counter-productive in this case, since creativity means to not care how things are done and do them differently, in a way no one else did it before. Or at least in a rather random, creatively chaotic way.

It's about finding ways to categorise what that behavour is, and why some people can do things instinctively (like post in a forum), while others can't. My impression is that content creators in SL don't talk much, and would find it remarkably hard to explain what they are doing, before or while they are doing it.

Dismissing NLP as a method of looking at people and what they do is a bit like dismissing writing code because you once caught a virus - yes, some charlatans and shills use the labels, but the techniques still stand.

(I'd be fascinated to look in the mind of a creator by this method - I'm pretty sure that creators have a mind-set which doesn't otherwise find expression via the web, and that has to be a worthy study, doesn't it?)

While I agree with your impassioned statement about creativity, aren't you contradicting yourself here? On the one hand you say you've achieved great success through modelling others, and on the other you claim you are inherently un-modellable.

I've been partly modelled; it certainly has the potential to be a destructive process for a creative who participates in it, because to some degree creativity springs from a sense of dissatisfaction, and following that impulse back to it's seed can make it look unhealthy, when in fact it's not: There is a large crossing point between NLP (a tool, as Ishtara has mentioned, largely used by those of a non-creative bent) and CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy), which teaches us that there are such things as "unhealthy thoughts" and we have to work, introspectively, to dissipate them.

BUT! ten times BUT!

...what NLP helps to analyse isn't just creativity: it's more than that. It's the entire range of non-verbal human skills, and the nature of perception, consciousness and our relationship to our physical and spacial selves. In case the heavy skeptics think these long words are a sign of charlatanry, let me mention that one of the most successful NLP modelling exercises was done by some Army Snipers - they interviewed top-flight marksmen and asked them what they did to prepare for a bulls-eye shot: while a lot of marksmanship is about "feeling the force" and "letting go", the answers from this particular simple process COULD be used to make a mediocre marksman, better.

Conversely, NLP helps to identify things people do as a skill, and things they do as a talent. Broadly, skills can be modelled, talents can't. The Talented person often feels out of control of their gift (pianist Glenn Gould is a cause celebre here!) and is also surprised by what they end up with (Orwell's "the writer doesn't know what he's said until he reads it back". While it may be impossible to turn yourself into Mozart by bugging him with a bunch of stupid questions, it's a huge time-saver to say "okay, so that thing Stevie Wonder does, I shouldn't feel so bad about not getting close to it".

So if you are sitting around wondering why all you make is plywood doghouses and a necklace that looks like the grille on a Hyundai, maybe reading what happens inside the head of a content creator will help you be happier in yourself. Is that bad?

But also, it's possible to find that something previously thought of as being a talent, was actually a skill. I see this quite a lot with real-life students, who often assume they are "just not cut out for" certain things when in fact they just haven't learned the correct way of thinking yet. I felt the same about certain things at some points, and then when I stumbled onto the correct way it was a wonderful experience of suddenly everything making sense.

No, at least not in my opinion I think there is, as you mentioned, a difference between skill and aesthetic. Anyone can learn to build exceptionally well from a technical standpoint and that I believe can be modeled. But their aesthetic preferences define style. Mozart and Metallica are both using the same sets of chords and notes, but the arrangement and instrumentation reflects totally different aesthetics. My own aesthetics prefer Art Nouveau over Modern, Pre-Raphaelite over Impressionism, Gaudi over Frank Lloyd Wright, Fantasy over Science Fiction - and those preferences are reflected in the shapes and textures of what I build. Someone with different aesthetic preferences can make the same item, using the same basic shapes and have a completely different result.

The mistake that I think Yumi is making is in thinking that there is a formula to building. A column is a not a formula where you take this one shape and always come up with a compelling result. A column can be round, square, triangular, twisted, have all manner of shapes at the top, center and bottom and be textured in hundreds of thousands of different ways depending on who is creating it. She asks "how do you know which shape to put where" and the answer is that you don't. You futz around until you get something that is pleasing to your eye and your sense of aesthetics. You can model Monet's training and technique, but you can't step behind his eyes and understand the decision of whether to use a forest green or a hunter green in the next daub.

Using the example in book Yumi referred to, you could model Disney and decide you wanted to create your own multimedia empire based on cartoon characters. You can come up with different characters, but you are still just imitating someone else's idea. What modeling can't do for you is teach you how to create characters that are as compelling and will touch generation after generation - half of Hollywood has tried and failed to replicate the enduring success of a mouse in red shorts. I think modeling can help someone learn technique and get them on the road to finding their own creative voice and imagination, but you can't model Nephilaine and expect to come up with an equally imaginative clothing line because your senses of aesthetics are different and unless you go in a different direction, all you are doing is copying her work.

ummm NLP is all over second life just like it is in real life...

What an odd thread!

Well, this is exactly what was so interesting to me. The Disney book doesn't actually describe anything about creating cartoons or cartoon characters, because the things it's looking at are even lower level than that. Not so much "how to have ideas", but how to see the world in a way that gives you ideas, or at least in the same way that a person who was really good at having ideas did. Then, how to see _those ideas_ in ways that let you evaluate them fairly without being too optimistic or pessimistic about either.



At the moment when you build, your brain does know which shape it is going to put where, or at least what it is going to try next. If it didn't, you could not proceed with building because you would not know what to click on.

The question of whether "aesthetic sense" applies to this part of the process is an interesting one in itself. Ie, do you decide on something that will look good first, then search for the prims to build that particular look? or do you try different prims and apply aesthetic judgment to the results of each try until you find something that looks good? If the latter, presumably you had some idea about what general thing you were going to build before you started searching through prims (unless you were "primdoodling" of course), what kind of information did that idea consist of, and what aesthetic sense was applied to it?

It sounds like a silly little niggle, but it baffles a lot of new builders. I can see it from the question they're asking - they *don't know how* to think of things to build, because they can't get the balance right. If they try to think of things made of prims, it's too restrictive and they can't come up with original ideas; if they try to think of things generally, they keep thinking of things that can't be built out of prims. How do good builders shape their strategy to avoid that, or do they not have that problem?

Beyond that, there's many other questions to ask. For example, every user knows that SL's most basic prim types are boxes, cylinders, prims, torii, tubes, rings and sculpties; but do the best builders think only in terms of these, and think of other shapes in terms of adjustments to these? Or do they have a mental "toolbox" which includes derived prim shapes, like hoops, spirals, laminas, pyramids, wedges and pacmen? Of course these are in reality adjustments to the standard prim types, but how much of the adjustment process is the builder subconscious of? What's the balance between the "toolbox" and the thoughts about free adjustment?

Wow! The Forums first Deep Intellectual discussion!!! I LIKE!

I'm with the "Building is a skill and can be learned" side. As they say "practice makes perfect".

Its the 'art' part that sets you apart from the others

Yumi, it is a little bit of everything you listed. Sometimes I will sketch out what I am going to build and sometimes it is just freeform and I take ideas from shapes. I’ll use the gazebo that I’m making right now as an example. I knew I wanted to add a “hang-out” spot in front of the water lily ponds at the Botanical Gardens. At first, it was going to be just benches. As I went to start imagining what those benches might look like (ie did they have sides and backs, were they ornate or simple) I realized that sitting on a bench makes the view too low to really enjoy the raised lily ponds. From there, it seemed logical that a platform needed to be created and the seating would go on the platform. At first I thought it should be a half circle since that shape would lend itself to the space – and because I have a well documented preference for curves as opposed to straight lines when building.

Frankly, my building skills are not so advanced that I was able to create a 25m wide half circle, despite trying a number of tools and ideas. Fallingwater Cellardoor probably would have whipped one out in 5 minutes, but my skill level is considerably lower than hers. So, I ended up using the Ring Maker tool to create a half circle using square shapes that are tapered. Got the same effect without struggling any further. From there, I imagined columns that matched a build close by so it would appear that both builds were part of a set. Then I decided on arches to tie the columns together; at that point, I finally saw the direction and finished product in my mind, which was vastly different from my original intent of a couple of benches. I don’t know about anyone else, but once I can see the finished product, it becomes mostly about embellishment. I added some flared pieces at the base of the columns, then added segments to make the arches more interesting. Then added some architectural details to hide joints in the columns. And, no, I didn’t know exactly what shape I was going to use but I did know the effect I was going for, it was really a matter of what shape was going to deliver the effect. Come to think of it, that is really mostly how I build. I have an effect I am going for and dink around until I achieve that effect with the toolset.

At some point, I had to stop for a few days and ponder textures. The texture I was working with could go right side up or flipped upside down, I had to do one column one way and the other the opposite way and then look at it for a few days. Eventually, my eye kept going back to upside down – both ways worked, but only one “felt right” given the effect that I was looking for. Once all the arches and columns were done, I needed to add some drapes to give the gazebo that exotic and lush feel that I prefer. I’ve been on drapes for a week now, playing with shapes, colors, concepts. Eventually I tossed out my first 3 efforts and am now down to something that I love. Then it was a couple days of playing with the flexi settings until those moved the way that I was now envisioning. The final part of this build is what mechanism the drapes hang from and I’m still figuring that out. All I know at this point is that it is curved…. I’m looking at shapes from the places I take inspiration from, eventually something will bubble to the surface in my brain and I’ll know exactly what needs to be there – then it becomes about can I build it using the prim toolset and how. I may end up tweaking the idea when I discover that my skill level isn’t such that I can make what I see in my head, much like with the curved platform, but it will still achieve the same effect.

That’s just my process – another builder will have a different method that works for them, they might sketch every last detail out based on prim shapes and what they know works for them.

It's never easy to describe actions that have become 'automatic'. The mind invents it's own non-verbal and non-shareable processes and instructions for things it's used to doing.

When I'm online, gaming or not, my 'focus' is intent. My ability to talk on the phone or use voice-chat suffers terribly because my mind is pre-occupied with something else.

This is one of the chief reasons I dread voice chat in secondlife. IM's can wait until I finish what I'm intently working on... voice is immediate and disruptive.

What was the quip? "The only reason computers get things done faster than humans is because they don't have to stop to answer the phone."

My Mother and a friend was really into NLP and tried it on me. I didn't really get it. Truthfully. It was lot of pushing and pulling my body. When my mother did it hurt my joints. It weird type of body movement to me.
I have always been odd, and un-normal.
Yet I have always been highly creative person. On my IQ test that I took in my 20's when it came to images I am genius level, when it came to things academic or logic based I am about 13 years old, yet over time I have learned and grown in spite of the low iq part even at 41.
I have always struggled with this strange duality and over time I have developed certain skills on my own in spite of being mildly autistic and several other handicaps.
Half of me is mildly retarded, semi functional, I require certain amount of nursing care, yet I can live independantly, pay my bills, do basic mathamatics, spend long hours almost in trance like state creating, half of me that I struggle to reach is a genius but circumstances, my brain, various other situations often block that part.
Yet I have persisted in being creative person and often make some very enjoyable and interesting things for my friends and myself.
Its not about who buying my stuff or if its even good its about me expressing myself as artist.
Yes there is probably lot of better content artist but so what its not about them its about me enjoying creating.
When they were pushing NLP on me they said this will make you normal, this will make you healthier, remove allergies,etc.
You know what I am still the same person with same struggles and handicaps but over time I have taught myself to improve problem solving, logic, and how to use my creativity in spite of messages saying I will never be able to do logical,etc.
While it might work for someone else, I didn't find the NLP process very helpfull.