Recreating is a Good Teacher
I was browsing Hacker News and read a short post titled Stealing is a Skill. There was also a small discussion on Hacker News. The discussion mentioned an ethical issue with this case as the author used others’ designs for a commercial product.
I think it is a much more interesting topic if we look from the learning angle that is also mentioned in the post. The gap between what you think you know and what you can really do. And how to see this gap.
Learning Through Apprenticeship
When you try learning a new skill, a good mentor will add a lot to your learning. A lot of hard skills are technical tricks that could be hard to spot with self-learning, but easy to refer to with enough experience.
A bad mentor could lead to a frustrating experience, and you being demotivated to pick that skill ever again. An AI mentor can be both good and bad, but it will always be “soft”. Not in a sense that a “hard” mentor will use harsh words or push you to extremes. But in the sense that a “hard” mentor could always say that you are doing it wrong.
Good X Imitate, Great X Steal
There is a good quote template circulating on the Internet about how “good poets imitate, great artists steal”. The origin of this quote is not really relevant now, it is more about the cultural effect and how good it feels. And that it is connected to the whole thing about learning through stealing.
Through trying to copy someone’s work, you can almost always see the difference in your skill. And that is the “hard” feedback you can have, even without a mentor or with a “soft” AI mentor.
Recreating as Self-Learning
I think it is better to see imitation and idea-stealing as a way to improve your own skills. Saying that, just copy-pasting things can also be framed as “stealing”, but it is not about skill in any sense. In their post, Ben describes their way of exploring new design understandings, which is more about learning than just a mindless copy.
This is a much better view of both the “stealing” quote and the “3% change approach” mentioned in the post. You can try to recreate others’ work to see where your skills are lacking without needing any supervision.
This post is part of my #100DaysToOffload challenge.