‘novelty U-curve’ directory
See Also
- Gwern
- “Spending Writing ‘Weirdness Points’ Wisely ”, Gwern 2013
- “Things You Can’t Countersignal Online: Good Writing ”, Gwern 2023
- “Can You Unsort Lists for Diversity? ”, Gwern 2019
- “Review Of Crumb ”, Gwern 2024
- “Why Cats Knock Stuff Over ”, Gwern 2023
- “Cat Psychology & Domestication: Are We Good Owners? ”, Gwern 2018
- “Why Do Hipsters Steal Stuff? ”, Gwern 2022
- Links
- “The Colors Of Her Coat [On Giblification & Semantic Apocalypses] ”, Alexander 2025
- “Boxed: Things I Learned After Lying in an MRI Machine for 30 Hours ”, Giancotti 2024
- “The Lessons of Hermann Grassmann and the Nature of Abstractions ”, Emanual 2024
- “The Originality of Machines: AI Takes the Torrance Test ”, Guzik et al 2023
- “Does Familiarity With an Idea Bias Its Evaluation? ”, Greul et al 2023
- “Appendix: The Art of Slowness: Slow Motion Enhances Consumer Evaluations by Increasing Processing Fluency ”, Stuppy et al 2023
- “The Art of Slowness: Slow Motion Enhances Consumer Evaluations by Increasing Processing Fluency ”, Stuppy et al 2023
- “Deviancy Aversion and Social Norms ”, Gollwitzer et al 2022
- “Contrastive Search Is What You Need For Neural Text Generation ”, Su & Collier 2022
- “Cannabis Use Does Not Increase Actual Creativity but Biases Evaluations of Creativity ”, Heng et al 2022
- “Mastering Uncertainty: A Predictive Processing Account of Enjoying Uncertain Success in Video Game Play ”, Deterding et al 2022
- “What’s Next? Artists’ Music After Grammy Awards ”, Negro et al 2022
- “Macaques Preferentially Attend to Intermediately Surprising Information ”, Wu et al 2022
- “Balancing Categorical Conventionality in Music ”, Silver et al 2022
- “The Esthetic Quality Model: Complexity and Randomness As Foundations of Visual Beauty by Signaling Quality ”, Krpan & Tilburg 2022
- “Collaborations and Innovation in Partitioned Industries: An Analysis of U.S. Feature Film Coproductions ”, Jia et al 2022
- “A Stanford Psychologist Says He’s Cracked the Code of One-Hit Wonders: What Separates Blind Melon from Shania Twain? ”, Thompson 2022
- “Nymph Piss and Gravy Orgies: Local and Global Contrast Effects in Relational Humor ”, Siew et al 2022
- “Night Shifts: Can Technology Shape Our Dreams? ”, Clune 2022
- “Motivating Personal Growth by Seeking Discomfort ”, Woolley & Fishbach 2022
- “One-Hit Wonders versus Hit Makers: Sustaining Success in Creative Industries ”, Berg 2022
- “Eliciting False Insights With Semantic Priming ”, Grimmer et al 2022
- “Typical Decoding for Natural Language Generation ”, Meister et al 2022
- “Hipsters and the Cool: A Game Theoretic Analysis of Identity Expression, Trends, and Fads ”, Golman et al 2021
- “Algorithmic Balancing of Familiarity, Similarity, & Discovery in Music Recommendations ”, Mehrotra 2021
- “Networks, Creativity, and Time: Staying Creative through Brokerage and Network Rejuvenation ”, Soda et al 2021
- “Embracing New Techniques in Deep Learning for Estimating Image Memorability ”, Needell & Bainbridge 2021
- “Emotionally Numb: Expertise Dulls Consumer Experience ”, Rocklage et al 2021
- “Entropy Trade-Offs in Artistic Design: A Case Study of Tamil kolam ”, Tran et al 2021
- “Mirostat: A Neural Text Decoding Algorithm That Directly Controls Perplexity ”, Basu et al 2020
- “An Insight-Related Neural Reward Signal ”, Oh et al 2020
- “Aversion towards Simple Broken Patterns Predicts Moral Judgment ”, Gollwitzer et al 2020
- “Stay True to Your Roots? Category Distance, Hierarchy, and the Performance of New Entrants in the Music Industry ”, Younkin & Kashkooli 2020
- “People Prefer Simpler Content When There Are More Choices: A Time Series Analysis of Lyrical Complexity in Six Decades of American Popular Music ”, Varnum et al 2019
- “The Similarity Network of Motion Pictures ”, Wei 2019
- “The Curious Case of Neural Text Degeneration ”, Holtzman et al 2019
- “Accelerating Dynamics of Collective Attention ”, Lorenz-Spreen et al 2019
- “Fashion and Art Cycles Are Driven by Counter-Dominance Signals of Elite Competition: Quantitative Evidence from Music Styles ”, Klimek et al 2019
- “Wriggly, Squiffy, Lummox, and Boobs: What Makes Some Words Funny? ”, Westbury & Hollis 2019
- “Enjoy It Again: Repeat Experiences Are Less Repetitive Than People Think ”, O’Brien 2019
- “Predictability and Uncertainty in the Pleasure of Music: A Reward for Learning? ”, Gold et al 2019
- “Relating Pattern Deviancy Aversion to Stigma and Prejudice ”, Gollwitzer et al 2017
- “What Makes Popular Culture Popular? Product Features and Optimal Differentiation in Music ”, Askin & Mauskapf 2017
- “CAN: Creative Adversarial Networks, Generating "Art" by Learning About Styles and Deviating from Style Norms ”, Elgammal et al 2017
- “It Doesn’t Hurt to Ask: Question-Asking Increases Liking ”, Huang et al 2017
- “Trio Walks, Duo Talks ”, Mowshowitz 2017
- “Exploration and Exploitation of Victorian Science in Darwin’s Reading Notebooks ”, Murdock et al 2016
- “Optimal Distinctiveness Revisited: an Integrative Framework for Understanding the Balance between Differentiation and Conformity in Individual and Organizational Identities ”, Zuckerman 2016
- “What Does It Mean to Span Cultural Boundaries? Variety and Atypicality in Cultural Consumption ”, Goldberg et al 2016
- “Anthony Downs, ‘Up and Down With Ecology: The ‘Issue-Attention’ Cycle’ ”, Gupta & Jenkins-Smith 2015
- “Spoiler Alert: Consequences of Narrative Spoilers for Dimensions of Enjoyment, Appreciation, and Transportation ”, Johnson & Rosenbaum 2015
- “The Shazam Effect: Record Companies Are Tracking Download and Search Data to Predict Which New Songs Will Be Hits. This Has Been Good for Business—But Is It Bad for Music? ”, Thompson 2014
- “Why Read New Books? ”, Parks 2014
- “The Hipster Effect: When Anticonformists All Look the Same ”, Touboul 2014
- “Give Your Ideas Some Legs: The Positive Effect of Walking on Creative Thinking ”, Oppezzo & Schwartz 2014
- “Social Psychology. Just Think: the Challenges of the Disengaged Mind ”, Wilson et al 2014
- “Atypical Combinations and Scientific Impact ”, Uzzi et al 2013
- “Number Crunching Shows Old Movies Are More Creative Than New Ones ”, Mann 2013
- “Mere Exposure to Bad Art ”, Meskin et al 2013
- “Identifiable but Not Identical: Combining Social Identity and Uniqueness Motives in Choice ”, Chan et al 2012
- “Don’t Get Mad, Get Creative: Social Rejection Can Fuel Imaginative Thinking, Study Shows ”
- “Outside Advantage: Can Social Rejection Fuel Creative Thought? ”, Kim et al 2012
- “The Logic of Fashion Cycles ”, Acerbi et al 2012
- “Dear Young Eccentric ”, Hanson 2012
- “The Creativity Crisis: The Decrease in Creative Thinking Scores on the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking ”, Kim 2011
- “Things You Can’t Countersignal ”, Alicorn 2010
- “Formal Theory of Creativity & Fun & Intrinsic Motivation (1990–2010) ”, Schmidhuber 2010
- “Does Your IPod Really Play Favorites? ”, Froelich et al 2009
- “Driven by Compression Progress: A Simple Principle Explains Essential Aspects of Subjective Beauty, Novelty, Surprise, Interestingness, Attention, Curiosity, Creativity, Art, Science, Music, Jokes ”, Schmidhuber 2008
- “Errors in Idea Evaluation: Preference for the Unoriginal? ”, Blair & Mumford 2007
- “Idea Evaluation: Error in Evaluating Highly Original Ideas ”, Licuanan et al 2007
- “Jacks of All Trades and Masters of None: Audiences’ Reactions to Spanning Genres in Feature Film Production ”, Hsu 2006
- “Relationship Between Complexity and Liking As a Function of Expertise ”, Ohlsson 2005
- “The Psychologist Who Empathized With Rats: James Tiptree Junior As Alice B. Sheldon, PhD ”, Elms 2004
- “Endogenous Explanation in the Sociology of Culture ”, Kaufman 2004
- “Cultural Entrepreneurship: Stories, Legitimacy, and the Acquisition of Resources ”, Lounsbury & Glynn 2001
- “Staring Emmy Straight in the Eye—And Doing My Best Not to Flinch ”, Hofstadter & Cope 2001
- “Letter Spirit (Part Two): Modeling Creativity in a Visual Domain ”, Rehling 2001
- “Low-Complexity Art ”, Schmidhuber 1997
- “Why No One Really Wants Creativity ”, Staw 1995
- “Creativity: Asset or Burden in the Classroom? ”, Westby & Dawson 1995
- “Subjective Complexity, Familiarity, and Liking for Popular Music ”, North & Hargreaves 1995
- “Letter Spirit: An Emergent Model of the Perception and Creation of Alphabetic Style ”, Hofstadter & McGraw 1993
- “Letter Spirit: An Architecture for Creativity in a Microdomain ”, McGraw & Hofstadter 1993
- “Writing Backwards: The Novels of William Hope Hodgson ”, Gafford 1992
- “The Social Self: On Being the Same and Different at the Same Time ”, Brewer 1991
- “Development of Liking for Familiar and Unfamiliar Melodies ”, Hargreaves & Castell 1987
- “The Effects of Repetition on Liking for Music ”, Hargreaves 1984
- “Novelty and Human Esthetic Preferences ”, Sluckin et al 1983
- “Some Experimental Studies of Familiarity and Liking ”, Sluckin et al 1982
- “Liking Words As a Function of the Experienced Frequency of Their Occurrence ”, Sluckin et al 1980
- “Psychological Factors Affecting Preferences for First Names ”, Colman et al 1980
- “The Reaction of Monkeys to ‘Fearsome’ Pictures ”, Humphrey & Keeble 1974
- “Up and down With Ecology—The ‘Issue-Attention Cycle’ ”, Downs 1972
- “That’s Interesting!: Towards a Phenomenology of Sociology and a Sociology of Phenomenology ”, Davis 1971
- “They Became What They Beheld § Foreword ”, Carpenter 1970 (page 5)
- “Preference for Familiar versus Novel Stimuli As a Function of the Familiarity of the Environment ”, Sheldon 1969
- “The Creative Personality and the Ideal Pupil ”, Torrance 1969
- The Art Of Thought, Graham 1926
- “It’s Hard to Know Why Music Gives Pleasure: Is That the Point? ”
- “ROBOT9000 and
#xkcd-Signal: Attacking Noise in Chat ” - “The Nature and Perception of Fluctuations in Human Musical Rhythms ”
- “The Secret of Minecraft, and Its Challenge to the Rest of Us ”, Sloan 2025
- “The Economy of Weirdness ”
- “You Need a Novelty Budget ”
- “Creativity Is Rejected: Teachers and Bosses Don’t Value Out-Of-The-Box Thinking. ”
- “The What-You’d-Implicitly-Heard-Before Telling Thing ”
- “Right Is The New Left ”
- “What Happened To 90s Environmentalism? ”
- “New Atheism: The Godlessness That Failed ”
- “How To Know When It’s Time To Go ”
- “Catholic Converts: British and American Intellectuals Turn to Rome ”
- “How Do Internet Atheism and Internet Feminism Help Us Understand the Current Cultural Moment? ”
- “Google, Amazon, and Facebook Owe Jürgen Schmidhuber a Fortune ”
- “A Non-Conformist’s Guide to Success in a Conformist World ”
- “Cultivating a State of Mind Where New Ideas Are Born ”, Karlsson 2025
- “Intellectual Hipsters and Meta-Contrarianism ”
- “You Have a Set Amount of "Weirdness Points". Spend Them Wisely. ”
- “When AI Matures, It May Call Jürgen Schmidhuber ‘Dad’ ”
- “Melodies of Popular Songs Have Gotten Simpler Over Time ”
- “Even When Contrarians Win, They Lose ”
- “From Fashion to Housewares, Are We in a Decades-Long Design Rut? ”, Andersen 2025
- “XKCD #1053: Ten Thousand ”
- “Connoisseur ”
- Sort By Magic
- Wikipedia (21)
- Miscellaneous
- Bibliography
Gwern
“Spending Writing ‘Weirdness Points’ Wisely ”, Gwern 2013
“Things You Can’t Countersignal Online: Good Writing ”, Gwern 2023
“Can You Unsort Lists for Diversity? ”, Gwern 2019
“Review Of Crumb ”, Gwern 2024
“Why Cats Knock Stuff Over ”, Gwern 2023
“Cat Psychology & Domestication: Are We Good Owners? ”, Gwern 2018
“Why Do Hipsters Steal Stuff? ”, Gwern 2022
Links
“The Colors Of Her Coat [On Giblification & Semantic Apocalypses] ”, Alexander 2025
The Colors Of Her Coat [on Giblification & semantic apocalypses]
“Boxed: Things I Learned After Lying in an MRI Machine for 30 Hours ”, Giancotti 2024
Boxed: Things I learned after lying in an MRI machine for 30 hours
“The Lessons of Hermann Grassmann and the Nature of Abstractions ”, Emanual 2024
The Lessons of Hermann Grassmann and the Nature of Abstractions
“The Originality of Machines: AI Takes the Torrance Test ”, Guzik et al 2023
“Does Familiarity With an Idea Bias Its Evaluation? ”, Greul et al 2023
“Appendix: The Art of Slowness: Slow Motion Enhances Consumer Evaluations by Increasing Processing Fluency ”, Stuppy et al 2023
“The Art of Slowness: Slow Motion Enhances Consumer Evaluations by Increasing Processing Fluency ”, Stuppy et al 2023
The Art of Slowness: Slow Motion Enhances Consumer Evaluations by Increasing Processing Fluency
“Deviancy Aversion and Social Norms ”, Gollwitzer et al 2022
“Contrastive Search Is What You Need For Neural Text Generation ”, Su & Collier 2022
Contrastive Search Is What You Need For Neural Text Generation
“Cannabis Use Does Not Increase Actual Creativity but Biases Evaluations of Creativity ”, Heng et al 2022
Cannabis use does not increase actual creativity but biases evaluations of creativity
“Mastering Uncertainty: A Predictive Processing Account of Enjoying Uncertain Success in Video Game Play ”, Deterding et al 2022
“What’s Next? Artists’ Music After Grammy Awards ”, Negro et al 2022
“Macaques Preferentially Attend to Intermediately Surprising Information ”, Wu et al 2022
Macaques preferentially attend to intermediately surprising information
“Balancing Categorical Conventionality in Music ”, Silver et al 2022
“The Esthetic Quality Model: Complexity and Randomness As Foundations of Visual Beauty by Signaling Quality ”, Krpan & Tilburg 2022
“Collaborations and Innovation in Partitioned Industries: An Analysis of U.S. Feature Film Coproductions ”, Jia et al 2022
“A Stanford Psychologist Says He’s Cracked the Code of One-Hit Wonders: What Separates Blind Melon from Shania Twain? ”, Thompson 2022
“Nymph Piss and Gravy Orgies: Local and Global Contrast Effects in Relational Humor ”, Siew et al 2022
Nymph Piss and Gravy Orgies: Local and Global Contrast Effects in Relational Humor
“Night Shifts: Can Technology Shape Our Dreams? ”, Clune 2022
“Motivating Personal Growth by Seeking Discomfort ”, Woolley & Fishbach 2022
“One-Hit Wonders versus Hit Makers: Sustaining Success in Creative Industries ”, Berg 2022
One-Hit Wonders versus Hit Makers: Sustaining Success in Creative Industries
“Eliciting False Insights With Semantic Priming ”, Grimmer et al 2022
“Typical Decoding for Natural Language Generation ”, Meister et al 2022
“Hipsters and the Cool: A Game Theoretic Analysis of Identity Expression, Trends, and Fads ”, Golman et al 2021
Hipsters and the cool: A game theoretic analysis of identity expression, trends, and fads
“Algorithmic Balancing of Familiarity, Similarity, & Discovery in Music Recommendations ”, Mehrotra 2021
Algorithmic Balancing of Familiarity, Similarity, & Discovery in Music Recommendations
“Networks, Creativity, and Time: Staying Creative through Brokerage and Network Rejuvenation ”, Soda et al 2021
Networks, Creativity, and Time: Staying Creative through Brokerage and Network Rejuvenation
“Embracing New Techniques in Deep Learning for Estimating Image Memorability ”, Needell & Bainbridge 2021
Embracing New Techniques in Deep Learning for Estimating Image Memorability
“Emotionally Numb: Expertise Dulls Consumer Experience ”, Rocklage et al 2021
“Entropy Trade-Offs in Artistic Design: A Case Study of Tamil kolam ”, Tran et al 2021
Entropy trade-offs in artistic design: A case study of Tamil kolam
“Mirostat: A Neural Text Decoding Algorithm That Directly Controls Perplexity ”, Basu et al 2020
Mirostat: A Neural Text Decoding Algorithm that Directly Controls Perplexity
“An Insight-Related Neural Reward Signal ”, Oh et al 2020
“Aversion towards Simple Broken Patterns Predicts Moral Judgment ”, Gollwitzer et al 2020
Aversion towards simple broken patterns predicts moral judgment
“Stay True to Your Roots? Category Distance, Hierarchy, and the Performance of New Entrants in the Music Industry ”, Younkin & Kashkooli 2020
“People Prefer Simpler Content When There Are More Choices: A Time Series Analysis of Lyrical Complexity in Six Decades of American Popular Music ”, Varnum et al 2019
“The Similarity Network of Motion Pictures ”, Wei 2019
“The Curious Case of Neural Text Degeneration ”, Holtzman et al 2019
“Accelerating Dynamics of Collective Attention ”, Lorenz-Spreen et al 2019
“Fashion and Art Cycles Are Driven by Counter-Dominance Signals of Elite Competition: Quantitative Evidence from Music Styles ”, Klimek et al 2019
“Wriggly, Squiffy, Lummox, and Boobs: What Makes Some Words Funny? ”, Westbury & Hollis 2019
Wriggly, Squiffy, Lummox, and Boobs: What Makes Some Words Funny?
“Enjoy It Again: Repeat Experiences Are Less Repetitive Than People Think ”, O’Brien 2019
Enjoy it again: Repeat experiences are less repetitive than people think
“Predictability and Uncertainty in the Pleasure of Music: A Reward for Learning? ”, Gold et al 2019
Predictability and Uncertainty in the Pleasure of Music: A Reward for Learning?
“Relating Pattern Deviancy Aversion to Stigma and Prejudice ”, Gollwitzer et al 2017
“What Makes Popular Culture Popular? Product Features and Optimal Differentiation in Music ”, Askin & Mauskapf 2017
What Makes Popular Culture Popular? Product Features and Optimal Differentiation in Music
“CAN: Creative Adversarial Networks, Generating "Art" by Learning About Styles and Deviating from Style Norms ”, Elgammal et al 2017
“It Doesn’t Hurt to Ask: Question-Asking Increases Liking ”, Huang et al 2017
“Trio Walks, Duo Talks ”, Mowshowitz 2017
“Exploration and Exploitation of Victorian Science in Darwin’s Reading Notebooks ”, Murdock et al 2016
Exploration and exploitation of Victorian science in Darwin’s reading notebooks
“Optimal Distinctiveness Revisited: an Integrative Framework for Understanding the Balance between Differentiation and Conformity in Individual and Organizational Identities ”, Zuckerman 2016
“What Does It Mean to Span Cultural Boundaries? Variety and Atypicality in Cultural Consumption ”, Goldberg et al 2016
What Does It Mean to Span Cultural Boundaries? Variety and Atypicality in Cultural Consumption
“Anthony Downs, ‘Up and Down With Ecology: The ‘Issue-Attention’ Cycle’ ”, Gupta & Jenkins-Smith 2015
Anthony Downs, ‘Up and Down with Ecology: The ‘Issue-Attention’ Cycle’
“Spoiler Alert: Consequences of Narrative Spoilers for Dimensions of Enjoyment, Appreciation, and Transportation ”, Johnson & Rosenbaum 2015
“The Shazam Effect: Record Companies Are Tracking Download and Search Data to Predict Which New Songs Will Be Hits. This Has Been Good for Business—But Is It Bad for Music? ”, Thompson 2014
“Why Read New Books? ”, Parks 2014
“The Hipster Effect: When Anticonformists All Look the Same ”, Touboul 2014
“Give Your Ideas Some Legs: The Positive Effect of Walking on Creative Thinking ”, Oppezzo & Schwartz 2014
Give Your Ideas Some Legs: The Positive Effect of Walking on Creative Thinking
“Social Psychology. Just Think: the Challenges of the Disengaged Mind ”, Wilson et al 2014
Social psychology. Just think: the challenges of the disengaged mind
“Atypical Combinations and Scientific Impact ”, Uzzi et al 2013
“Number Crunching Shows Old Movies Are More Creative Than New Ones ”, Mann 2013
Number Crunching Shows Old Movies Are More Creative Than New Ones
“Mere Exposure to Bad Art ”, Meskin et al 2013
“Identifiable but Not Identical: Combining Social Identity and Uniqueness Motives in Choice ”, Chan et al 2012
Identifiable but Not Identical: Combining Social Identity and Uniqueness Motives in Choice
“Don’t Get Mad, Get Creative: Social Rejection Can Fuel Imaginative Thinking, Study Shows ”
Don’t get mad, get creative: Social rejection can fuel imaginative thinking, study shows
“Outside Advantage: Can Social Rejection Fuel Creative Thought? ”, Kim et al 2012
Outside advantage: Can social rejection fuel creative thought?
“The Logic of Fashion Cycles ”, Acerbi et al 2012
“Dear Young Eccentric ”, Hanson 2012
“The Creativity Crisis: The Decrease in Creative Thinking Scores on the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking ”, Kim 2011
“Things You Can’t Countersignal ”, Alicorn 2010
“Formal Theory of Creativity & Fun & Intrinsic Motivation (1990–2010) ”, Schmidhuber 2010
Formal Theory of Creativity & Fun & Intrinsic Motivation (1990–2010)
“Does Your IPod Really Play Favorites? ”, Froelich et al 2009
“Driven by Compression Progress: A Simple Principle Explains Essential Aspects of Subjective Beauty, Novelty, Surprise, Interestingness, Attention, Curiosity, Creativity, Art, Science, Music, Jokes ”, Schmidhuber 2008
“Errors in Idea Evaluation: Preference for the Unoriginal? ”, Blair & Mumford 2007
“Idea Evaluation: Error in Evaluating Highly Original Ideas ”, Licuanan et al 2007
“Jacks of All Trades and Masters of None: Audiences’ Reactions to Spanning Genres in Feature Film Production ”, Hsu 2006
“Relationship Between Complexity and Liking As a Function of Expertise ”, Ohlsson 2005
Relationship Between Complexity and Liking as a Function of Expertise
“The Psychologist Who Empathized With Rats: James Tiptree Junior As Alice B. Sheldon, PhD ”, Elms 2004
The Psychologist Who Empathized with Rats: James Tiptree Junior as Alice B. Sheldon, PhD
“Endogenous Explanation in the Sociology of Culture ”, Kaufman 2004
Endogenous Explanation in the Sociology of Culture
“Cultural Entrepreneurship: Stories, Legitimacy, and the Acquisition of Resources ”, Lounsbury & Glynn 2001
Cultural entrepreneurship: stories, legitimacy, and the acquisition of resources
“Staring Emmy Straight in the Eye—And Doing My Best Not to Flinch ”, Hofstadter & Cope 2001
Staring Emmy Straight in the Eye—And Doing My Best Not to Flinch
“Letter Spirit (Part Two): Modeling Creativity in a Visual Domain ”, Rehling 2001
Letter Spirit (part two): Modeling creativity in a visual domain
“Low-Complexity Art ”, Schmidhuber 1997
“Why No One Really Wants Creativity ”, Staw 1995
“Creativity: Asset or Burden in the Classroom? ”, Westby & Dawson 1995
“Subjective Complexity, Familiarity, and Liking for Popular Music ”, North & Hargreaves 1995
Subjective complexity, familiarity, and liking for popular music
“Letter Spirit: An Emergent Model of the Perception and Creation of Alphabetic Style ”, Hofstadter & McGraw 1993
Letter Spirit: An Emergent Model of the Perception and Creation of Alphabetic Style
“Letter Spirit: An Architecture for Creativity in a Microdomain ”, McGraw & Hofstadter 1993
Letter spirit: An architecture for creativity in a microdomain
“Writing Backwards: The Novels of William Hope Hodgson ”, Gafford 1992
Writing Backwards: The Novels of William Hope Hodgson
“The Social Self: On Being the Same and Different at the Same Time ”, Brewer 1991
The Social Self: On Being the Same and Different at the Same Time
“Development of Liking for Familiar and Unfamiliar Melodies ”, Hargreaves & Castell 1987
“The Effects of Repetition on Liking for Music ”, Hargreaves 1984
“Novelty and Human Esthetic Preferences ”, Sluckin et al 1983
“Some Experimental Studies of Familiarity and Liking ”, Sluckin et al 1982
“Liking Words As a Function of the Experienced Frequency of Their Occurrence ”, Sluckin et al 1980
Liking words as a function of the experienced frequency of their occurrence
“Psychological Factors Affecting Preferences for First Names ”, Colman et al 1980
“The Reaction of Monkeys to ‘Fearsome’ Pictures ”, Humphrey & Keeble 1974
“Up and down With Ecology—The ‘Issue-Attention Cycle’ ”, Downs 1972
“That’s Interesting!: Towards a Phenomenology of Sociology and a Sociology of Phenomenology ”, Davis 1971
That’s Interesting!: Towards a Phenomenology of Sociology and a Sociology of Phenomenology
“They Became What They Beheld § Foreword ”, Carpenter 1970 (page 5)
“Preference for Familiar versus Novel Stimuli As a Function of the Familiarity of the Environment ”, Sheldon 1969
Preference for familiar versus novel stimuli as a function of the familiarity of the environment
“The Creative Personality and the Ideal Pupil ”, Torrance 1969
The Creative Personality and the Ideal Pupil
The Art Of Thought, Graham 1926
“It’s Hard to Know Why Music Gives Pleasure: Is That the Point? ”
It’s hard to know why music gives pleasure: is that the point?
“ROBOT9000 and #xkcd-Signal: Attacking Noise in Chat ”
ROBOT9000 and #xkcd-signal: Attacking Noise in Chat
“The Nature and Perception of Fluctuations in Human Musical Rhythms ”
The Nature and Perception of Fluctuations in Human Musical Rhythms
“The Secret of Minecraft, and Its Challenge to the Rest of Us ”, Sloan 2025
The secret of Minecraft, and its challenge to the rest of us
“The Economy of Weirdness ”
“You Need a Novelty Budget ”
“Creativity Is Rejected: Teachers and Bosses Don’t Value Out-Of-The-Box Thinking. ”
Creativity is rejected: Teachers and bosses don’t value out-of-the-box thinking.
“The What-You’d-Implicitly-Heard-Before Telling Thing ”
“Right Is The New Left ”
“What Happened To 90s Environmentalism? ”
What Happened To 90s Environmentalism?
“New Atheism: The Godlessness That Failed ”
New Atheism: The Godlessness That Failed
“How To Know When It’s Time To Go ”
How To Know When It’s Time To Go
“Catholic Converts: British and American Intellectuals Turn to Rome ”
Catholic Converts: British and American Intellectuals Turn to Rome
“How Do Internet Atheism and Internet Feminism Help Us Understand the Current Cultural Moment? ”
How do Internet atheism and Internet feminism help us understand the current cultural moment?
“Google, Amazon, and Facebook Owe Jürgen Schmidhuber a Fortune ”
Google, Amazon, and Facebook Owe Jürgen Schmidhuber a Fortune
“A Non-Conformist’s Guide to Success in a Conformist World ”
A Non-Conformist’s Guide to Success in a Conformist World
“Cultivating a State of Mind Where New Ideas Are Born ”, Karlsson 2025
“Intellectual Hipsters and Meta-Contrarianism ”
Intellectual Hipsters and Meta-Contrarianism
“You Have a Set Amount of "Weirdness Points". Spend Them Wisely. ”
You have a set amount of "weirdness points". Spend them wisely.
“When AI Matures, It May Call Jürgen Schmidhuber ‘Dad’ ”
“Melodies of Popular Songs Have Gotten Simpler Over Time ”
“Even When Contrarians Win, They Lose ”
“From Fashion to Housewares, Are We in a Decades-Long Design Rut? ”, Andersen 2025
From Fashion to Housewares, Are We in a Decades-Long Design Rut?
“XKCD #1053: Ten Thousand ”
“Connoisseur ”
Sort By Magic
Annotations sorted by machine learning into inferred 'tags'. This provides an alternative way to browse: instead of by date order, one can browse in topic order. The 'sorted' list has been automatically clustered into multiple sections & auto-labeled for easier browsing.
Beginning with the newest annotation, it uses the embedding of each annotation to attempt to create a list of nearest-neighbor annotations, creating a progression of topics. For more details, see the link.
Miscellaneous
/doc/psychology/ novelty/ 2023-11-22-xkcd-2857-rebuttals.png : /doc/economics/ 1999-zuckerman.pdf : https://aeon.co/ magazine/ culture/ why-we-love-repetition-in-music https://news.ycombinator.com/ item?id=6861533 : https://www.amazon.com/ Hit-Makers-Science-Popularity-Distraction/ dp/ 110198032X https://www.amazon.com/ Matter-Taste-Fashions-Culture-Change/ dp/ 0300173873 https://www.lesswrong.com/ posts/ 7LnHFj4gs5Zd4WKcu/ notes-on-awe : https://www.overcomingbias.com/ 2023/ 01/ i-see-stylists-everywhere.html https://www.overcomingbias.com/ p/ why-is-everyone-so-boringhtml https://www.schedium.net/ 2023/ 01/ the-window-trick-of-las-vegas-hotels.html https://www.statsignificant.com/ p/ when-do-we-stop-finding-new-music : https://www.statsignificant.com/ p/ which-movies-stand-the-test-of-time https://www.theatlantic.com/ ideas/ archive/ 2023/ 12/ great-resignation-myth-polls/ 676189/ https://www.wired.com/ story/ beauty-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder-but-memorability-may-be-universal/
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