Related, Raymond Chandler says in his letters that he taught himself to write a novelette by copying one (by Erle Stanley Gardner). He took the original story and wrote a detailed synopsis, then wrote a novelette from the synopsis, compared it to the original, did rewrites, and so on until he understood what tricks Gardner had used to make the scenes work.
replyBen Franklin did this as well. He writes about this exercise in his autobiography.
replyI too wanted to make this point. In art and designing, copying is how you learn and how you kick start your creativity and innovativeness.
replyA bit tough to say this, but transformers are trained the same way.
replyNo. They're trained on the data, but there's no point in training at which they go through some exercise that involves creating copies of some of their input using the model being trained.
replyIn any case, why is it "a bit tough to say this"? You thought your ability to learn was irreproducible?
Jazz musicians also copy each other's solos for learning and practice purposes, but they would never actually perform more than a couple well placed quotes or licks from another player.
replyI think there's a big difference between jazz and corporate landing pages. Should we be surprised or shocked when different brands of microwave ovens have very similar controls?
reply> Should we be surprised or shocked when different brands of microwave ovens have very similar controls?
replyNo, but OTOH I'd be a little bit surprised and confused if someone who designed microwave oven controls wrote a self-important blog post about how skillfully they copied another's design.
Also connected: many composers would write out previous great works, to learn them more deeply. Bach as I recall would do this.
replyThis also works in drawing and painting. One of my painting teachers used to admonish us: "copy, copy, copy".
replyi have a vague memory of hunter s thompson talking about sitting down and typing out the great gatsby to see how it would feel to write a great american novel
replyThis was my first thought as well. Hunter S. Thompson used to copy Hemingway by hand to internalize his cadence.
replyObligatory link to a relevant Jorge Luis Borges story: Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote (about an author who copied Don Quixote word for word)
replyhttps://raley.english.ucsb.edu/wp-content/Engl10/Pierre-Mena...
Pierre Menards Quixote is not a copy. It is a perfect recreation. While it is word-for-word identical to the original, the whole ironic humor of Borges text is that it is not a copy.
replyEdit: Which you might know well enough. Just wanted to add some more context.