Human creation, like this very text, is the output of a complex network of chemicals, reactions, re-reactions, electrical signals, and whatever it is that compels me to write this sentence. I can't describe that force, it certainly doesn't feel correct to describe it as my will, but simultaneously, I know that I am not a puppet, controlled by forces non understood.
What I am, though, is an imperfect being. No matter how many times I sign my signature, or write the same word, each time will be slightly different.
Perfection isn't the point. It is imperfection and the variety that makes my signature special.
Could it be different ink used? A different pressure. More fatigue in my wrist. Less traction along the surface of the paper. A different temperature in the ball-point of the pen, impacting the flow of the ink.
I took a break from writing to pick up a pen. I wanted to write, for purpose. I happened to run out of ink while I was writing the word "determinism". This is my everyday hand writing, and each time, there is variation in the word I've written. My intent is to the write the same word (until the pen ran out of ink - a rare thing!)
You will observe the result is different everytime. There's no determinism at play. Well, other than the determination I had to fill the page. I am not using a "font" - I am using the muscles in my hand. I am using my brain to instruct those muscles to do stuff. I am determined to fill the page, yet, I failed.
And at that failure is where the intersection of determinism and creativity lie.
I am not even sure if free will exists in a formal stance - the arguments against it are pretty strong, but even if I don't have free will - I still have a compelling desire to create something, and to ponder on the creations made by others.
Have you ever listened to a chorus in a song, and wondered if each time it occurs during the song, if it is exactly the same? Have you gone to the concert and heard the singer have slight variations in the way the chorus is delivered? That's something that I ponder on, at marvel at. The variation.
On a recording, I can't tell. I could look at the waveform, slow it down, and analyse it. But I won't. It spoils the magic, and ruins the thought experiment. It leaves no time to dance. From the crowd, looking to the stage, I see them in a different place, a different pose, a different time, and I see and hear the difference in delivery.
My hand writing is the same. The pen is a tool. It is capable of deterministic creation if we remove all the variables, or control them to such an extent that the final output is reproducible apparently exactly.
When we put tools in our hands, or on a bench; we are introducing some more or less precision or imprecision. Great talent may limit that imprecision. I know that I am no great talent, but this brings me to think on those who might be.
The tolerances they may work within, given their starting conditions, the same as mine, in whatever repetitive exercise it may be, have less variation. That is a mastery, that is a skill. It is consistency. Precision. Whatever you want to call it. But it is still imprecise.
Why are we so fuzzy, then? Manufacturing fascinates me. (Well, everything does, but that's a story for another day.) I marvel at two things, apparently the same, like a juvenile Walter Benjamin, unable to articulate his Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction and understand not how two seperate objects appear to be identical. Why? Because even my tools of observation are imprecise.
Mechanical reproduction and the generation of items are one thing, but Benjamin's musings remain relevant today:
Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be. This unique existence of the work of art determined the history to which it was subject throughout the time of its existence
Digital files don't get this. Apart from some metadata, they stay the same when copied and transmitted. So when people wander around and say that AI will destroy human creativity, remember, that for a given input, with a given tool, a human will produce a slightly different result each time.
However, in an generative AI world, the same input, the same random seed, will reproduce to infinity the same output. Every time. For all time.
Until we understand all the hidden dice rolls of the determinism that acts upon the structures of our bodies, our minds, and our tools, we will always be fuzzy, and human content will always have an edge, for its ability to function beyond the known boundaries of its starting conditions.