Venkatesh Rao

If you write fiction, you have to choose names for characters and places even if they are not critical to the story. If you do engineering, you have to choose names for variables, and details like shaft diameters even if specific bindings don’t matter. Therein lies a rhyme.

There are 3 types of details required to define a work well enough to actually create it: Essential details: which determine the nature of the thing Influential details: which meaningfully shape that nature Interchangeable details: which are necessary but not uniquely so.

We’re talking selectorate theory for creative work, where instead of people/citizens/voters we’re talking about the hundreds or thousands of details that go into individual works by individual creators. Goes up to millions or billions for group works like movies.