PREDICTIONS – 10 Years Later - Santa Fe Institute

4. THE RISE AND FALL OF CREATIVITY
Fellini’s career differed in other ways, too. His curve’s nominal beginning
pointed close to his birth-date, characterizing him as a born
moviemaker. Even though he spent much of his early life in movierelated
activities, he started directing moves rather late, at the age of
thirty-two. By late I mean with respect to his potential. Directing is the
job of a boss, and no one starts as a boss. Consequently, for people
whose life work mainly consists of being bosses, there must be an early
discrepancy from the natural growth S-curve. Fellini’s curve showed an
early catching-up effect not seen in the work of the three Nobel laureates
(Appendix C, Figure 4.5). The curve also implied that he should
not succumb to disease nor commit suicide before 2003. In fact, all four
natural-growth curves indicated that these gifted individuals could look
forward to continued creativity and long lives.
Ten Years Later
The S-curves as drawn in Appendix C Figure 4.5 are based
on data up to 1991. The little circles on the graphs tell what
happened afterward. There are no surprises in the way three
out of the four individuals pursued their careers. In fact, the
two physicists followed their respective curves very closely,
the writer followed his curve fairly closely, but the movie director
did not follow it at all. Fellini died in 1993 before
making any more movies.
Arguing that the more artistic the individual the more unpredictable
his or her career, would be jumping to conclusions.
The predictions for the two physicists turned out more accurate
probably because of the amounts of data involved. There is an
order of magnitude more data for them than for Garcia
Marquez, and high statistics reduce uncertainties. But for
Fellini the story is different. I would argue that Fellini was deprived
of the chance to complete his work. It may be
interesting to research into Fellini’s later life for plans and scenarios
of films that he did not have the time to realized. It
sounds ironic— due to the age difference—but in a way
Fellini’s death was more premature than Mozart’s.
99