But this post in particular was a nice contrast with that, a defence of not having to analyze one's own design influences.
The novelty of doing something that appears to be 'new' can blind you to the fact that people have been doing it for millions of years. The only difference is that you now can blog.
I dislike the amount of "post rationalisation" that goes with arts critique. See the movie "Room 237"[1] as a great example of this. Some of them sound reasonable, and make sense. And some of them just sound ridiculous, and tenuous, and make very little sense. And because Kubrick is dead and didn't tell us what he meant there's little way for us to know if these people's imaginings about his film are in any way correct or not.
I tend to go a bit too far the other way. I know someone who, when at school and asked "Why did that character do that thing?" would answer "because that's what the author wrote" which is correct, but not what an English comprehension teacher wants to hear.