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Why Are Some People More Creative Than Others?

byandyphillips 9y ago
UX Designer here. It took me a long time, almost 4 years of college, to train my creative muscle. Most people don't wake up one day and are instantly creative, it takes hard work and dedication just like any other skill.
chillwaves 9y ago
Some people are better athletes than others, but anyone who trains will be better than someone who does not, regardless of any innate potential. I see creativity along the same lines. Many folks are conditioned to memorize, follow processes, follow norms and paths laid by others, it may not occur to them to seek out originality. It is another form of learned helplessness. Creating is hard, especially when judged in a commercial context. Sure, if I make my own bread it will not win a prize but I made it, it is mine and therefore special to me in ways that are not reflected by the market. Too often emotional value is dictated by market value, with the logical conclusion being "what's the point of making when I can buy something better" -- and you may respond, that is the correct view but it misunderstands that creativity is a process, a worthy act in its own right but also a journey that may end up in interesting places that are not explored by commercial venture.
- jamesrcole 9y ago
  I think of creativity as a kind of skill, that you build through practice.
  - jrs235 9y ago
    I think creativity comes from exposing oneself to different disciplines/topics and finding ways to connect what you learn in one domain to another. It's like the cafeteria concept employed my companies. You want cross pollination of ideas to find creative solutions. Reading is a great way to learn new things from different domains.
- Judgmentality 9y ago
  > but anyone who trains will be better than someone who does not, regardless of any innate potential I disagree. The genetic lottery is unfair; and some people are just better than you no matter what you do, and no matter what they don't do.
  - felipemnoa 9y ago
    A You that trains will be better than a You that does not train.
    - eachro 9y ago
      This is what people should take away from this, not that there might always be someone out there better than you no matter what. In the end, you can only control your own circumstances so do your best, prepare/train for whatever it is you're doing and whatever happens happens.
      - projektir 9y ago
        We should take away from this exactly what is true, not what is motivational. Our whole problem lately is that we've been doing the opposite. These things are bigger than you and me and the person next door and there are far more important things than motivating some random person to train more. That is, frankly, peanuts compared to what is at stake. You are pushing a highly individualistic philosophy that not everyone even agrees on. We live in societies and we have governments beholden to us and it's very important how these things function, much more important than what you individually do. If these systems and structures do not properly serve us because we overestimate personal agency and underestimate circumstance, that's a major problem. The investigation to find what is true (why are people creative?) with figuring out how to improve the station of some person (why am I not creative?) is a conflict of interest, do not mix these unless you like believing in things that are just plain wrong.
        eachro 9y ago
        "We should take away from this exactly what is true, not what is motivational. Our whole problem lately is that we've been doing the opposite. These things are bigger than you and me and the person next door and there are far more important things than motivating some random person to train more. That is, frankly, peanuts compared to what is at stake." Ooh, interesting. Can you elaborate more on what you thing the "whole problem" is? What things are you talking about? What is at stake? Let me say what my actual opinion on all this is, since you seem to be assuming a lot of intent("You are pushing...") from my 2 sentence original post. Many people ask: "why is X more creative than me?", "why is X better than me at Y?" and often the goal is not really to better understand anything about the nature of creativity but to give some justification for their perceived deficiencies. In these cases, this kind of thinking is unproductive because the explanation(something something brain connections blah blah blah) is out of their control! Exactly what you're saying with this being a "conflict of interest." And to these people I say, IF you care about being more creative, IF you care about being the best in your field: control what you control, and whatever happens happens.
- tacomonstrous 9y ago
  >I see creativity along the same lines. Many folks are conditioned to memorize, follow processes, follow norms and paths laid by others, it may not occur to them to seek out originality. It is another form of learned helplessness. The same applies in the academic setting as well. When I was doing my PhD, I found myself trapped in exactly this kind of paralysis. I was very good at learning things, so everyone expected me to do well, but I had never created anything, and the idea that I ever could was so overwhelming and foreign that I couldn't even get started. It wasn't until a little over a year before graduating that I managed to get it together, and was lucky enough to pull it off in time. Part of the problem is the romanticization of creativity, at least in my mind, as if it were an act of heroism or exceptional ability. On the contrary, it's mostly a matter of working and thinking and not giving up. Once you get enmeshed deeply enough in something, you stop wondering about if you're any good at it.
tw1010 9y ago
Is there a name for the fact that articles that start with "Why are ...?", that promise to explain some curiosity, tend to almost never give a satisfying answer? (Usually because it just reports on some small incremental research paper that's still far away from shining a clear lucid light on the bigger picture.) Betteridge's law doesn't apply and clickbait is too broad. Another part of the phenomenon seems to be that the comments here on HN is rarely about the actual content of article itself, but about peoples personal thoughts on the subject. For instance, I wouldn't be surprised if an article about incremental research about dreams would be titled "Why do we dream?", would not contain a satisfying answer in the body of the report, and would on HN mostly consist of peoples own experiences and thoughts about dreams (instead of about the specifics of the research).
- erAck 9y ago
  Agreed, the title should had added "We don't know but we keep searching".
- AnimalMuppet 9y ago
  I could think of a bunch of "names", but they're mostly insults. "Over promise, under deliver" might fit, though...
Swizec 9y ago
Creativity is a weird resource. You don't consume it, you refill it by using it. The more creative things you do, the more creative you become. I see this a lot in writing. When I'm on the wagon and writing every day, the ideas keep coming and flowing and I start thinking "Maybe I should publish twice a day? There's no way I can limit myself to just once" But then I fall off the wagon and I publish/write once a week. It becomes a struggle. Ideas don't flow. It feels like I have nothing to say. The less writing I do, the fewer things feel interesting enough to write about. Ideas get discarded. Try it. Do something creative every day. Even just something small. Write down an idea or a joke or a thought. Or write a 10 line piece of code that does something silly. Soon enough you won't be able to contain yourself and creativity will come bursting out of you. You might not write the next Harry Potter or come up with the next Homebrew, but you're going to create something cool I bet.
ComputerGuru 9y ago
I take issue with the basic premise. I don't think people are more creative than others at all; rather I believe that people exercise/express their creativity more than others. It's the difference between being dealt a card and choosing it for yourself.
- rankam 9y ago
  Do you believe that people are equal in regards to everything or just creativity?
  - ComputerGuru 9y ago
    I'm not arguing that one way or the other, actually.\* I'm saying that differences in innate creativity, if any, are dwarfed by their expression or lack thereof. i.e. the biggest factor is not what you have but how you use it. This is from experience teaching people to "think outside the box" to write better code, to create/describe better models of the real world, etc. starting with people that you would swear didn't have a creative bone in their body and watching them improve dramatically. \* (I know I kind of did argue that, but since you're asking outright, this is what I actually believe.)
supreme_sublime 9y ago
> Some ideas were more creative than others. For the sock, one participant suggested using it to warm your feet—the common use for a sock—while another participant suggested using it as a water filtration system. > We also ranked their ideas for originality: Common uses received lower scores (using a sock to warm your feet), while uncommon uses received higher scores (using a sock as a water filtration system). > Overall, people with stronger connections came up with better ideas. The only objective measure used here is the originality rank. Just because an idea is "original" doesn't mean it is "creative". At least not in a useful way. What if I suggested using a sock to wash your car? Probably an "original" idea. So maybe they ranked it as less creative, even though it is original? Of course this is just a contrived example, but it seems to me like this is an area that could introduce bias pretty easily.
- randcraw 9y ago
  The article did suggest that a creative act had to be both novel and useful. There are an infinite number of useless uses for a sock. Enumerating them is not creative; it's random, like rolling a die. Creativity requires both imagination and judgement -- for each idea you conceive, you must also judge its practical utility to serve some known purpose. Or imagine some unknown purpose that it also might serve... "In shoe world, all hats look just like shoes, but no one wears shoes on their feet. As such, nobody ever invented a sock, nor can they imagine any use for it. After all, why would you put a sock on your head?"
  - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
    There's clearly only a large finite number of possible uses for a sock - I'd say if you can enumerate ones that others wouldn't even conceive then you're being more creative. What would you call someone who can think of ways to use something that no-one/few others can? Unfurl the sock and make a "blind man trail" as a party game. Burn the [cotton] sock and use as char-cloth. Cut up the sock and use as fuel in a tiny model steam-engine. The judgement comes in with craft, or engineering IMO and isn't a facet of creativity per se. Like, burning the sock will create little heat and lots of fumes, etc.; the idea needed creativity. What we mustn't assume is that creation (of goods, craft items, products, whatever) requires _only_ creativity.
mbrumlow 9y ago
This is something we as humans are going to have to deal with at one point or another. While some people would have it that "we are all the same" - the fact is that we are not. It tends to become a touchy subject when you suggest that brain functionality differs between people but we seem to blindly accept that some people make better athletes than others. It is particularly hard because you can't simply look at somebody and make any sort of judgement about ones mental abilities and there sometimes is no rhyme or reason why one person is more creative, or smarter than the other. For me, I am a strong believer that brain functions are much like those of our physical counterparts. While the majority of people can all train the body up to run 1, 5, or 10 miles or more some people will simply have to exert less effort and be able to run further or faster than others. The same goes for brain functions. We can all be "good" in math, science, reading excreta... But only a subset of us will be experts in those subjects or even all of those subjects. I think there is a lot to be studied how how early brain development can push the boundaries for the given set of hardware you are born with. But at some point I think you are mostly locked into what you have. This is a hard topic to even begin to study. Because while two people may be able to preform the same mental functions we don't have a good way of judging amount of effort, and prep time required. For example, somebody who is just introduced to a new consept and can preformed the mental functions within minutes of introduction vs somebody who can preform the same mental functions but required 2 years of practice. The two people have very different cognitive capabilities, and you could argue one is smarter than the other. As for the notion that we are not all the same. Please don't take that as we should be treating each other different based off skills. I think with regards of us all being human we all deserve the same level of respect and opportunity in life. My interest in this subject is based on the notion that we could have happier lives if this sort of subject was less taboo and we could explore making life decisions based off our actual aptitude. I would much rather work with people, and do a job that I found "easier" every day than a job that I could do that I found "hard". While that is a very black and white statement that is not to mean that I don't want a challenge, but it does mean that I don't want to constantly be struggling. I see this in the world already. Where people take jobs they hate, because their aptitude is simply low for that line of work. Where everything is constantly a uphill battle. I can't help to wonder how much better their life would be had they picked a different job where the work came more easy and maybe even considered fun to them. I was lucky to find a job where there is just enough hard stuff to keep me busy, but the bulk of the work I find easy. I think a lot of people who found their way into software experience this. Meanwhile I have friends who can't wait till the work day is over and generally hate their job and complain about how hard it is. So simply put, some people are more creative, or smart or any other attribute because we are all different, and had different experiences during critical brain development times in life. I think the expectation that everybody would be the same -- or even have the same aptitude on any given mental exercise would be weird -- unless we were all clones.
pmoriarty 9y ago
As an artist and musician, I often encourage my friends to draw something, paint something, or make some music. The reply I hear over and over again is, "oh, no, I don't have the talent" or "oh, no, I'm awful at drawing". It's like they don't realize that what they attribute to "talent" is attainable through practice and hard work. When I point that out and encourage them to just try, that it might be fun, they make some other excuse. I've come to understand that what all their excuses amount to is that they're just not interested in creating. They'd rather remain consumers. You have to create in order to be creative. You have to practice creativity in order to be good at it. You can't just read a book, go to a seminar, or wear funny clothes and expect to suddenly be a "creative genius". It can take years to master.[1] On the other hand, most children don't have any problem being creative. Somehow by the time we become adults we lose that, and then think we're permanently incapable. [1] - One of my favorite videos[2] shows the artistic progression of Jonathan Hardesty. In his early work few would detect any hint of "talent", and yet after nine years of hard work, his skill rises to a truly impressive level -- at which point, if one had only seen the end result, a lot of people would call him "talented". But as you can see in the video, he was clearly not born with this "talent". He earned it. That's what it takes. [2] - https://vimeo.com/29510470 https://vimeo.com/29510470
- epicide 9y ago
  I think a lot of it is a fear of failure. A fear of looking dumb or silly. Kids don't have an issue with that. We learn to be afraid.
  - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
    I think you're close. My observation suggests that kids are used to it, everything they do is new, they're inexpert at everything. They don't expect to be good. Adults think that they should be capable simply because one tends to get better at things as an adult. The weight of expectation makes them often worse. My field is pottery, some adults think they can just throw a vase on their first go, kids just enjoy the experience (on the whole) and don't expect to be good at it. Kids, once they've learnt some fine motor control, don't make kid-pictures because they're kids, they do it because they haven't practiced. Adults try, and their observation can get them a little further, but they still make the same sort of pictures and are embarrassed because it's "childish". I recently started a sports class where I'm ranked along with 7 & 8 yo kids, an interesting and humbling experience.
HwdSlle 9y ago
probably freedom, and under freedom; then care and success start to be consumed by the world, so focus and productivity goes insulted, things would be simple as to fight then takes under to process the work values or so;
HwdSlle 9y ago
probably freedom, and under freedom; then care and success start to be consumed by the world, so focus and productivity goes insulted, things would be simple as to fight then taken under to process the work values prisoner of the values;
kingkawn 9y ago
Some people get brutalized into relating to themselves through obedience to preexisting forms, some don’t.
Isamu 9y ago
People have horrible notions about what it is to be "creative" that really just serve to prevent them from attempting something. Linus Pauling said that when he is asked how he comes up with so many great ideas, he says he just comes up with a lot of ideas and then throws away the bad ones. People are discouraged when they sit down to a blank sheet of paper and their first few efforts seem like crap. The truth is that many "creative" people started younger, when their first crappy efforts weren't so stinging. You can start something new when you are older. But you have to tolerate your errors, and you have to bother to identify your problems and fix them. Also: you don't have to be Mozart to be creative. Garden-variety creativity is pretty much available to most people who are willing to brave the slog and self-embarrassment.
phyller 9y ago
The article mentions alternate uses of a sock, citing its suggested use as a "water filter" as being particularly creative. In high school I had a project to make a water filter which I forgot about. The day it was due I managed to assemble a plausible filter by taking my sock, getting it wet, and draping it between the dirty water glass and the clean water glass, with the dirty water glass higher so the water would be sucked up and through the sock into the clean water glass. Maybe there is a high correlation between creativity and irresponsibility or desperation :) As this is Hacker News and full of curious people, I can tell you that it doesn't work very well. The dirty water just ends up on the other side, minus large pieces of detritus.
- randcraw 9y ago
  Frustration and dissatisfaction are famous sources of creative catalysis. Why go to the trouble of creating unless there's a reward for expending the extra effort? Maybe the OP psychologists needed to motivate their subjects better. Maybe exceeding a sufficient threshold of desire is essential in order for someone to "get creative"?
YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
>> Creativity is often defined as the ability to come up with new and useful ideas. Like intelligence, it can be considered a trait that everyone—not just creative “geniuses” like Picasso and Steve Jobs—possesses in some capacity. Well, if you stretch the definition of "creative genius" to include a master of several artistic disciplines who created or popularised entire art movements and influenced artists the world over for more than a hundred years with an entrepreneur who sold lots of electronic devices, then honestly, I have no idea what your experiments are even meant to measure, anymore.
WhitneyLand 9y ago
Is one answer psychedelic substances? At a high level it seems consistent with the article conjecture. I haven’t checked research recently, but there sure are some compelling anecdotes. It’s interesting to me some (based on comments here and elsewhere) many would be opposed to personal experiments under professional medical care. Even for a very skeptical person (as I would self identify), consider the countless profound experiences recounted, even by people who might be considered equally skeptical. Either these experiences are valid, with respect to enabling some sort of beneficial expansion of brain activity, or they are not. If it is valid, how could such a rare and potentially transformative opportunity be ignored? If it’s not valid, risks seem negligible under professional supervision, and you still might experience a once in a lifetime fantastic journey. It’s so easy for us to grok what, say a blind from birth person can’t experience through words alone, yet somehow difficult to imagine ourselves having a similarly untapped perspective, through which difficult to imagine insights might be possible. Hopefully it won’t take too many years for the data to yield an answer. Maybe Steve Jobs and others chose not to wait based on similar cost/benefit analysis. https://patch.com/california/santacruz/can-psychedelic-drugs-enhance-creativity https://patch.com/california/santacruz/can-psychedelic-drugs...
- WhitneyLand 9y ago
  Downvote with no comment? Love to have counterpoints, always regret not having a chance to learn from them.
beagle3 9y ago
Some studies find lefties are more creative, and some don't, see e.g. [0] for some discussion. My anecdata is that three times in unconferences for which creativity was a theme, 30%-50% of the people were lefty (compared to 10% in the general population). [0] http://mentalfloss.com/article/84560/are-lefties-really-more-creative http://mentalfloss.com/article/84560/are-lefties-really-more...
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  Nature or nurture - lefties perhaps have to be exercise their creativity to work around a right-hand biased world?
codeulike 9y ago
"What's your favourite idea?" "Mine is being creative." https://youtu.be/9C_HReR_McQ https://youtu.be/9C_HReR_McQ Apologies, had to post that.
quantum_state 9y ago
This is indeed an interesting conversation ... it seems to me that just like everything else ... being creative is a habit ... the belief that there must be a better way to do something unless proven otherwise seems to be the ultimate source of creativity ...
candiodari 9y ago
In AI you quickly see in the first chapters that there is a clear tradeoff on creativity. When doing search algorithms (which is what all AI algorithms fundamentally are), creativity is essentially breadth-first exploring of a search space, and the opposite is depth first. Neural networks, for instance, are extremely un-creative. They just go straight for their goal, no deviating (the assumption being that any search space is entirely flat if it just has enough dimensions, and clearly to some extent that's true). They will leave very large swaths of the solution space entirely unexplored. But when they work, you can find the method fast and it will yield decent results. Being uncreative, ironically, makes them adapt very quickly. Genetic algorithms, on the other hand, are the most creative algorithms we have, and of course they are famous for finding ridiculously optimized results, but taking a very long time to do so. Genetic algorithm results are always fun. Genetic algorithms always write a program. And while only simple solutions can be understood by humans, but they're ridiculously optimized. Every instruction does 5-10 different things that affect the end result and somehow those results come together at exactly the right time to work. People, and especially the HR/coaching industry, seem to deny this tradeoff, but it's inevitable. If a person is creative, they'll be slow and unreliable to produce results, but those results will be a lot better (assuming, of course, there are any). A very uncreative person can produce results quickly and reliably, but they're "bad", in a sense: one might say they're just trivial re-hashes of solutions seen before. But I wish I had a dollar for every time a high-level manager has come to me with a variation of the following statement : "Ok, let's plan out how we can creatively solve this problem". If a plan is made, of course, in the best case it cuts down on the creativity, in the worst case prevents it entirely. In my experience most people are entirely capable of being very creative or almost robot-like predictable. It's the environment that forces one over the other (although it may just be their perception of their environment rather than the actual demands placed on them).

UX Designer here. It took me a long time, almost 4 years of college, to train my creative muscle. Most people don't wake up one day and are instantly creative, it takes hard work and dedication just like any other skill.

chillwaves 9y ago

Some people are better athletes than others, but anyone who trains will be better than someone who does not, regardless of any innate potential. I see creativity along the same lines. Many folks are conditioned to memorize, follow processes, follow norms and paths laid by others, it may not occur to them to seek out originality. It is another form of learned helplessness. Creating is hard, especially when judged in a commercial context. Sure, if I make my own bread it will not win a prize but I made it, it is mine and therefore special to me in ways that are not reflected by the market. Too often emotional value is dictated by market value, with the logical conclusion being "what's the point of making when I can buy something better" -- and you may respond, that is the correct view but it misunderstands that creativity is a process, a worthy act in its own right but also a journey that may end up in interesting places that are not explored by commercial venture.

jamesrcole 9y ago
I think of creativity as a kind of skill, that you build through practice.
- jrs235 9y ago
  I think creativity comes from exposing oneself to different disciplines/topics and finding ways to connect what you learn in one domain to another. It's like the cafeteria concept employed my companies. You want cross pollination of ideas to find creative solutions. Reading is a great way to learn new things from different domains.
Judgmentality 9y ago
> but anyone who trains will be better than someone who does not, regardless of any innate potential I disagree. The genetic lottery is unfair; and some people are just better than you no matter what you do, and no matter what they don't do.
- felipemnoa 9y ago
  A You that trains will be better than a You that does not train.
  - eachro 9y ago
    This is what people should take away from this, not that there might always be someone out there better than you no matter what. In the end, you can only control your own circumstances so do your best, prepare/train for whatever it is you're doing and whatever happens happens.
    - projektir 9y ago
      We should take away from this exactly what is true, not what is motivational. Our whole problem lately is that we've been doing the opposite. These things are bigger than you and me and the person next door and there are far more important things than motivating some random person to train more. That is, frankly, peanuts compared to what is at stake. You are pushing a highly individualistic philosophy that not everyone even agrees on. We live in societies and we have governments beholden to us and it's very important how these things function, much more important than what you individually do. If these systems and structures do not properly serve us because we overestimate personal agency and underestimate circumstance, that's a major problem. The investigation to find what is true (why are people creative?) with figuring out how to improve the station of some person (why am I not creative?) is a conflict of interest, do not mix these unless you like believing in things that are just plain wrong.
      - eachro 9y ago
        "We should take away from this exactly what is true, not what is motivational. Our whole problem lately is that we've been doing the opposite. These things are bigger than you and me and the person next door and there are far more important things than motivating some random person to train more. That is, frankly, peanuts compared to what is at stake." Ooh, interesting. Can you elaborate more on what you thing the "whole problem" is? What things are you talking about? What is at stake? Let me say what my actual opinion on all this is, since you seem to be assuming a lot of intent("You are pushing...") from my 2 sentence original post. Many people ask: "why is X more creative than me?", "why is X better than me at Y?" and often the goal is not really to better understand anything about the nature of creativity but to give some justification for their perceived deficiencies. In these cases, this kind of thinking is unproductive because the explanation(something something brain connections blah blah blah) is out of their control! Exactly what you're saying with this being a "conflict of interest." And to these people I say, IF you care about being more creative, IF you care about being the best in your field: control what you control, and whatever happens happens.
tacomonstrous 9y ago
>I see creativity along the same lines. Many folks are conditioned to memorize, follow processes, follow norms and paths laid by others, it may not occur to them to seek out originality. It is another form of learned helplessness. The same applies in the academic setting as well. When I was doing my PhD, I found myself trapped in exactly this kind of paralysis. I was very good at learning things, so everyone expected me to do well, but I had never created anything, and the idea that I ever could was so overwhelming and foreign that I couldn't even get started. It wasn't until a little over a year before graduating that I managed to get it together, and was lucky enough to pull it off in time. Part of the problem is the romanticization of creativity, at least in my mind, as if it were an act of heroism or exceptional ability. On the contrary, it's mostly a matter of working and thinking and not giving up. Once you get enmeshed deeply enough in something, you stop wondering about if you're any good at it.

tw1010 9y ago

Is there a name for the fact that articles that start with "Why are ...?", that promise to explain some curiosity, tend to almost never give a satisfying answer? (Usually because it just reports on some small incremental research paper that's still far away from shining a clear lucid light on the bigger picture.) Betteridge's law doesn't apply and clickbait is too broad. Another part of the phenomenon seems to be that the comments here on HN is rarely about the actual content of article itself, but about peoples personal thoughts on the subject. For instance, I wouldn't be surprised if an article about incremental research about dreams would be titled "Why do we dream?", would not contain a satisfying answer in the body of the report, and would on HN mostly consist of peoples own experiences and thoughts about dreams (instead of about the specifics of the research).

erAck 9y ago
Agreed, the title should had added "We don't know but we keep searching".
AnimalMuppet 9y ago
I could think of a bunch of "names", but they're mostly insults. "Over promise, under deliver" might fit, though...

Swizec 9y ago

Creativity is a weird resource. You don't consume it, you refill it by using it. The more creative things you do, the more creative you become. I see this a lot in writing. When I'm on the wagon and writing every day, the ideas keep coming and flowing and I start thinking "Maybe I should publish twice a day? There's no way I can limit myself to just once" But then I fall off the wagon and I publish/write once a week. It becomes a struggle. Ideas don't flow. It feels like I have nothing to say. The less writing I do, the fewer things feel interesting enough to write about. Ideas get discarded. Try it. Do something creative every day. Even just something small. Write down an idea or a joke or a thought. Or write a 10 line piece of code that does something silly. Soon enough you won't be able to contain yourself and creativity will come bursting out of you. You might not write the next Harry Potter or come up with the next Homebrew, but you're going to create something cool I bet.

ComputerGuru 9y ago

I take issue with the basic premise. I don't think people are more creative than others at all; rather I believe that people exercise/express their creativity more than others. It's the difference between being dealt a card and choosing it for yourself.

rankam 9y ago
Do you believe that people are equal in regards to everything or just creativity?
- ComputerGuru 9y ago
  I'm not arguing that one way or the other, actually.\* I'm saying that differences in innate creativity, if any, are dwarfed by their expression or lack thereof. i.e. the biggest factor is not what you have but how you use it. This is from experience teaching people to "think outside the box" to write better code, to create/describe better models of the real world, etc. starting with people that you would swear didn't have a creative bone in their body and watching them improve dramatically. \* (I know I kind of did argue that, but since you're asking outright, this is what I actually believe.)

supreme_sublime 9y ago

> Some ideas were more creative than others. For the sock, one participant suggested using it to warm your feet—the common use for a sock—while another participant suggested using it as a water filtration system. > We also ranked their ideas for originality: Common uses received lower scores (using a sock to warm your feet), while uncommon uses received higher scores (using a sock as a water filtration system). > Overall, people with stronger connections came up with better ideas. The only objective measure used here is the originality rank. Just because an idea is "original" doesn't mean it is "creative". At least not in a useful way. What if I suggested using a sock to wash your car? Probably an "original" idea. So maybe they ranked it as less creative, even though it is original? Of course this is just a contrived example, but it seems to me like this is an area that could introduce bias pretty easily.

randcraw 9y ago
The article did suggest that a creative act had to be both novel and useful. There are an infinite number of useless uses for a sock. Enumerating them is not creative; it's random, like rolling a die. Creativity requires both imagination and judgement -- for each idea you conceive, you must also judge its practical utility to serve some known purpose. Or imagine some unknown purpose that it also might serve... "In shoe world, all hats look just like shoes, but no one wears shoes on their feet. As such, nobody ever invented a sock, nor can they imagine any use for it. After all, why would you put a sock on your head?"
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  There's clearly only a large finite number of possible uses for a sock - I'd say if you can enumerate ones that others wouldn't even conceive then you're being more creative. What would you call someone who can think of ways to use something that no-one/few others can? Unfurl the sock and make a "blind man trail" as a party game. Burn the [cotton] sock and use as char-cloth. Cut up the sock and use as fuel in a tiny model steam-engine. The judgement comes in with craft, or engineering IMO and isn't a facet of creativity per se. Like, burning the sock will create little heat and lots of fumes, etc.; the idea needed creativity. What we mustn't assume is that creation (of goods, craft items, products, whatever) requires _only_ creativity.

mbrumlow 9y ago

This is something we as humans are going to have to deal with at one point or another. While some people would have it that "we are all the same" - the fact is that we are not. It tends to become a touchy subject when you suggest that brain functionality differs between people but we seem to blindly accept that some people make better athletes than others. It is particularly hard because you can't simply look at somebody and make any sort of judgement about ones mental abilities and there sometimes is no rhyme or reason why one person is more creative, or smarter than the other. For me, I am a strong believer that brain functions are much like those of our physical counterparts. While the majority of people can all train the body up to run 1, 5, or 10 miles or more some people will simply have to exert less effort and be able to run further or faster than others. The same goes for brain functions. We can all be "good" in math, science, reading excreta... But only a subset of us will be experts in those subjects or even all of those subjects. I think there is a lot to be studied how how early brain development can push the boundaries for the given set of hardware you are born with. But at some point I think you are mostly locked into what you have. This is a hard topic to even begin to study. Because while two people may be able to preform the same mental functions we don't have a good way of judging amount of effort, and prep time required. For example, somebody who is just introduced to a new consept and can preformed the mental functions within minutes of introduction vs somebody who can preform the same mental functions but required 2 years of practice. The two people have very different cognitive capabilities, and you could argue one is smarter than the other. As for the notion that we are not all the same. Please don't take that as we should be treating each other different based off skills. I think with regards of us all being human we all deserve the same level of respect and opportunity in life. My interest in this subject is based on the notion that we could have happier lives if this sort of subject was less taboo and we could explore making life decisions based off our actual aptitude. I would much rather work with people, and do a job that I found "easier" every day than a job that I could do that I found "hard". While that is a very black and white statement that is not to mean that I don't want a challenge, but it does mean that I don't want to constantly be struggling. I see this in the world already. Where people take jobs they hate, because their aptitude is simply low for that line of work. Where everything is constantly a uphill battle. I can't help to wonder how much better their life would be had they picked a different job where the work came more easy and maybe even considered fun to them. I was lucky to find a job where there is just enough hard stuff to keep me busy, but the bulk of the work I find easy. I think a lot of people who found their way into software experience this. Meanwhile I have friends who can't wait till the work day is over and generally hate their job and complain about how hard it is. So simply put, some people are more creative, or smart or any other attribute because we are all different, and had different experiences during critical brain development times in life. I think the expectation that everybody would be the same -- or even have the same aptitude on any given mental exercise would be weird -- unless we were all clones.

pmoriarty 9y ago

As an artist and musician, I often encourage my friends to draw something, paint something, or make some music. The reply I hear over and over again is, "oh, no, I don't have the talent" or "oh, no, I'm awful at drawing". It's like they don't realize that what they attribute to "talent" is attainable through practice and hard work. When I point that out and encourage them to just try, that it might be fun, they make some other excuse. I've come to understand that what all their excuses amount to is that they're just not interested in creating. They'd rather remain consumers. You have to create in order to be creative. You have to practice creativity in order to be good at it. You can't just read a book, go to a seminar, or wear funny clothes and expect to suddenly be a "creative genius". It can take years to master.[1] On the other hand, most children don't have any problem being creative. Somehow by the time we become adults we lose that, and then think we're permanently incapable. [1] - One of my favorite videos[2] shows the artistic progression of Jonathan Hardesty. In his early work few would detect any hint of "talent", and yet after nine years of hard work, his skill rises to a truly impressive level -- at which point, if one had only seen the end result, a lot of people would call him "talented". But as you can see in the video, he was clearly not born with this "talent". He earned it. That's what it takes. [2] - https://vimeo.com/29510470 https://vimeo.com/29510470

epicide 9y ago
I think a lot of it is a fear of failure. A fear of looking dumb or silly. Kids don't have an issue with that. We learn to be afraid.
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  I think you're close. My observation suggests that kids are used to it, everything they do is new, they're inexpert at everything. They don't expect to be good. Adults think that they should be capable simply because one tends to get better at things as an adult. The weight of expectation makes them often worse. My field is pottery, some adults think they can just throw a vase on their first go, kids just enjoy the experience (on the whole) and don't expect to be good at it. Kids, once they've learnt some fine motor control, don't make kid-pictures because they're kids, they do it because they haven't practiced. Adults try, and their observation can get them a little further, but they still make the same sort of pictures and are embarrassed because it's "childish". I recently started a sports class where I'm ranked along with 7 & 8 yo kids, an interesting and humbling experience.

HwdSlle 9y ago

probably freedom, and under freedom; then care and success start to be consumed by the world, so focus and productivity goes insulted, things would be simple as to fight then takes under to process the work values or so;

HwdSlle 9y ago

probably freedom, and under freedom; then care and success start to be consumed by the world, so focus and productivity goes insulted, things would be simple as to fight then taken under to process the work values prisoner of the values;

kingkawn 9y ago

Some people get brutalized into relating to themselves through obedience to preexisting forms, some don’t.

Isamu 9y ago

People have horrible notions about what it is to be "creative" that really just serve to prevent them from attempting something. Linus Pauling said that when he is asked how he comes up with so many great ideas, he says he just comes up with a lot of ideas and then throws away the bad ones. People are discouraged when they sit down to a blank sheet of paper and their first few efforts seem like crap. The truth is that many "creative" people started younger, when their first crappy efforts weren't so stinging. You can start something new when you are older. But you have to tolerate your errors, and you have to bother to identify your problems and fix them. Also: you don't have to be Mozart to be creative. Garden-variety creativity is pretty much available to most people who are willing to brave the slog and self-embarrassment.

phyller 9y ago

The article mentions alternate uses of a sock, citing its suggested use as a "water filter" as being particularly creative. In high school I had a project to make a water filter which I forgot about. The day it was due I managed to assemble a plausible filter by taking my sock, getting it wet, and draping it between the dirty water glass and the clean water glass, with the dirty water glass higher so the water would be sucked up and through the sock into the clean water glass. Maybe there is a high correlation between creativity and irresponsibility or desperation :) As this is Hacker News and full of curious people, I can tell you that it doesn't work very well. The dirty water just ends up on the other side, minus large pieces of detritus.

randcraw 9y ago
Frustration and dissatisfaction are famous sources of creative catalysis. Why go to the trouble of creating unless there's a reward for expending the extra effort? Maybe the OP psychologists needed to motivate their subjects better. Maybe exceeding a sufficient threshold of desire is essential in order for someone to "get creative"?

YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago

>> Creativity is often defined as the ability to come up with new and useful ideas. Like intelligence, it can be considered a trait that everyone—not just creative “geniuses” like Picasso and Steve Jobs—possesses in some capacity. Well, if you stretch the definition of "creative genius" to include a master of several artistic disciplines who created or popularised entire art movements and influenced artists the world over for more than a hundred years with an entrepreneur who sold lots of electronic devices, then honestly, I have no idea what your experiments are even meant to measure, anymore.

WhitneyLand 9y ago

Is one answer psychedelic substances? At a high level it seems consistent with the article conjecture. I haven’t checked research recently, but there sure are some compelling anecdotes. It’s interesting to me some (based on comments here and elsewhere) many would be opposed to personal experiments under professional medical care. Even for a very skeptical person (as I would self identify), consider the countless profound experiences recounted, even by people who might be considered equally skeptical. Either these experiences are valid, with respect to enabling some sort of beneficial expansion of brain activity, or they are not. If it is valid, how could such a rare and potentially transformative opportunity be ignored? If it’s not valid, risks seem negligible under professional supervision, and you still might experience a once in a lifetime fantastic journey. It’s so easy for us to grok what, say a blind from birth person can’t experience through words alone, yet somehow difficult to imagine ourselves having a similarly untapped perspective, through which difficult to imagine insights might be possible. Hopefully it won’t take too many years for the data to yield an answer. Maybe Steve Jobs and others chose not to wait based on similar cost/benefit analysis. https://patch.com/california/santacruz/can-psychedelic-drugs-enhance-creativity https://patch.com/california/santacruz/can-psychedelic-drugs...

WhitneyLand 9y ago
Downvote with no comment? Love to have counterpoints, always regret not having a chance to learn from them.

beagle3 9y ago

Some studies find lefties are more creative, and some don't, see e.g. [0] for some discussion. My anecdata is that three times in unconferences for which creativity was a theme, 30%-50% of the people were lefty (compared to 10% in the general population). [0] http://mentalfloss.com/article/84560/are-lefties-really-more-creative http://mentalfloss.com/article/84560/are-lefties-really-more...

pbhjpbhj 9y ago
Nature or nurture - lefties perhaps have to be exercise their creativity to work around a right-hand biased world?

codeulike 9y ago

"What's your favourite idea?" "Mine is being creative." https://youtu.be/9C_HReR_McQ https://youtu.be/9C_HReR_McQ Apologies, had to post that.

quantum_state 9y ago

This is indeed an interesting conversation ... it seems to me that just like everything else ... being creative is a habit ... the belief that there must be a better way to do something unless proven otherwise seems to be the ultimate source of creativity ...

candiodari 9y ago

In AI you quickly see in the first chapters that there is a clear tradeoff on creativity. When doing search algorithms (which is what all AI algorithms fundamentally are), creativity is essentially breadth-first exploring of a search space, and the opposite is depth first. Neural networks, for instance, are extremely un-creative. They just go straight for their goal, no deviating (the assumption being that any search space is entirely flat if it just has enough dimensions, and clearly to some extent that's true). They will leave very large swaths of the solution space entirely unexplored. But when they work, you can find the method fast and it will yield decent results. Being uncreative, ironically, makes them adapt very quickly. Genetic algorithms, on the other hand, are the most creative algorithms we have, and of course they are famous for finding ridiculously optimized results, but taking a very long time to do so. Genetic algorithm results are always fun. Genetic algorithms always write a program. And while only simple solutions can be understood by humans, but they're ridiculously optimized. Every instruction does 5-10 different things that affect the end result and somehow those results come together at exactly the right time to work. People, and especially the HR/coaching industry, seem to deny this tradeoff, but it's inevitable. If a person is creative, they'll be slow and unreliable to produce results, but those results will be a lot better (assuming, of course, there are any). A very uncreative person can produce results quickly and reliably, but they're "bad", in a sense: one might say they're just trivial re-hashes of solutions seen before. But I wish I had a dollar for every time a high-level manager has come to me with a variation of the following statement : "Ok, let's plan out how we can creatively solve this problem". If a plan is made, of course, in the best case it cuts down on the creativity, in the worst case prevents it entirely. In my experience most people are entirely capable of being very creative or almost robot-like predictable. It's the environment that forces one over the other (although it may just be their perception of their environment rather than the actual demands placed on them).