I'm not really sure why you seem to be so antagonized by my statements. I am not making any moral judgement on people. I am not saying anything about this nurtu

I'm not really sure why you seem to be so antagonized by my statements. I am not making any moral judgement on people. I am not saying anything about this nurture/nature debate. All I'm saying is that in the end you can only control what you can control, so you do your best there and the results are what they are. I have not insinuated anything about the certainty of success, only that there is uncertainty. > The truth is never unproductive. Yes understanding creativity is important. I am not against the truth. But you perfectly well that I am talking about productivity with respect to these concrete goals of becoming more creative/getting better at X/etc. The "truth" that you discover from studies like this are probabilistic. X% of the study participants showed Y or we observed some correlation of Z with creativity, etc. There is no certainty that these findings apply to a specific individual. Maybe, maybe not. You can make these statements about social structures, (possible) differences in the connections of brains of creative people(as suggested in the linked paper), etc, etc. But what is actionable out of this "truth" if you are trying to become a great mathematician? There are two responses to this. What can we do as a society? And what can I do as an individual who is toiling on this path towards a higher goal? You're concerned about the former. That is fair. I am talking about the latter. >It's actually completely reasonable to question the message, and it's very problematic that in the current climate any attempt at questioning it results in a moralistic response akin to "you're just looking for excuses". This is the very kind of thinking I'm arguing against here. I have no way of proving this, but I would bet any amount of money that pieces like this and its like have this exact effect that you are against. I hypothesize that a majority of people reading this will walk away with the conclusion that more creative people have these innate differences in brain connectivity and then go on to surmise that the odds are stacked against them so why bother trying. And THAT is more damaging than any motivational message. After typing all this up, I now agree with your original thesis: "We should take away from this exactly what is true, not what is motivational." In light of that, I stick to my message that you should still control the things you control in your pursuits of w/e goal it is you're pursuing b/c it is unrealistic to imagine that people will walk away from these pieces with just this "truth" - they will naturally form opinions about it and later on inform their actions with this "truth."