4 ms·

I just found that this OP and the other two HN articles I've stumbled on today are somehow related at a deeper level - they're all talking about the creativity

by euske 7y ago

I just found that this OP and the other two HN articles I've stumbled on today are somehow related at a deeper level - they're all talking about the creativity and intelligence in general. The Lesson to Unlearn - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21729619 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21729619 Brain tunes itself to criticality, maximizing information processing - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21729211 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21729211 I don't think all individuals should become a 100% creative/original person. That would make the society very unstable. So we need some (actually, a lot of) obedient people that makes the society keep going, in this regard that I think the current education is useful. On the other hand, there's always a rebel no matter how hard we try to cast people into a form. The question is that the society needs a good mixture of creative and boring people and I don't know how we can achieve that. My theory right now is the society is somehow auto-adjusting itself - like the brain auto-adjusting itself in the above article - to have its "critical" state, i.e. having the right mixture of people: not too boring but not too revolutionary. Of course, the society is much bigger and more complex than a single brain, so its adjustment is slow and inefficient. But it's interesting how it's still functioning while its education system is so broken.

throwaway010718 7y ago
Perhaps evolution has partially tuned the mixture of personality types that is optimal for us as a species. For example if there is a leadership gene then it should be ~10 times rarer than the follower gene. There could also be epigenomic (sp?) affects as well where one's leadership gene doesn't express itself unless there is a vacuum of leadership.
- jackcosgrove 7y ago
  Whatever the cause of this, personality traits are not evenly distributed. I know it's not necessarily an accurate system, but the MBTI is a consistent way of classifying personalities. The distribution of types varies a lot: https://www.myersbriggs.org/my-mbti-personality-type/my-mbti-results/how-frequent-is-my-type.htm https://www.myersbriggs.org/my-mbti-personality-type/my-mbti... The biggest disparity seems to be between sensing and intuition, where sensing relies more on experience to make inferences, while intuition relies more on abstraction to make inferences. Whether this is evolutionarily optimal or just a side effect of other forces I don't know.
  - jotakami 7y ago
    Aren’t all inferences based on abstraction, and all abstractions based on experience? Would it not be more correct to say that the difference here is degree rather than kind, where the intuitive types just have brains that are more active in building abstractions to explain their experiences?
    - agustif 7y ago
      I remember reading the important difference was in the order of the process
haecceity 7y ago
I thought this was about Kuhn who claimed that all scientific education are indoctrination. Which sort of makes sense. As an undergrad we accept propositions and experimental results as true even if we don't fully understand them because you gotta do what you gotta do finish those problem sets.
- WalterBright 7y ago
  1. A newbie follows the rules because he's told to. 2. A master follows the rules because he understands the rules. 3. A guru transcends the rules because he understands they don't apply. You can't skip steps.
  - WalterBright 7y ago
    To amplify that a bit, I have a friend who writes poetry to his gf. I asked him how he acquired the skill. 1. He'd just copy poems he liked. 2. He started tweaking and customizing poems he liked. 3. He just started writing his own. And it's the same way the Beatles evolved, and just about every other musician.
  - arthev 7y ago
    The Dreyfus model of skill acquisition might interest you if you're interested in these lines of thought.
overgard 7y ago
What specific evidence implies that increased creativity would lead to instability?
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 7y ago
> I don't think all individuals should become a 100% creative/original person. That would make the society very unstable. So we need some (actually, a lot of) obedient people that makes the society keep going That seems very questionable at best, in particular the "unstable" part. An obedient population is extremely vulnerable to authority figures. The whole point of democracy is to create stability by removing that single point of failure, by involving so many people in everything that crazy or malicious individuals can not easily gain excessive power, and democracy is under no circumstances compatible with obedience: Either you think critically and vote in your own interest, or you are obedient and vote how the dictator tells you to. It's impossible to have a population that critically evaluates candidates and selects the best one and that also follows orders without regard to their own evaluation of that order.
knzhou 7y ago
There's a near opposite hypothesis to yours: Strauss–Howe generational theory. The idea is that instead of sitting at an 'optimal' point, we have cycles of general societal personality that last four generations, which dictate the flow of history. [0] At such a zoomed-out level, one can make an argument for any grand theory, I guess -- they're too vague to pin down specifically. Still fun to occasionally think about, though. It's the "use sparingly" peak of the nutrition pyramid for thought. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generational_theory#Timing_of_generations_and_turnings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generatio...
- goodmachine 7y ago
  Fascinating stuff, although obviously bananas. Reminds me somewhat of Elliot Waves https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliott_wave_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliott_wave_principle
mistermann 7y ago
> The question is that the society needs a good mixture of creative and boring people and I don't know how we can achieve that. My theory right now is the society is somehow auto-adjusting itself - like the brain auto-adjusting itself in the above article - to have its "critical" state, i.e. having the right mixture of people: not too boring but not too revolutionary. True. But, our society optimizes for economic output, and writes off any anomalies as "stupid". Scientists are pushing us forward into more complex life and societies, but it seems we don't have a similarly sophisticated balancing discipline that ensures we can handle this pace of change. Even worse, the consensus seems to be that we don't even need to think about such things, and any suggestion otherwise is interpreted as hostile.
vharuck 7y ago
One person can be creative in one task and uncreative in another. There are plenty of people who just "clock in, clock out" at work but have creative hobbies. Even if all people are creative in some way, society will work as long as there's an impetus (like money) to do the menial work. It's a problem when some people think they have to always be creative, otherwise they're "boring."

by euske 7y ago

throwaway010718 7y ago

Perhaps evolution has partially tuned the mixture of personality types that is optimal for us as a species. For example if there is a leadership gene then it should be ~10 times rarer than the follower gene. There could also be epigenomic (sp?) affects as well where one's leadership gene doesn't express itself unless there is a vacuum of leadership.

jackcosgrove 7y ago
Whatever the cause of this, personality traits are not evenly distributed. I know it's not necessarily an accurate system, but the MBTI is a consistent way of classifying personalities. The distribution of types varies a lot: https://www.myersbriggs.org/my-mbti-personality-type/my-mbti-results/how-frequent-is-my-type.htm https://www.myersbriggs.org/my-mbti-personality-type/my-mbti... The biggest disparity seems to be between sensing and intuition, where sensing relies more on experience to make inferences, while intuition relies more on abstraction to make inferences. Whether this is evolutionarily optimal or just a side effect of other forces I don't know.
- jotakami 7y ago
  Aren’t all inferences based on abstraction, and all abstractions based on experience? Would it not be more correct to say that the difference here is degree rather than kind, where the intuitive types just have brains that are more active in building abstractions to explain their experiences?
  - agustif 7y ago
    I remember reading the important difference was in the order of the process

haecceity 7y ago

I thought this was about Kuhn who claimed that all scientific education are indoctrination. Which sort of makes sense. As an undergrad we accept propositions and experimental results as true even if we don't fully understand them because you gotta do what you gotta do finish those problem sets.

WalterBright 7y ago
1. A newbie follows the rules because he's told to. 2. A master follows the rules because he understands the rules. 3. A guru transcends the rules because he understands they don't apply. You can't skip steps.
- WalterBright 7y ago
  To amplify that a bit, I have a friend who writes poetry to his gf. I asked him how he acquired the skill. 1. He'd just copy poems he liked. 2. He started tweaking and customizing poems he liked. 3. He just started writing his own. And it's the same way the Beatles evolved, and just about every other musician.
- arthev 7y ago
  The Dreyfus model of skill acquisition might interest you if you're interested in these lines of thought.

overgard 7y ago

What specific evidence implies that increased creativity would lead to instability?

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 7y ago

> I don't think all individuals should become a 100% creative/original person. That would make the society very unstable. So we need some (actually, a lot of) obedient people that makes the society keep going That seems very questionable at best, in particular the "unstable" part. An obedient population is extremely vulnerable to authority figures. The whole point of democracy is to create stability by removing that single point of failure, by involving so many people in everything that crazy or malicious individuals can not easily gain excessive power, and democracy is under no circumstances compatible with obedience: Either you think critically and vote in your own interest, or you are obedient and vote how the dictator tells you to. It's impossible to have a population that critically evaluates candidates and selects the best one and that also follows orders without regard to their own evaluation of that order.

knzhou 7y ago

There's a near opposite hypothesis to yours: Strauss–Howe generational theory. The idea is that instead of sitting at an 'optimal' point, we have cycles of general societal personality that last four generations, which dictate the flow of history. [0] At such a zoomed-out level, one can make an argument for any grand theory, I guess -- they're too vague to pin down specifically. Still fun to occasionally think about, though. It's the "use sparingly" peak of the nutrition pyramid for thought. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generational_theory#Timing_of_generations_and_turnings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generatio...

goodmachine 7y ago
Fascinating stuff, although obviously bananas. Reminds me somewhat of Elliot Waves https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliott_wave_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliott_wave_principle

mistermann 7y ago

> The question is that the society needs a good mixture of creative and boring people and I don't know how we can achieve that. My theory right now is the society is somehow auto-adjusting itself - like the brain auto-adjusting itself in the above article - to have its "critical" state, i.e. having the right mixture of people: not too boring but not too revolutionary. True. But, our society optimizes for economic output, and writes off any anomalies as "stupid". Scientists are pushing us forward into more complex life and societies, but it seems we don't have a similarly sophisticated balancing discipline that ensures we can handle this pace of change. Even worse, the consensus seems to be that we don't even need to think about such things, and any suggestion otherwise is interpreted as hostile.

vharuck 7y ago

One person can be creative in one task and uncreative in another. There are plenty of people who just "clock in, clock out" at work but have creative hobbies. Even if all people are creative in some way, society will work as long as there's an impetus (like money) to do the menial work. It's a problem when some people think they have to always be creative, otherwise they're "boring."