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The old, original version, of the Journey (into?) Imagination ride with Figment at EPCOT had the best explanation for creativity that I ever saw. It didn't so

The old, original version, of the Journey (into?) Imagination ride with Figment at EPCOT had the best explanation for creativity that I ever saw. It didn't so much say that creativity as most think of it is a myth, but I'm convinced that and ride wear / decay combined killed the ride and pressure from executives never let the message it did say get said the same way ever again. Creativity is just the result of all the environmental exposure, all of the ideas, influences, muses, and necessity needs combining through the analog supercomputer that is the human mind to result in an output that it finds either a solution or interesting enough to share with others. That's all creativity is. The same thing that we're trying to approach today with giant info-network models, curated data, and a loose prompt.

maxbond 4y ago
That doesn't really tell us what creativity is, that describes inputs to a black box without addressing what's in the box. I might say, "an airplane is just aluminum and fluid dynamics, that's all an airplane is," and I don't think you'd accept it as a definition.
- choxi 4y ago
  I don't understand or appreciate what the mystique of creativity is. The inside of the black box could just be your brain randomly remixing concepts and evaluating the variations. Most of them are probably nonsensical (“purple monkey dishwasher”) but some of them are interesting (“monkey dishwashers”) and then you take that idea and keep mixing it. The ideas that gets mixed are just whatever you’re able to pull into context, so ideas you’re familiar with are more likely to get mixed. Sometimes you struggle to come up with creative ideas, and it’s because you’ve run out of new ideas to mix with so changing your environment helps by injecting new ideas. But at its core creativity is, at a practical level, just remixing ideas and applying some value metric against them. Regarding the article, you can apply creative remixing at multiple levels so a creative nonfiction writer may start with fixed facts but can still remix the order, presentation, format, where to begin/end, etc.
  - maxbond 4y ago
    By the same token, I don't understand the reductionism, and the desire to say creativity is "just" this or that. I don't think any of these explanations are complete (eg I don't find that moving to a new environment gets new ideas into my head as much as that I need time to allow the idea in my mind to form more fully, and a change of scenery helps me get out of my own way & let the process happen; it makes sense to me that we'd simply have different experiences of what it is to be creative and what works for us individually) and I don't understand what's to be gained by reducing or devaluing it. Like when I read these comments I'm just left scratching my head and wondering, "what's the point here? Why assert that creativity is something narrow and well defined?" I don't per say think it's mystical, but it seems apparent to me it's quite subjective and broad. So I just don't really understand where you're both coming from. I'm open to hearing more about it. I think the core of my objection is that I think creativity involves discovery as well as remixing. Often as a software engineer I'm assembling lego bricks other people have developed in order to build a new shape. That's straightforward remixing and I think it is a creative endeavor. But sometimes I come across something more challenging that requires experimentation and stumbling down wrong paths, until I discover an architecture that generalizes wonderfully and which addresses problems I haven't even considered yet. I'm a bit of a mathematical platonist, and I think that structure existed in some nonphysical way and that I uncovered it through empiricism and a pinch of cleverness. But I don't think it's really a product of my genius - I'm not all that smart - as much as that it's an almost inevitable result of how the universe works, a minima in some manifold that I was traveling down. I realize that might sound romantic or mystical, but that isn't how I see it.

maxbond 4y ago

That doesn't really tell us what creativity is, that describes inputs to a black box without addressing what's in the box. I might say, "an airplane is just aluminum and fluid dynamics, that's all an airplane is," and I don't think you'd accept it as a definition.

choxi 4y ago
I don't understand or appreciate what the mystique of creativity is. The inside of the black box could just be your brain randomly remixing concepts and evaluating the variations. Most of them are probably nonsensical (“purple monkey dishwasher”) but some of them are interesting (“monkey dishwashers”) and then you take that idea and keep mixing it. The ideas that gets mixed are just whatever you’re able to pull into context, so ideas you’re familiar with are more likely to get mixed. Sometimes you struggle to come up with creative ideas, and it’s because you’ve run out of new ideas to mix with so changing your environment helps by injecting new ideas. But at its core creativity is, at a practical level, just remixing ideas and applying some value metric against them. Regarding the article, you can apply creative remixing at multiple levels so a creative nonfiction writer may start with fixed facts but can still remix the order, presentation, format, where to begin/end, etc.
- maxbond 4y ago
  By the same token, I don't understand the reductionism, and the desire to say creativity is "just" this or that. I don't think any of these explanations are complete (eg I don't find that moving to a new environment gets new ideas into my head as much as that I need time to allow the idea in my mind to form more fully, and a change of scenery helps me get out of my own way & let the process happen; it makes sense to me that we'd simply have different experiences of what it is to be creative and what works for us individually) and I don't understand what's to be gained by reducing or devaluing it. Like when I read these comments I'm just left scratching my head and wondering, "what's the point here? Why assert that creativity is something narrow and well defined?" I don't per say think it's mystical, but it seems apparent to me it's quite subjective and broad. So I just don't really understand where you're both coming from. I'm open to hearing more about it. I think the core of my objection is that I think creativity involves discovery as well as remixing. Often as a software engineer I'm assembling lego bricks other people have developed in order to build a new shape. That's straightforward remixing and I think it is a creative endeavor. But sometimes I come across something more challenging that requires experimentation and stumbling down wrong paths, until I discover an architecture that generalizes wonderfully and which addresses problems I haven't even considered yet. I'm a bit of a mathematical platonist, and I think that structure existed in some nonphysical way and that I uncovered it through empiricism and a pinch of cleverness. But I don't think it's really a product of my genius - I'm not all that smart - as much as that it's an almost inevitable result of how the universe works, a minima in some manifold that I was traveling down. I realize that might sound romantic or mystical, but that isn't how I see it.