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> watch toddlers playing with toys—their imaginations are boundless and they are able to imbue even the most mundane objects with a sense of wonder and magic.
by roenxi 2y ago
> watch toddlers playing with toys—their imaginations are boundless and they are able to imbue even the most mundane objects with a sense of wonder and magic.
This example just annoys me. I can still out-create a toddler, that isn't hard. The issue with creativity is that toddler-level creativity isn't useful. The important part of creativity is being able to apply it while achieving adult-level goals.
The article doesn't ignore that as such, but this is like saying babies can handle the concept of abstract variables so we can all be programmers. True enough, but not at all a useful observation and it'll just depress the group of people who, for whatever reason, struggle hard and yet never become programmers. There are minimum standards that toddlers do not reach.
- lostemptations5 2y agoLogical deduction is not at all creativity. Toddlers create interesting and unexpected things because they remove the rules-- in fact have no rules to begin with. Using a bunch of deductive logic to come up with a good solution is quite different, and don't worry a sign of good intelligence.
- RACEWAR 2y agoIt sounds like you take your assessment very seriously, but > There are minimum standards that toddlers do not reach. this is very funny taken out of context. Good points, though.
- fuzzfactor 2y agoI played with manual typewriters and mechanical calculators, back then electronic versions were virtually unheard of. But I was already intrigued by electronics and figured it would take over in the future. Vacuum tubes were still the only option almost universally. Didn't touch them as a preschooler, high voltage and all that. With the typewriter, the possibilities were endless, but for the calculator there was only so much you could do to make the right numbers show up in the little squares. Which led directly to number theory, something that can be learned without being taught. > There are minimum standards that toddlers do not reach. I guess there's a grain of truth there, never did get much further ;)
- gumby 2y ago> > watch toddlers playing with toys—their imaginations are boundless and they are able to imbue even the most mundane objects with a sense of wonder and magic. Also a lot of that "play" is "merely" epistemic and phenomenological research, i.e. hard work. There is a lot of creativity in designing and selecting experiments that work with what is at hand. And of course discovery is fun -- that same "wonder and magic" is still experienced in adulthood when you validate something you've believed for a while or just realized. Piaget discusses this extensively, though not in the vocabulary I used. And for the mandatory AI/CS linkage: Piaget was Papert's thesis advisor, so every RNN user or practitioner implicitly depends on Piaget's insight.
- wcarss 2y ago> The important part of creativity is being able to apply it while achieving adult-level goals. That may be the important part for you, but for others, the important part is to not make that the important part.
- 082349872349872 2y agoThis is the distinction between working and hacking: working is what one does while achieving adult-level goals; hacking is what one does while either not goal-directed at all, or while pursuing anti-adult-level goals. > Your tiercel’s too long at hack, Sir. He’s no eyass but a passage-hawk that footed ere we caught him, Dangerously free o’ the air. —JRK
- roenxi 2y agoSure, but the toddler is doing it because they are not mentally capable of walking, synthesising visual data into a coherent world model or communicating with words and evolution has prepared them with the understanding that it is do-or-die on those fronts. Their motivations are urgent and important, but not adult. And the point of their creativity is to figure out how to conform ASAP - adults can't really harness that energy because by and large they are all already great at conforming (vs a toddler, anyway). I suspect these others are motivated by different concerns. It is the difference between a baby dropping a block to work out gravity - which everyone does - vs Newton dropping a block to work out gravity. One of those is an adult motivated by an interesting form of creativity, and the other is something that everyone can do at any age, they just don't need to because they figured it out at the time. The motivation here is critical to assessing the action.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]