15 ms·

People Don’t Actually Like Creativity

375 points by wikiburner 13y ago

vezzy-fnord 13y ago
This is a very old observation and in fact, the suppression of creativity and individualism is one of the key goals of the compulsory schooling system. From John D. Rockefeller, Sr.'s General Education Board, Occasional Papers No. 1, 1913: "In our dreams, we have limitless resources and the people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present education conventions fade from their minds, and unhampered by tradition, we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive rural folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning, or men of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, editors, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have an ample supply…The task we set before ourselves is very simple as well as a very beautiful one, to train these people as we find them to a perfectly ideal life just where they are. So we will organize our children and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way, in the homes, in the shops and on the farm."
- analog31 13y ago
  This quote, or maybe ones similar too it, have been cited as the "basis" of our school system, and it's not inconceivable to me that people with those motives helped get our public schools off the ground. But is there any evidence that such ideas are actually influential in today's schools? I'll bet that most teachers, if shown your quote, would retch. Maybe I'm lucky (at least, lucky enough to be affluent), but I don't think that my kids are discouraged from being creative at school or in quasi-school activities such as their music lessons.
  - vezzy-fnord 13y ago
    But is there any evidence that such ideas are actually influential in today's schools? I'll bet that most teachers, if shown your quote, would retch. I assume you have read John Taylor Gatto's works before. In particular, you might be interested in his most recent: Weapons of Mass Instruction. I don't know how exactly you would gauge their influence. It's certainly much more prevalent in certain countries (the USA and the major Western European forces, where the idea of modern compulsory schooling originated in the first place: Prussia), compared to say, Eastern European countries. The national psychology has always been different there, and after being ravaged by communism, the school system is quite chaotic and ineffectual, though the EU and other powers are trying to enact change (not necessarily for the better). In any event, just look at how the classroom model of schooling works these days: intense focus on rote memorization, adherence to ritualistic and often obsolete or pointless standards, very bureaucratic operation and government, a fanatical concern with and faith in the grading system, standardized testing as the be-all-end-all of education and so on. Then depending on the country, schools are used to instill nationalistic and other forms of propaganda, be it in the history textbooks or throughout the entire atmosphere of the classroom. Typically most states do this, though the exact level and subtlety depends on the individual nation. The teachers would likely retch, but they're just as big of pawns as anybody else. They're not meant to know. They're told to serve a seemingly benevolent purpose in educating the nation's youth, and they must obviously comply with whatever they're given if they'd like to keep their job.
    - barrkel 13y ago
      Prussia was an eastern European country. Most of it is now Poland, some of it Russia. Modern education is less indoctrination than industrialized daycare. Grading systems at least have some hope of removing some of the biases inherent other forms of judging people, which tend to come down to social markers (the way you speak, dress, who you know) and perpetuate elite prejudicial advantage. Similarly uniforms: they're a social equalizer for people from a poor background.
      - vezzy-fnord 13y ago
        Grading systems (at least in their contemporary form) are no more effective, because the grader can be very easily manipulated or show bias themselves. That and it's just a very flat method of measuring progress. It's systemic, ruthlessly bureaucratic and typically within the context of standardized testing. Social equalization was no doubt one of the motivations behind uniforms, though it's also likely a symbolic tool to foster groupthink and a superficial cloak of egalitarianism. There's many different ways to show your influence and being of a higher class than through mere clothing.
- codingdave 13y ago
  It may not be new, but in regard to education in particular, it is worth repeating loudly and often. I work in the educational governance arena, and am exposed to many discussions that go on at the school district administration level. It is very popular to talk about improving creativity in education. Many educational leaders recognize the issue. But at the same time there are even more discussions about Common Core standards and other ways to standardize education. Sometimes both conversations come from the same people. I was at a conference this fall, with two session at the same time, in rooms right next to each other -- one promoting why the Common Core is the greatest thing ever, the other denouncing it. Both sessions were equally full, and both sessions got the worst reviews of the entire conference, mostly because the people are so conflicted about how to deal with innovation and creativity vs standardization. It is a problem that is easy to identify, but much more difficult to fix. People are trying. For example, Khan academy is a great resource for independent learning, but even their elementary math lessons are categorized by traditional grade levels. The best solution I have to improve creativity in the American educational system is to educate the parents. Make sure that all parents are aware of the issues, and make sure that all parents know that the education of their children is not in the hand of their local school district, but in their own hands. They need to understand the pros and cons of all schooling options, and make the right decisions for their children, and include their children in those discussions when they get old enough. I know this is a huge tangent away from the original article, but this strikes a bit of a nerve with me, and I agree with you that education is an arena in which the issue of creativity is vitally important, probably moreso than in the workplace.
  - vezzy-fnord 13y ago
    Any educational solution that works within the framework of the existing system is doomed to failure. Schooling, in its present form, is the greatest lie ever told, I would say. Education is something that should heavily depend on the individual person. The best way to educate is to self-educate. Then there could be certain gatherings like free schools (free as in freedom, look them up if you aren't aware) and democratic schools if one wants to study with a group or requires tutoring from an experienced person. Apprenticeship is also something I would like to see make a comeback. The school system, however, has done a truly horrifying and dreadful act in that it has killed off the desire for people to autodidact, and has convinced generations that it is the only right way. Of course, many people self-educate in their spare time, but they often do not realize it and instead hold faith in formal academics and schooling as the sole credible form of education. Another fallacy the schooling system has perpetuated is the incorrect equivocation of school and education. They have nothing alike. One is a strict and guided system, the other is the acquisition of knowledge by any means that are possible.
- Nursie 13y ago
  >> the suppression of creativity and individualism is one of the key goals of the compulsory schooling system. This is a popular meme but bears pretty much no relationship with reality.
  - vezzy-fnord 13y ago
    Please elaborate. Popular? It's been getting more attention recently due to the work of various authors, but the vast majority of people still see compulsory schooling as an irrevocable necessity.
    - Nursie 13y ago
      The vast majority see compulsory and free schooling as an unmitigated good. The "it's only there to make you conform and obey the elites" meme is certainly getting more popular, but its so far from the aims of educators (and the politicians that continue to fund it) that it's about as well grounded and believable as chemtrails, the illuminati or other conspiracy theory.
      - nickff 13y ago
        1) Government-run schools are not free. 2) The educators' intentions may be good, but the results are much more important. 3) The politicians do not fund things, they appropriate money from tax receipts. 4) There are many defenders of the public school system who justify it on the basis of creating a 'shared experience' for the citizenry, which sounds quite collectivist. Why would singing national anthems and pledges of allegiance be so common in schools around the world, if not for statism? 5) The government schooling system has historically been used as a tool of oppression against minorities; it would be naive to believe that politicians and bureaucrats suddenly stopped using the schools to achieve their ends .
        Nursie 13y ago
        1) They are free at the point of access, we all pay for them. I'm not sure why you feel the need to point this out as it's a useless distinction 2) Not when we're talking about the subject we're actually talking about they're not. I quote from the OP - "the suppression of creativity and individualism is one of the key goals of the compulsory schooling system". That's what I dispute. It may well be an outcome, and that would be bad and should be changed, but it's disingenuous (to say the least) to ascribe this as a motive. 3) The politicians decide what to fund out of the public purse, yes. Again, useless distinction 4) Is collectivism evil in and of itself? I don't subscribe to this view in the slightest, in case you were wondering, and I've only ever heard a few left-wing talking heads claim that that is what we should be trying to do with schools. Personally I 'justify' it by observing that education is given to people who otherwise would not get it for a variety of reasons, and having a base level of education throughout society being a very Good Thing. 5) It's also verging on conspiracy to ascribe nefarious aims and goals to every person involved in education.
- api 13y ago
  Wow. How... Leninist of him. Damn commie.
- jcromartie 13y ago
  Is there anything wrong with this? Not everybody can be an astronaut. Somebody has to plant the corn or pick up the garbage.
  - vezzy-fnord 13y ago
    Except they're here imposing this as a global task. Of course we need lower level labor as well, but those do not require much formal education in the first place.
andyl 13y ago
I'd say: people don't like change. Creativity is change. Change takes energy, and there's a fininte supply of energy to go around. If you can introduce creative changes that require little energy to adopt, you're on to something.
- Arnt 13y ago
  Rephrasing in a most unkind way: "Change requires too much energy, but if you also bring along a perpetuum mobile, you're on to something."
mathattack 13y ago
Two observations... One is general - that other people imposing their creativity on me requires me to think. This isn't bad, but I have a limited capacity to think, and my bias leads me to think that my new ideas are great, and yours aren't. This is an oversimplification, but if everything changed all the time, we couldn't cope. Some people reject all creativity as a result. Others just put up filters. Second is just practical career advice. Someone at a large company once told me, "People around here talk about diversity and innovation, but what they really want is people doing the same things just a little cheaper, a little faster, and a little more predictably." This isn't to say that Change is bad, only that there is lots of resistance with semi-rational reasoning behind it.
jerf 13y ago
In general, things that we are constantly reminding each other of are things that we either do not naturally believe and thus need constant reminding of, or things we do not really believe (which can be determined by looking at our actions). The things we all already know and believe, we never even talk about. We know and agree, what would be the point? For another example (and my, did I have to search for one that was politically neutral...), consider how often we're telling ourselves here on HN that procrastination is bad. If we want to believe that, we need constant reminding of it, constant reminding to carefully consider our real priorities, or our actions will betray our true priorities, which aren't whatever we want or think them to be. By contrast, consider how often we debate whether the best way to learn programming is by doing it, (exclusive) or by studying it. We might discuss the best way to learn by doing, but virtually no one really believes programming is best learned by extensive study before one is even permitted a REPL. (And anyone who pops up here and claims they believe that I will assume is being contrarian for contrariness' sake. Do take note of my "exclusive" there; of course there's a place for study, but even in formal studies there's no reason not to have the student in front of a compiler/interpreter on day one, or lab day one anyhow.)
- Xcelerate 13y ago
  > do not naturally believe and thus need constant reminding of > consider how often we're telling ourselves here on HN that procrastination is bad. If we want to believe that, we need constant reminding of it I don't think it's so much that there are people who think procrastination isn't a bad thing, it's just that it can be a really hard problem to overcome; hence, so much discussion about ways to do so.
  - jerf 13y ago
    There's an old saying that actions speak louder than words; I've come to believe it's phrased too weakly. Especially when it comes to determining what a person believes, words verge on useless. It's easy to assert that you believe procrastination is bad, but if your actions don't show any change, I don't consider that as you really believing it. I do not believe that repeated assertions are a bad thing. A huge amount of self-discipline amounts to just this sort of hack, where your forebrain tries to figure out a way to basically trick the hindbrain into doing what you want. I also think that in order to optimally use these techniques, its important to understand what you're doing, and to clearly see and understand the discrepancy between actions and words. So I do not intend pointing out the mismatch between words an actions as a criticism, but as an observation.
swalsh 13y ago
I consider myself a creative individual, mostly because my boss brings it up in every review... I think the thing a lot of "creative" people do is get too attached to ideas. When you have that idea its a diamond. Sometimes its hard to tell that its really just another rock. Of course sometimes ideas don't die. When that's true, you just gotta do it. Find a way.
asiekierka 13y ago
I wish I were creative.
- egypturnash 13y ago
  It's a learned skill like any other. Google "learn how to be creative" and you'll find a lot of techniques to train yourself; read a bunch of these things and try stuff that you see popping up in a lot of them and/or stuff that sounds fun.
- nickthemagicman 13y ago
  Everyone is creative...it's what propelled human beings out of the woods as a successful species. It's the defining characteristic of humans. We're not big animals, you think we would have survived all the large predators if we weren't creative or be able to populate all regions and adapt to any environment if we weren't creative. You are creative, trust me, you're the result of millions of years of hyper creative areas of brain specialization however current culture has convinced you other wise.
seiji 13y ago
A wise man once said: when you have a flabby culture of consensus that rejects those who offend the few, that’s exactly what you’re going to get: risk-minimizers, not excellence-maximizers. It’s generally agreed upon that some people are too creative, too interesting, to succeed in typical human organizations because of that specific effect.
- Adrock 13y ago
  That's a quote from here: https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/tag/corporate-behavior/ https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/tag/corporate-behavior/ Why not include a link to the source or even the author's actual name?
rswai 13y ago
Normal people (none of who are on hacker news ofcourse :p) tend to be scared of change, because change is 'different'. Little do they know that there really is no such thing as 'different' when it comes to your personality because the moment people start classifying you as different then you've actually started acting upon and becoming the real you! You've stopped being what they want you to be. Sadly enough most people in the world live in denial,suppressing their capabilities thus most partnerships formed by a group of 'conformists'. I guess it explains why we're still light years behind any real WORLD development.
michaelochurch 13y ago
I suppose what has happened to my HN account (artificially high latency, aka "slowbanning", and personal penalties in comment placement, aka "rankbanning") proves this. If you actually challenge VC-istan (as opposed to Graham-esque incremental improvements) on its moral fundamentals, you've gone too far. More generally, creativity (in particular, I'll focus on social humor) has a status effect. Let's put social status on a scale from -1.0 to 1.0. Below 0.0, you're an at-risk member who may be expelled from the group. At 1.0, you're an unquestioned god-king of it (most groups' leaders are 0.5 to 0.7). When you're above +0.4, you can't really use humor (which I'm taking to be a microcosm of creativity) except of a stunted kind, because most good humor is partisan or offensive, and not "presidential" or "leader-like". That, I would argue, applies to creative expression in general. Below 0.0, you're a disliked member of the group and your ideas (or humor) will be rejected just because they come from you and are therefore taken to be unskilled displays and desperate attempts to improve status. Between 0.0 and +0.2, your jokes might be well-received, but it's not worth the risk, because you don't have much status capital to spend. This leaves a narrow range of the status spectrum-- 0.2 to 0.4-- in which humor (/creativity) can bring improvement. However, people at +0.3 to +0.4 aren't high enough to end up climbing corporate ladders-- you need +0.6 to +0.7 to play that game, and you need to achieve that status reliably (at each level of the executive hierarchy)-- and doubling down on humor typecasts you as "the funny guy", which isn't the image you want and limits you at the +0.4 ceiling. The problem isn't really that people individually dislike creativity. It's that social groups become increasingly anti-intellectual and focused on self-preservation (which requires excluding the "different") as they get bigger.
- drunkpotato 13y ago
  I like your contributions here and follow your blog. I think this particular post is being downvoted because it seems a bit out of place and not your usual intelligent response to an article or comment.
- tbrownaw 13y ago
  I suppose what has happened to my HN account (artificially high latency, aka "slowbanning", and personal penalties in comment placement, aka "rankbanning") proves this. If you actually challenge VC-istan (as opposed to Graham-esque incremental improvements) on its moral fundamentals, you've gone too far. Are you sure it's not just your presentation that does that? Also keep in mind that morality of systems is complex. Just because bad outcomes can be traced back to $FOO, does not mean that not-$FOO would result in less bad outcomes and so does not mean that $FOO is wrong or immoral. Some VC-istan companies having asshole managers who react poorly to conceited employees, does not necessarily mean that all of VC-istan shares bad management philosophies. It doesn't even mean that that one company has bad management policies, it could be that anything else (or anything else they've tried) results in more asshole managers or other worse problems. The problem isn't really that people individually dislike creativity. It's that social groups become increasingly anti-intellectual and focused on self-preservation (which requires excluding the "different") as they get bigger. How can a group best maximize the well-being of its members? Suppose interesting new ideas from a group member are nomally distributed, with a mean that varies by the member's skill/intelligence (approximated by status), a standard deviation that varies by the member's creativity, and are adopted by other group members based on some combination of status and approximate value. Whether you personally get better ideas (and can help the group more) by rolling the dice yourself vs collecting the best ideas from others (and vs spending your time implementing ideas from a single cheap/fast source), depends on how many others there are and how relatively skilled/intelligent you are. As the number of creative people increases, the value of your being creative decreases. As the group size increases, the percentage of the group that needs to be creative decreases (the absolute number of creative members should still increase). Mistrusting new ideas is not necessarily anti-intellectual. Mistrusting complex ideas because they're complex would be anti-intellectual. Wanting to see a larger sample size so you have a better approximation of someone's cool new idea isn't.
JamesArgo 13y ago
Let's suppose everyone is behaving relativity rationally. How could we explain this? One obvious suggestion: the average value of a "creative" idea is less than that of a inside-the-box idea. Though the peek value of a "creative" idea can be tremendous, most "creative" ideas are of negative utility, similar to how most mutations decrease fitness, even though most increases in fitness are caused by mutations. Though all earth-shattering ideas are creative, perhaps all creative ideas aren’t earth-shattering and, on average, one is better off thinking inside the box.
- studiofellow 13y ago
  Knowing the value of an idea is difficult until we see it in hindsight, already fulfilled. I think that pretending to know the value of a creative idea when it's merely an idea is presumptuous. The article describes how the reception of creativity is all about risk--that we don't know its value immediately. I think this is a more logical way of looking at it.
- colomon 13y ago
  Let me amplify your point with a specific, personal example. I write Irish traditional-style dance tunes, reels & jigs, mostly. I think I do a pretty decent job of it. (Of course, I might be wrong about this -- certainly there are loads of bad, creative ideas! Assume for the moment, though, that I actually am okay at it.) As far as I know, the number of people who can play even one of the tunes I've written can be counted on your fingers. It might take only one hand. Like so many things, there are strong network effects in Irish tunes. Most of the musicians want to play with other people; so there is limited incentive to learn a tune that almost no-one else knows. When you do want to learn something novel, there are literally thousands of obscure tunes to choose from, with more being written every day. And of course, since my tunes have not been professionally recorded, only a very limited number of people have ever been exposed to them; mostly close friends and a few people who heard me get up the nerve to play them in a bar somewhere. What I'm trying to get at here is this is all perfectly reasonable. If you looked at it from a narrow focus on me, then you could certainly say that creative ideas are being ignored. But if you look at it from a broader perspective, you'd be wrong to conclude that all those musicians don't like creativity. Most of them are looking for something new to play. There's just no compelling reason it should be my tune.
jd_free 13y ago
We live in a society where people who use "diversity" as a buzzword are actively promoting policies that discourage diversity of thought and demand conformance. "Standards" dictated from on high are the bane of creative exploration. At the same time, many "creative" ideas are actually just really stupid ideas. It's to be expected that the person with the stupid idea will accuse his critics of stifling his "creativity". That doesn't mean they're wrong.
- studiofellow 13y ago
  I think a lot of cultures (including much of startup culture) place too much emphasis on ideas. So many creative ideas really are stupid ideas. However, that doesn't mean creativity should be criticized--it just means we need to teach people to do more than have ideas. Creativity comes into play when problem solving, and determining whether ideas are worthwhile, too. edit: spelling.
analog31 13y ago
An observation about the article is the frequent mention of risk. What's risk? It's the chance that something will go wrong. If risk is how we formally define it, then a ten million dollar idea with a 90% chance of failure is worth a million. This suggests a potential gap between the innovator's view of their own idea, and its actual value. On the other hand, a dullard who comes up with a million dollar idea that's demonstrably risk free, has delivered equal value. What happens when the innovator presents the ten million dollar idea to a room full of dullards? After several such episodes in succession, they've persuaded themselves that the dullards hate innovation. Blaming people for being risk-averse isn't good enough. There has to be something else going on, such as a gap between perceived risk and real risk, that influences both innovators and dullards.
jaimebuelta 13y ago
Creativity (substitute it by change if you prefer) is only interesting if it produces better results (by whatever definition of "better" that applies to the area). Creative people will produce a lot of meh stuff/crap for each interesting output. Environments that promote creativity are easy on mistakes/failed outcomes, because they know that, at some point, it will produce something interesting. Will be 1/100th of the times, but it will be worth it. But most of the people assumes that, just because someone is creative, all the stuff will be awesome. And that's simply not possible. With no patience, there can't be any creativity. And very few people is patient.
- polskibus 13y ago
  It's not just about quality, the throughput also can vary. Doing something new every time, means you will most likely not do it as fast as a person already skilled in the same topic.
mdakin 13y ago
I call these anti-creative people of the world who work to hold the world of humanity fixed in one conceptual place/time "The Lords of the Status Quo." These "lords" are great in number, but always individually weak. This group somehow combined forces with "The Lords of Hierarchy"-- those who built and currently inhabit the hierarchal social structures that last throughout time (e.g. Corporations, Religions, Governments). That combined force is the most powerful abstract entity that I know of on this planet, and has somehow managed to impose its collective will over everyone on this planet. (Drone strikes, anyone?) If you want to understand the combined group you want to understand "Slave Morality." They are all something like Slaves. The creatives are best understood using "Hero Morality." I can't wait until this world's "Slaves" finally free themselves. I am generally an anti-Nietzsche thinker and I believe his ideas should be taken with a huge handful of salt, but I think the Hero/Slave archetypes actually do explain a lot about this (effed up) world.
jnorthrop 13y ago
If an organization really wants to embrace creativity it also has to embrace failure. A large percentage of creative solutions--stuff that is "out-of-the-box," unique and innovative--are likely not to work. If the organization is risk adverse, it will never truly embrace creativity.
crazygringo 13y ago
Except that, most creative ideas are bad. Like the famous observation about Churchill: "His chief of staff Alan Brooke complained that every day Churchill had 10 ideas, only one of which was good -- and he did not know which one." And when I think of product meeting's I've sat in on... generally 90% of the "creative" ideas would be complete disasters. And a lot of the remaining 10% might be good, but the work involved in figuring that out for sure would often be prohibitive, for an unclear payoff. But occasionally you get a gem that everyone gets excited about. I would say that people do like creativity, but only when it's clear that the particular creative solution will likely work. Which is generally not the case. And if people went chasing every plausible creative idea, we wouldn't have time for anything else, like normal productivity. That's why it's a very difficult balance to get right.
- mrcactu5 13y ago
  most people don't have time to risk investing their personal or business resources on a bad idea. So they don't try anything. This is classic "fear of failure". I agree -- people like creativity when someone else takes all the risk
  - WalterBright 13y ago
    Ideas are a dime a dozen. It's the risk, time and effort involved in making them work that has value.
    - sitkack 13y ago
      That is because ideas come from artists who are mostly really really bad at capitalism.
  - no_wave 13y ago
    I disagree. People get angry at the exercise of creativity. Look at the reaction to the financial independence/lifestyle design. People HATE them. Tell many Americans that you're going to stop working for six months to read books in Thailand and they will despise you. There are so many upsides to creativity, and so much human potential for it - the thing that stops most is the shame that gets splashed on you every time. And then you start splashing it yourself. And that's the game.
mrcactu5 13y ago
some people are very creative but can't get things done other people are not very creative but move things over. in order to achieve that result that everyone appreciates, there is usually some technical detail we have to work through that nobody else cares about or understands. anyone who is both creative and wants to do stuff has to work through that lonely period.
simonsarris 13y ago
John Cleese (of Monty Python fame) gave a lecture on this topic, which I think is pertinent if you want to consider some solutions to this problem: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AU5x1Ea7NjQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AU5x1Ea7NjQ (I posted it to HN almost a year ago, but it got no upvotes then, though I think it is excellent and merits its own discussion so we don't derail this article's comments too much, so here's a repost: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6862219 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6862219) He gives several pointers on how work environments could foster creativity if they wanted to, but also weighs the merits of both "open" and "closed" thinking. I thought it fascinating, and a good breakdown of "being creative" versus "getting things done", and the environment needed for each. I definitely prefer written articles to videos, but I do think the video has a lot of merit for anyone interested in this topic. It has a lot more actionable advice than this Slate article.
- dgesang 13y ago
  Absolutely amazing talk!
- pinaceae 13y ago
  Thank you for sharing, it is indeed a great talk.
- jvehent 13y ago
  Fantastic lecture indeed, and very well delivered!
- UNIXgod 13y ago
  I love this! Thank you for linking it up. This also how to do a talk proper.
- hsitz 13y ago
  "It has a lot more actionable advice than this Slate article." I enjoyed the talk, but I don't really see how actionable the advice is. Or, rather, I think it's either wrong or what he says is incomplete. As he sets things up creativity is unleashed in sessions where you have "open" mind and you do the more mundane work in sessions with "closed" mind. This bifurcation, at least as he sets it up with (e.g., "set aside at least 1 1/2 hours for your open mind session"), doesn't really fit with how creativity gets expressed. In many endeavors -- e.g., music, acting, sports -- the opportunity for creativity comes about only because of huge amounts of practice, in which the endeavor is developed to a point where it becomes second nature. Then, when placed in a situation where you have to perform, creativity comes out. I can't see how this fits with the process of switching from open mind to closed mind, as Cleese describes it. I also have problems when I think of how creativity comes out in process of writing, whether it's writing fiction, non-fiction, or software. This process of getting work done is much more fluid than Cleese describes. People don't brainstorm for ideas for an hour or two, then sit down to do the mundane work. The work gets done in sessions that are better described by the concept of "flow", where if you still want to use Cleese's concepts of "open mind" and "closed mind" then it is best said that you drift frequently perhaps imperceptibly between the two. Cleese's characterization in the talk is much more like brainstorming, where you just ponder, daydream, think things up, for an hour or two to find a right "answer", then go to work with "closed mind" implementing your answer. That doesn't seem to me to be how creativity happens, at least not for wide variety of different "creative" endeavors. Creativity comes out when you're in the flow, getting work done in single long session that is not characterizable as an "open mind session" or "closed mind session".
mcguire 13y ago
I would really suggest reading the paper mentioned first in the article[1]. Although it has a good deal of the usual statistical ranting, it's short and reasonably well-written. From the conclusion: "Our results show that regardless of how open minded people are, when they feel motivated to reduce uncertainty either because they have an immediate goal of reducing uncertainty, or feel uncertain generally, this may bring negative associations with creativity to mind which result in lower evaluations of a creative idea. Our findings imply a deep irony. Prior research shows that uncertainty spurs the search for and generation of creative ideas, yet our findings reveal that uncertainty also makes us less able to recognize creativity, perhaps when we need it most." The key finding is two-fold: in a normal, non-uncertain, state, creativity has positive associations and is easier to recognize and assess. However, when people attempt to deal with an excess of uncertainty, creative ideas have negative associations. That's something to think about the next time everything is on fire. Oh, and the final bit is interesting: "In addition, our results suggest that if people have difficulty gaining acceptance for creative ideas especially when more practical and unoriginal options are readily available, the field of creativity may need to shift its current focus from identifying how to generate more creative ideas to identifying how to help innovative institutions recognize and accept creativity." [1] http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1457&context=articles http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ar... [PDF]
toddmorey 13y ago
Catchy headline, but I feel it's an inaccurate generalization. From my experience, there is a spectrum of people between two different viewpoints: creative people who are energized by new ideas and non-creative people whose default posture is to be skeptical about them. Neither bias is either completely right or completely wrong. Most new ideas fail, so it's healthy to know critics who can help counterbalance creative enthusiasm and perhaps see potential pitfalls. But new ideas—the right ones—are hugely valuable. I've heard creativity described as a tolerance for the cognitive dissonance—that is, the natural mental pain and discomfort—of combining unrelated or incongruent ideas. This process likely bothers a skeptical person a lot more and they tire or frustrate out earlier. Less creative people can be difficult to brainstorm with because they don't enjoy the process and want to "get to the answer." But creative people can be difficult to execute with because seemingly everything at every moment is up for reinvention. The point here is that we need people on both ends of the spectrum and they need to understand each other and the value they bring.
ffrryuu 13y ago
Because they are the trouble makers. Now get back in line and do your work as you are told!
calinet6 13y ago
People love creativity, as evidenced by our love of the results of creativity. Our systems however, are not set up to reward creativity. Our systems at work, at school, and in life in general are set up to maintain a status quo, to result in the least amount of risk possible (especially as those systems become larger), and in general to reward predictability, consistency, and obedience. All of which describe the opposite of creativity. The reasons the systems are this way is due to our style of management, primarily in the US. Carrot-and-stick styles, with emphasis on short-term goals and comparison of employees to each other (bonuses for the top 5% etc) result in short-term thinking styles and discourage creativity in the workplace. Bonuses and employee evaluations also tend to focus on measurable goals, and creativity is difficult to measure and difficult to quantify, therefore it's optimized away. Just one of the many negative unintended consequences of our default individual-focused reward-and-punish management style. Deming-style management process would likely fix this and encourage wider thinking and creativity, with less of an individual focus. Read more and spread the word: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming
- Brakenshire 13y ago
  > People love creativity, as evidenced by our love of the results of creativity. I don't think this follows. Just because you like the result of a process, doesn't mean you like the process. For instance, just because people use the fruits of scientific and engineering processes, that doesn't mean they actually think, or want to think, like scientists or engineers.
- randomdata 13y ago
  I would argue that work does favour creativity. If you go to work just like everyone else does, you'll make an income just like everyone else does. It is only the people who reject the status quo and find their own way to work that actually are able to make incomes that rise well above the typical worker.
colmvp 13y ago
"In the documentary The September Issue, Anna Wintour systematically rejects the ideas of her creative director Grace Coddington, seemingly with no reason aside from asserting her power." Having watched it, t's entirely possible that they cut the explanatory bits to frame Wintour as even more cold as she is in public persona. I wouldn't be surprised. But in any case, she's the Editor-in-Chief, which makes her the final filter. She's goes a lot by her hunch which is based on taste, a palette that revitalized Vogue and kept it relevant in the fashion industry. Taste is hard to justify. In such cases, I don't think it's so much about people not digging creativity so much as the idea isn't there. That's just part of being creative. Sometimes you think you're doing interesting work and it's actually not as good as you think it is.
Millennium 13y ago
People generally want to be convinced of an idea's value before implementing it, and this is reasonable. For tested and tried ideas, this value is generally a known quantity, or at least one that can be estimated reasonably well. As long as that value is high, convincing people to do it is relatively easy: it's mostly a matter of presenting that value in ways they'll accept. For untried (i.e. "creative") ideas, this is much harder. Further complicating the process is that the creators of ideas inevitably place a very high intrinsic value on them. There are many reasons for this, but a lot of them are tied into the ego, either directly ("I had this idea, so it's good") or indirectly ("This idea reinforces beliefs I hold, or advances a cause I favor, or lets me practice my favored hobbies, or may answer a question I'm personally curious about, etc., therefore it is good"). Other people just plain don't find these ego-tied arguments compelling, nor really should they, and so they cloud the process of convincing people to go along with a new idea. It would seem, then, that the trick is to remove one's ego from the convincing process, and argue solely based on what's left. But the ego still complicates things. Even when more observer-independent arguments can be found, they never shine as brightly in the eyes of the creator as the ego-tied ones, and so it feels like you're selling it short: not something creatives like to do, and for obvious reasons. Worse, though, are the many ideas that just plain don't have many (or even any) arguments that don't tie straight back into one's own ego. No one else will ever be convinced to go alongside these, but to attack them is to attack the creator's ego, leading to accusations of sour grapes and headlines like "People don't actually like creativity."
- trustfundbaby 13y ago
  This is true and more important than it sounds. There is also the problem that a lot of people think that they will have to invest a lot in an idea to see if it will work which means that unless something sounds completely brilliant, there will always be friction to try it. This IMO is what causes creativity to not respected, because people try to use their opinions or common sense to evaluate ideas (because of the perceived high cost of actually evaluating ideas by implementing them) instead of relying on cold hard data. We know is that a good number of the best ideas start out sounding really silly at first, if not they would already exist (right?) So it stands to reason that people would scoff at creative ideas because they would generally not "make sense" to the average person. That is why it is important to come up with a process or culture that allows you to quickly run an idea through its paces, to validate or invalidate it using data. Making it cheap to entertain ideas in the same way git makes it easy to create and throw away branches. I think that this is why you find that at the most innovative companies this is exactly what happens, and as soon as this culture of quickly validating ideas goes away, the company starts its slow decline.
johnohara 13y ago
It's important to distinguish the difference between elegant design and creativity. Elegant design is often easy to recognize and appreciate. We celebrate its creativity and thought because it "looks right" and "feels familiar." But true creativity is abrasive, uncomfortable, and many times, divisive. It doesn't often look right or feel familiar, especially when it comes from persons or sources not easily understood. Which is why it struggles in environments where the goal is to stay focused on the task at hand.
the_cat_kittles 13y ago
Another simple reason I think lots of people don't like creativity: It is an affront to tradition. Lots of people subconsciously (or otherwise) think you are arrogant for thinking you can improve on the status quo.
overdrivetg 13y ago
"If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats." - Howard Aiken I suspect many here can relate.
Pxtl 13y ago
People like results. If you demonstrated good results in a creative fashion? Then they like creativity. If you did it conventionally? They like that too. The problem with the "creative" way is you have to go through the process of eliminating all the bad ideas again, which the conventional approach has already done. But the ideas are the fun part. Being creative means producing lots of bad ideas that nobody wants to deal with. Dragging unwilling participants through your creative process of throwing out all the bad ideas? That's your dirty work. That's housekeeping and laundry. The few good new ideas? Prove them, then bring in others. Unless somebody is paid to put up with your crap. They laughed at Einstein, but the also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
- wrongc0ntinent 13y ago
  Most of the comments so far, this one included, evade one aspect of creativity in the sense of unconventional ideas. The risk associated with testing out a truely original hypothesis is often greater than we can actually comprehend even far into the experiment; but failure doesn't mean the hypothesis was incorrect. We often speak of an idea "before its time", etc., - sadly, in retrospect. These are the ideas we drown by not sharing the risk as a group, ideas that could spare us great amounts of everything from discomfort to pain.
njharman 13y ago
I don't know how most people define creativity. The author seems to be equating creativity with independent, non-conformist risk takers. Which is not how I'd define creativity, but maybe that is what makes people "creative".
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
gwern 13y ago
> Unfamiliar things are distrusted and hard to process, overly familiar things are boring, and the perfect object of beauty lies somewhere in between (Sluckin, Hargreaves, & Colman, 1983)... (More details in http://lesswrong.com/lw/i0b/open_thread_july_1622_2013/9f1o http://lesswrong.com/lw/i0b/open_thread_july_1622_2013/9f1o )
j2kun 13y ago
Who says that creativity implies risk? This article treats the two as equivalent.
normloman 13y ago
Copywriter here. Sometimes clients ask me to create slogans for their company. I screw around for a bit, generate a list of maybe 25 slogans, then present them with the 5 best. I always have a favorite out of the bunch. A slogan that's so memorable, because it's so out of the ordinary. One that gets to the point, and really delivers the benefit of the client's product. And that slogan never gets picked. Business owners are afraid to stick out. So they pick the most tame slogan from the bunch. Example: A web design company wanted to target a display ad to small businesses without websites. I wrote the ad with the headline: "If you're not online, you don't exist." Client changed this to "If you don't have a good website, we can help." Most people don't know what they like, or they are afraid to admit it. So instead, they pick the same thing everyone else is doing. It simplifies making decisions. No feelings, no uncertainty. Just a quick Google of your competitors to see what they do.
- ritchiea 13y ago
  I have one of those awful people as a client right now. We spent hours with a truly fantastic marketer (and I don't throw that kind of praise around lightly, especially in marketing), who not only helped us identify great copy, but also helped us identify some broader values to give the company character. I sat in that meeting with the 2 founders. We took notes, raved about the meeting, had a bunch of great concrete stuff to move forward with. A week later the CEO designed the startup's landing page. None of the good stuff from the meeting was there, just a generic uninformative slogan and a generic long parallax marketing page that doesn't tell anyone what the product does. Sigh.
Mikeb85 13y ago
I think a lot of it comes down to the way societies have evolved, and our 'survival' function. We don't want to risk our limited resources and time on ideas that, more than likely, will yield nothing. Furthermore, a lot of 'creative people' are just hipsters that use it as a crutch to never get anything productive done. I mean, shit like this isn't a particularly great expression of creativity: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/6/63/Robert_Delaunay,_1913,_Premier_Disque,_134_cm,_52.7_inches,_Private_collection.jpg/260px-Robert_Delaunay,_1913,_Premier_Disque,_134_cm,_52.7_inches,_Private_collection.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/6/63/Robert_D... We should encourage creativity, but also temper it with realism. While the life of the 'starving artist' is alluring, it's really not all that...
jgeada 13y ago
I heard somewhere an interesting distillation of creativity: - if something is obviously a good idea, it would already be the way things are done. Creativity largely ends up coming up with good approaches that are not immediately obviously good and, in that respect it is inherently difficult to tease apart the good ideas from the bad ideas.
emhs 13y ago
They're right that people don't like creativity or dissent. There was a good post on Less Wrong about this [1], and about how the rejection of creativity, the rejection of what to you, is blindingly obvious, is key in the break between the creative person, the independent thinker, and their trust in society's expectations and sanity [2]. Seeing the things that the established process missed requires valuing finding a better idea more than how many people you might piss off along the way. It make take several ideas to get there, but you have to learn to reward your brain for producing ideas, and you can't expect society to provide that reward. You have to produce that reward all on your own, until you find the right idea and succeed with it. Then everyone shuts up for a moment, before talking about how they knew you'd figure it out all along, and they were starting to think in that direction just the other day. [1] http://lesswrong.com/lw/mb/lonely_dissent/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/mb/lonely_dissent/ [2] http://lesswrong.com/lw/qf/no_safe_defense_not_even_science/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/qf/no_safe_defense_not_even_science/
simonsquiff 13y ago
Reminds me of Shanks law: "Because people understand by finding in their memories the closest possible match to what they are hearing and use that match as the basis of comprehension, any new idea will be treated as a variant of something the listener has already thought of or heard. Agreement with a new idea means a listener has already had a similar thought and well appreciates that the speaker has recognized his idea. Disagreement means the opposite. Really new ideas are incomprehensible. The good news is that for some people, failure to comprehend is the beginning of understanding. For most, of course, it is the beginning of dismissal."
danielharan 13y ago
What circular rot: because creative people have historically faced rejection, that rejection is good, because you'll need it. "Perhaps for some people, the pain of rejection is like the pain of training for a marathon—training the mind for endurance. Research shows you’ll need it. Truly creative ideas take a very long time to be accepted. The better the idea, the longer it might take. Even the work of Nobel Prize winners was commonly rejected by their peers for an extended period of time."
drawkbox 13y ago
I agree with this, it is mainly people's plight against change. Don't ask for approval for creativity, noone will let you. Do it and ask for forgiveness later. If you are waiting for approval for creativity you are doing it wrong. This is the same problem that plagues big companies who had a large market share, without creativity/prototypes/new innovations those companies are dead. The people in those companies are shut down when asking for approval. See the pirate flag days at Apple and what Steve Jobs had to go through for a high level at what happens, even if you start the company they won't let you be creative without a fight. The very definition of creativity is thinking different and with that comes resistance.
spiritplumber 13y ago
Heh, about the part where it goes “I even say, ‘I’ll do the work. Just give me the go ahead and I’ll do it myself,’ ” she says. “But they won’t, and so the system stays less efficient.” I get that at least once a month. What I generally do now is tell people "You are wrong" when I'm told no. This has caused a few surreal situations (one was a bunch of NASA guys listening to a presentation on how Widget T was badly behind schedule and needed a lot of work done, with the first production batch of working Widget Ts in a heap on the conference table).
hyp0 13y ago
I've never seen a job ad for "idea people". Usually, idea people are made fun of, like Michael Keaton's character in Night Shift (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084412/quotes http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084412/quotes) - or Scriber, in A Fire Upon the Deep (http://books.google.com.au/books?id=uRjpxtbshBYC&lpg=PT110&ots=aorLn0iZxN&dq=scriber%20%22a%20fire%20upon%20the%20deep%22%20that%20had%20always%20been%20his%20problem%20too&pg=PT110#v=onepage&q=scriber%20%22a%20fire%20upon%20the%20deep%22%20that%20had%20always%20been%20his%20problem%20too&f=false http://books.google.com.au/books?id=uRjpxtbshBYC&lpg=PT110&o...). "[...] It's that, the actual doing, that's going slow." Scriber nodded knowingly. That had been the central problem in his life too. The "big" problem is the space of ideas is huge, expanding exponentially, each variation admitting many more ways of varying. And... the vast majority are no good. So youth's easy enthusiasm for ideas quickly turn to caution, doubt, ridicule, and they become bitter cynics before their time, getting very angry with youth's easy enthusiasms. The exception is an idea that actually has a verified concrete benefit. A good idea. But here, people don't care about the idea; but they care about the benefit. A common problem is when the greatest benefits of your wonderful idea are not yet verifiable... the solution is to find (or work to create) some benefit - perhaps much smaller than the dream - that is concrete and verifiable. Then, people will adopt it. Ideally, as time goes on, you can add more and more benefits which comprise the dream til it is complete (or at least give you time to work on making real your dream's benefits.)
chacham15 13y ago
“I even say, ‘I’ll do the work. Just give me the go ahead and I’ll do it myself,’” That's the difference between a leader and a follower: if you strongly believe that you are indeed correct, work on the system on your own time and then you either learn a valuable lesson that youre not as "good" as you think you are or you teach the others a valuable lesson that you're better than they think you are. This way people who are good will become leaders and have a better say in what goes on and people who are not will learn and one day be good. The shame is in the people who are good, but remain inactive because they dont figure out if they are actually correct and neither does the management.
plumeria 13y ago
This reminds me of The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand...
anigbrowl 13y ago
Though her company initially hired her for her problem-solving skills, she is regularly unable to fix actual problems because nobody will listen to her ideas. So true. Half (or maybe more) of being successful as a creative person is learning to play politics and sell your ideas.
liotier 13y ago
"Here’s to the crazy ones. The rebels. The troublemakers. The ones who see things differently. Please do it somewhere else and just give us the benefits once you are established" - Steve Jobs (the quote usually truncates the last sentence)
dredmorbius 13y ago
Reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance again, Pirsig hits on this among other themes: Schools teach you to imitate. If you don't imitate what the teacher wants you to get you get a bad grade. Here in college, it was more sophisticated, of course; you were supposed to imitate the teacher in such a way as to convince the teacher you were not imitating but taking the essence of the instruction and going ahead with it on your own. That got you A's. Originality on the other hand could get you anything --- from A to F. The whole grading system cautioned against it. The book of course is all about Quality, Creativity, and Innovation. Highly recommended.
rumcajz 13y ago
Consider how hard is it to push through a "sane" solution in corporate environment. "Creative" solution is out of question.
Ideka 13y ago
Relevant: http://youtu.be/9C_HReR_McQ http://youtu.be/9C_HReR_McQ

375 points by wikiburner 13y ago

This is a very old observation and in fact, the suppression of creativity and individualism is one of the key goals of the compulsory schooling system. From John D. Rockefeller, Sr.'s General Education Board, Occasional Papers No. 1, 1913: "In our dreams, we have limitless resources and the people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present education conventions fade from their minds, and unhampered by tradition, we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive rural folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning, or men of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, editors, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have an ample supply…The task we set before ourselves is very simple as well as a very beautiful one, to train these people as we find them to a perfectly ideal life just where they are. So we will organize our children and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way, in the homes, in the shops and on the farm."

analog31 13y ago
This quote, or maybe ones similar too it, have been cited as the "basis" of our school system, and it's not inconceivable to me that people with those motives helped get our public schools off the ground. But is there any evidence that such ideas are actually influential in today's schools? I'll bet that most teachers, if shown your quote, would retch. Maybe I'm lucky (at least, lucky enough to be affluent), but I don't think that my kids are discouraged from being creative at school or in quasi-school activities such as their music lessons.
- vezzy-fnord 13y ago
  But is there any evidence that such ideas are actually influential in today's schools? I'll bet that most teachers, if shown your quote, would retch. I assume you have read John Taylor Gatto's works before. In particular, you might be interested in his most recent: Weapons of Mass Instruction. I don't know how exactly you would gauge their influence. It's certainly much more prevalent in certain countries (the USA and the major Western European forces, where the idea of modern compulsory schooling originated in the first place: Prussia), compared to say, Eastern European countries. The national psychology has always been different there, and after being ravaged by communism, the school system is quite chaotic and ineffectual, though the EU and other powers are trying to enact change (not necessarily for the better). In any event, just look at how the classroom model of schooling works these days: intense focus on rote memorization, adherence to ritualistic and often obsolete or pointless standards, very bureaucratic operation and government, a fanatical concern with and faith in the grading system, standardized testing as the be-all-end-all of education and so on. Then depending on the country, schools are used to instill nationalistic and other forms of propaganda, be it in the history textbooks or throughout the entire atmosphere of the classroom. Typically most states do this, though the exact level and subtlety depends on the individual nation. The teachers would likely retch, but they're just as big of pawns as anybody else. They're not meant to know. They're told to serve a seemingly benevolent purpose in educating the nation's youth, and they must obviously comply with whatever they're given if they'd like to keep their job.
  - barrkel 13y ago
    Prussia was an eastern European country. Most of it is now Poland, some of it Russia. Modern education is less indoctrination than industrialized daycare. Grading systems at least have some hope of removing some of the biases inherent other forms of judging people, which tend to come down to social markers (the way you speak, dress, who you know) and perpetuate elite prejudicial advantage. Similarly uniforms: they're a social equalizer for people from a poor background.
    - vezzy-fnord 13y ago
      Grading systems (at least in their contemporary form) are no more effective, because the grader can be very easily manipulated or show bias themselves. That and it's just a very flat method of measuring progress. It's systemic, ruthlessly bureaucratic and typically within the context of standardized testing. Social equalization was no doubt one of the motivations behind uniforms, though it's also likely a symbolic tool to foster groupthink and a superficial cloak of egalitarianism. There's many different ways to show your influence and being of a higher class than through mere clothing.
codingdave 13y ago
It may not be new, but in regard to education in particular, it is worth repeating loudly and often. I work in the educational governance arena, and am exposed to many discussions that go on at the school district administration level. It is very popular to talk about improving creativity in education. Many educational leaders recognize the issue. But at the same time there are even more discussions about Common Core standards and other ways to standardize education. Sometimes both conversations come from the same people. I was at a conference this fall, with two session at the same time, in rooms right next to each other -- one promoting why the Common Core is the greatest thing ever, the other denouncing it. Both sessions were equally full, and both sessions got the worst reviews of the entire conference, mostly because the people are so conflicted about how to deal with innovation and creativity vs standardization. It is a problem that is easy to identify, but much more difficult to fix. People are trying. For example, Khan academy is a great resource for independent learning, but even their elementary math lessons are categorized by traditional grade levels. The best solution I have to improve creativity in the American educational system is to educate the parents. Make sure that all parents are aware of the issues, and make sure that all parents know that the education of their children is not in the hand of their local school district, but in their own hands. They need to understand the pros and cons of all schooling options, and make the right decisions for their children, and include their children in those discussions when they get old enough. I know this is a huge tangent away from the original article, but this strikes a bit of a nerve with me, and I agree with you that education is an arena in which the issue of creativity is vitally important, probably moreso than in the workplace.
- vezzy-fnord 13y ago
  Any educational solution that works within the framework of the existing system is doomed to failure. Schooling, in its present form, is the greatest lie ever told, I would say. Education is something that should heavily depend on the individual person. The best way to educate is to self-educate. Then there could be certain gatherings like free schools (free as in freedom, look them up if you aren't aware) and democratic schools if one wants to study with a group or requires tutoring from an experienced person. Apprenticeship is also something I would like to see make a comeback. The school system, however, has done a truly horrifying and dreadful act in that it has killed off the desire for people to autodidact, and has convinced generations that it is the only right way. Of course, many people self-educate in their spare time, but they often do not realize it and instead hold faith in formal academics and schooling as the sole credible form of education. Another fallacy the schooling system has perpetuated is the incorrect equivocation of school and education. They have nothing alike. One is a strict and guided system, the other is the acquisition of knowledge by any means that are possible.
Nursie 13y ago
>> the suppression of creativity and individualism is one of the key goals of the compulsory schooling system. This is a popular meme but bears pretty much no relationship with reality.
- vezzy-fnord 13y ago
  Please elaborate. Popular? It's been getting more attention recently due to the work of various authors, but the vast majority of people still see compulsory schooling as an irrevocable necessity.
  - Nursie 13y ago
    The vast majority see compulsory and free schooling as an unmitigated good. The "it's only there to make you conform and obey the elites" meme is certainly getting more popular, but its so far from the aims of educators (and the politicians that continue to fund it) that it's about as well grounded and believable as chemtrails, the illuminati or other conspiracy theory.
    - nickff 13y ago
      1) Government-run schools are not free. 2) The educators' intentions may be good, but the results are much more important. 3) The politicians do not fund things, they appropriate money from tax receipts. 4) There are many defenders of the public school system who justify it on the basis of creating a 'shared experience' for the citizenry, which sounds quite collectivist. Why would singing national anthems and pledges of allegiance be so common in schools around the world, if not for statism? 5) The government schooling system has historically been used as a tool of oppression against minorities; it would be naive to believe that politicians and bureaucrats suddenly stopped using the schools to achieve their ends .
      - Nursie 13y ago
        1) They are free at the point of access, we all pay for them. I'm not sure why you feel the need to point this out as it's a useless distinction 2) Not when we're talking about the subject we're actually talking about they're not. I quote from the OP - "the suppression of creativity and individualism is one of the key goals of the compulsory schooling system". That's what I dispute. It may well be an outcome, and that would be bad and should be changed, but it's disingenuous (to say the least) to ascribe this as a motive. 3) The politicians decide what to fund out of the public purse, yes. Again, useless distinction 4) Is collectivism evil in and of itself? I don't subscribe to this view in the slightest, in case you were wondering, and I've only ever heard a few left-wing talking heads claim that that is what we should be trying to do with schools. Personally I 'justify' it by observing that education is given to people who otherwise would not get it for a variety of reasons, and having a base level of education throughout society being a very Good Thing. 5) It's also verging on conspiracy to ascribe nefarious aims and goals to every person involved in education.
api 13y ago
Wow. How... Leninist of him. Damn commie.
jcromartie 13y ago
Is there anything wrong with this? Not everybody can be an astronaut. Somebody has to plant the corn or pick up the garbage.
- vezzy-fnord 13y ago
  Except they're here imposing this as a global task. Of course we need lower level labor as well, but those do not require much formal education in the first place.

andyl 13y ago

I'd say: people don't like change. Creativity is change. Change takes energy, and there's a fininte supply of energy to go around. If you can introduce creative changes that require little energy to adopt, you're on to something.

Arnt 13y ago
Rephrasing in a most unkind way: "Change requires too much energy, but if you also bring along a perpetuum mobile, you're on to something."

mathattack 13y ago

Two observations... One is general - that other people imposing their creativity on me requires me to think. This isn't bad, but I have a limited capacity to think, and my bias leads me to think that my new ideas are great, and yours aren't. This is an oversimplification, but if everything changed all the time, we couldn't cope. Some people reject all creativity as a result. Others just put up filters. Second is just practical career advice. Someone at a large company once told me, "People around here talk about diversity and innovation, but what they really want is people doing the same things just a little cheaper, a little faster, and a little more predictably." This isn't to say that Change is bad, only that there is lots of resistance with semi-rational reasoning behind it.

jerf 13y ago

In general, things that we are constantly reminding each other of are things that we either do not naturally believe and thus need constant reminding of, or things we do not really believe (which can be determined by looking at our actions). The things we all already know and believe, we never even talk about. We know and agree, what would be the point? For another example (and my, did I have to search for one that was politically neutral...), consider how often we're telling ourselves here on HN that procrastination is bad. If we want to believe that, we need constant reminding of it, constant reminding to carefully consider our real priorities, or our actions will betray our true priorities, which aren't whatever we want or think them to be. By contrast, consider how often we debate whether the best way to learn programming is by doing it, (exclusive) or by studying it. We might discuss the best way to learn by doing, but virtually no one really believes programming is best learned by extensive study before one is even permitted a REPL. (And anyone who pops up here and claims they believe that I will assume is being contrarian for contrariness' sake. Do take note of my "exclusive" there; of course there's a place for study, but even in formal studies there's no reason not to have the student in front of a compiler/interpreter on day one, or lab day one anyhow.)

Xcelerate 13y ago
> do not naturally believe and thus need constant reminding of > consider how often we're telling ourselves here on HN that procrastination is bad. If we want to believe that, we need constant reminding of it I don't think it's so much that there are people who think procrastination isn't a bad thing, it's just that it can be a really hard problem to overcome; hence, so much discussion about ways to do so.
- jerf 13y ago
  There's an old saying that actions speak louder than words; I've come to believe it's phrased too weakly. Especially when it comes to determining what a person believes, words verge on useless. It's easy to assert that you believe procrastination is bad, but if your actions don't show any change, I don't consider that as you really believing it. I do not believe that repeated assertions are a bad thing. A huge amount of self-discipline amounts to just this sort of hack, where your forebrain tries to figure out a way to basically trick the hindbrain into doing what you want. I also think that in order to optimally use these techniques, its important to understand what you're doing, and to clearly see and understand the discrepancy between actions and words. So I do not intend pointing out the mismatch between words an actions as a criticism, but as an observation.

swalsh 13y ago

I consider myself a creative individual, mostly because my boss brings it up in every review... I think the thing a lot of "creative" people do is get too attached to ideas. When you have that idea its a diamond. Sometimes its hard to tell that its really just another rock. Of course sometimes ideas don't die. When that's true, you just gotta do it. Find a way.

asiekierka 13y ago

I wish I were creative.

egypturnash 13y ago
It's a learned skill like any other. Google "learn how to be creative" and you'll find a lot of techniques to train yourself; read a bunch of these things and try stuff that you see popping up in a lot of them and/or stuff that sounds fun.
nickthemagicman 13y ago
Everyone is creative...it's what propelled human beings out of the woods as a successful species. It's the defining characteristic of humans. We're not big animals, you think we would have survived all the large predators if we weren't creative or be able to populate all regions and adapt to any environment if we weren't creative. You are creative, trust me, you're the result of millions of years of hyper creative areas of brain specialization however current culture has convinced you other wise.

seiji 13y ago

A wise man once said: when you have a flabby culture of consensus that rejects those who offend the few, that’s exactly what you’re going to get: risk-minimizers, not excellence-maximizers. It’s generally agreed upon that some people are too creative, too interesting, to succeed in typical human organizations because of that specific effect.

Adrock 13y ago
That's a quote from here: https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/tag/corporate-behavior/ https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/tag/corporate-behavior/ Why not include a link to the source or even the author's actual name?

rswai 13y ago

Normal people (none of who are on hacker news ofcourse :p) tend to be scared of change, because change is 'different'. Little do they know that there really is no such thing as 'different' when it comes to your personality because the moment people start classifying you as different then you've actually started acting upon and becoming the real you! You've stopped being what they want you to be. Sadly enough most people in the world live in denial,suppressing their capabilities thus most partnerships formed by a group of 'conformists'. I guess it explains why we're still light years behind any real WORLD development.

michaelochurch 13y ago

I suppose what has happened to my HN account (artificially high latency, aka "slowbanning", and personal penalties in comment placement, aka "rankbanning") proves this. If you actually challenge VC-istan (as opposed to Graham-esque incremental improvements) on its moral fundamentals, you've gone too far. More generally, creativity (in particular, I'll focus on social humor) has a status effect. Let's put social status on a scale from -1.0 to 1.0. Below 0.0, you're an at-risk member who may be expelled from the group. At 1.0, you're an unquestioned god-king of it (most groups' leaders are 0.5 to 0.7). When you're above +0.4, you can't really use humor (which I'm taking to be a microcosm of creativity) except of a stunted kind, because most good humor is partisan or offensive, and not "presidential" or "leader-like". That, I would argue, applies to creative expression in general. Below 0.0, you're a disliked member of the group and your ideas (or humor) will be rejected just because they come from you and are therefore taken to be unskilled displays and desperate attempts to improve status. Between 0.0 and +0.2, your jokes might be well-received, but it's not worth the risk, because you don't have much status capital to spend. This leaves a narrow range of the status spectrum-- 0.2 to 0.4-- in which humor (/creativity) can bring improvement. However, people at +0.3 to +0.4 aren't high enough to end up climbing corporate ladders-- you need +0.6 to +0.7 to play that game, and you need to achieve that status reliably (at each level of the executive hierarchy)-- and doubling down on humor typecasts you as "the funny guy", which isn't the image you want and limits you at the +0.4 ceiling. The problem isn't really that people individually dislike creativity. It's that social groups become increasingly anti-intellectual and focused on self-preservation (which requires excluding the "different") as they get bigger.

drunkpotato 13y ago
I like your contributions here and follow your blog. I think this particular post is being downvoted because it seems a bit out of place and not your usual intelligent response to an article or comment.
tbrownaw 13y ago
I suppose what has happened to my HN account (artificially high latency, aka "slowbanning", and personal penalties in comment placement, aka "rankbanning") proves this. If you actually challenge VC-istan (as opposed to Graham-esque incremental improvements) on its moral fundamentals, you've gone too far. Are you sure it's not just your presentation that does that? Also keep in mind that morality of systems is complex. Just because bad outcomes can be traced back to $FOO, does not mean that not-$FOO would result in less bad outcomes and so does not mean that $FOO is wrong or immoral. Some VC-istan companies having asshole managers who react poorly to conceited employees, does not necessarily mean that all of VC-istan shares bad management philosophies. It doesn't even mean that that one company has bad management policies, it could be that anything else (or anything else they've tried) results in more asshole managers or other worse problems. The problem isn't really that people individually dislike creativity. It's that social groups become increasingly anti-intellectual and focused on self-preservation (which requires excluding the "different") as they get bigger. How can a group best maximize the well-being of its members? Suppose interesting new ideas from a group member are nomally distributed, with a mean that varies by the member's skill/intelligence (approximated by status), a standard deviation that varies by the member's creativity, and are adopted by other group members based on some combination of status and approximate value. Whether you personally get better ideas (and can help the group more) by rolling the dice yourself vs collecting the best ideas from others (and vs spending your time implementing ideas from a single cheap/fast source), depends on how many others there are and how relatively skilled/intelligent you are. As the number of creative people increases, the value of your being creative decreases. As the group size increases, the percentage of the group that needs to be creative decreases (the absolute number of creative members should still increase). Mistrusting new ideas is not necessarily anti-intellectual. Mistrusting complex ideas because they're complex would be anti-intellectual. Wanting to see a larger sample size so you have a better approximation of someone's cool new idea isn't.

JamesArgo 13y ago

Let's suppose everyone is behaving relativity rationally. How could we explain this? One obvious suggestion: the average value of a "creative" idea is less than that of a inside-the-box idea. Though the peek value of a "creative" idea can be tremendous, most "creative" ideas are of negative utility, similar to how most mutations decrease fitness, even though most increases in fitness are caused by mutations. Though all earth-shattering ideas are creative, perhaps all creative ideas aren’t earth-shattering and, on average, one is better off thinking inside the box.

studiofellow 13y ago
Knowing the value of an idea is difficult until we see it in hindsight, already fulfilled. I think that pretending to know the value of a creative idea when it's merely an idea is presumptuous. The article describes how the reception of creativity is all about risk--that we don't know its value immediately. I think this is a more logical way of looking at it.
colomon 13y ago
Let me amplify your point with a specific, personal example. I write Irish traditional-style dance tunes, reels & jigs, mostly. I think I do a pretty decent job of it. (Of course, I might be wrong about this -- certainly there are loads of bad, creative ideas! Assume for the moment, though, that I actually am okay at it.) As far as I know, the number of people who can play even one of the tunes I've written can be counted on your fingers. It might take only one hand. Like so many things, there are strong network effects in Irish tunes. Most of the musicians want to play with other people; so there is limited incentive to learn a tune that almost no-one else knows. When you do want to learn something novel, there are literally thousands of obscure tunes to choose from, with more being written every day. And of course, since my tunes have not been professionally recorded, only a very limited number of people have ever been exposed to them; mostly close friends and a few people who heard me get up the nerve to play them in a bar somewhere. What I'm trying to get at here is this is all perfectly reasonable. If you looked at it from a narrow focus on me, then you could certainly say that creative ideas are being ignored. But if you look at it from a broader perspective, you'd be wrong to conclude that all those musicians don't like creativity. Most of them are looking for something new to play. There's just no compelling reason it should be my tune.

jd_free 13y ago

We live in a society where people who use "diversity" as a buzzword are actively promoting policies that discourage diversity of thought and demand conformance. "Standards" dictated from on high are the bane of creative exploration. At the same time, many "creative" ideas are actually just really stupid ideas. It's to be expected that the person with the stupid idea will accuse his critics of stifling his "creativity". That doesn't mean they're wrong.

studiofellow 13y ago
I think a lot of cultures (including much of startup culture) place too much emphasis on ideas. So many creative ideas really are stupid ideas. However, that doesn't mean creativity should be criticized--it just means we need to teach people to do more than have ideas. Creativity comes into play when problem solving, and determining whether ideas are worthwhile, too. edit: spelling.

analog31 13y ago

An observation about the article is the frequent mention of risk. What's risk? It's the chance that something will go wrong. If risk is how we formally define it, then a ten million dollar idea with a 90% chance of failure is worth a million. This suggests a potential gap between the innovator's view of their own idea, and its actual value. On the other hand, a dullard who comes up with a million dollar idea that's demonstrably risk free, has delivered equal value. What happens when the innovator presents the ten million dollar idea to a room full of dullards? After several such episodes in succession, they've persuaded themselves that the dullards hate innovation. Blaming people for being risk-averse isn't good enough. There has to be something else going on, such as a gap between perceived risk and real risk, that influences both innovators and dullards.

jaimebuelta 13y ago

Creativity (substitute it by change if you prefer) is only interesting if it produces better results (by whatever definition of "better" that applies to the area). Creative people will produce a lot of meh stuff/crap for each interesting output. Environments that promote creativity are easy on mistakes/failed outcomes, because they know that, at some point, it will produce something interesting. Will be 1/100th of the times, but it will be worth it. But most of the people assumes that, just because someone is creative, all the stuff will be awesome. And that's simply not possible. With no patience, there can't be any creativity. And very few people is patient.

polskibus 13y ago
It's not just about quality, the throughput also can vary. Doing something new every time, means you will most likely not do it as fast as a person already skilled in the same topic.

mdakin 13y ago

I call these anti-creative people of the world who work to hold the world of humanity fixed in one conceptual place/time "The Lords of the Status Quo." These "lords" are great in number, but always individually weak. This group somehow combined forces with "The Lords of Hierarchy"-- those who built and currently inhabit the hierarchal social structures that last throughout time (e.g. Corporations, Religions, Governments). That combined force is the most powerful abstract entity that I know of on this planet, and has somehow managed to impose its collective will over everyone on this planet. (Drone strikes, anyone?) If you want to understand the combined group you want to understand "Slave Morality." They are all something like Slaves. The creatives are best understood using "Hero Morality." I can't wait until this world's "Slaves" finally free themselves. I am generally an anti-Nietzsche thinker and I believe his ideas should be taken with a huge handful of salt, but I think the Hero/Slave archetypes actually do explain a lot about this (effed up) world.

jnorthrop 13y ago

If an organization really wants to embrace creativity it also has to embrace failure. A large percentage of creative solutions--stuff that is "out-of-the-box," unique and innovative--are likely not to work. If the organization is risk adverse, it will never truly embrace creativity.

crazygringo 13y ago

Except that, most creative ideas are bad. Like the famous observation about Churchill: "His chief of staff Alan Brooke complained that every day Churchill had 10 ideas, only one of which was good -- and he did not know which one." And when I think of product meeting's I've sat in on... generally 90% of the "creative" ideas would be complete disasters. And a lot of the remaining 10% might be good, but the work involved in figuring that out for sure would often be prohibitive, for an unclear payoff. But occasionally you get a gem that everyone gets excited about. I would say that people do like creativity, but only when it's clear that the particular creative solution will likely work. Which is generally not the case. And if people went chasing every plausible creative idea, we wouldn't have time for anything else, like normal productivity. That's why it's a very difficult balance to get right.

mrcactu5 13y ago
most people don't have time to risk investing their personal or business resources on a bad idea. So they don't try anything. This is classic "fear of failure". I agree -- people like creativity when someone else takes all the risk
- WalterBright 13y ago
  Ideas are a dime a dozen. It's the risk, time and effort involved in making them work that has value.
  - sitkack 13y ago
    That is because ideas come from artists who are mostly really really bad at capitalism.
- no_wave 13y ago
  I disagree. People get angry at the exercise of creativity. Look at the reaction to the financial independence/lifestyle design. People HATE them. Tell many Americans that you're going to stop working for six months to read books in Thailand and they will despise you. There are so many upsides to creativity, and so much human potential for it - the thing that stops most is the shame that gets splashed on you every time. And then you start splashing it yourself. And that's the game.

mrcactu5 13y ago

some people are very creative but can't get things done other people are not very creative but move things over. in order to achieve that result that everyone appreciates, there is usually some technical detail we have to work through that nobody else cares about or understands. anyone who is both creative and wants to do stuff has to work through that lonely period.

simonsarris 13y ago

John Cleese (of Monty Python fame) gave a lecture on this topic, which I think is pertinent if you want to consider some solutions to this problem: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AU5x1Ea7NjQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AU5x1Ea7NjQ (I posted it to HN almost a year ago, but it got no upvotes then, though I think it is excellent and merits its own discussion so we don't derail this article's comments too much, so here's a repost: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6862219 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6862219) He gives several pointers on how work environments could foster creativity if they wanted to, but also weighs the merits of both "open" and "closed" thinking. I thought it fascinating, and a good breakdown of "being creative" versus "getting things done", and the environment needed for each. I definitely prefer written articles to videos, but I do think the video has a lot of merit for anyone interested in this topic. It has a lot more actionable advice than this Slate article.

dgesang 13y ago
Absolutely amazing talk!
pinaceae 13y ago
Thank you for sharing, it is indeed a great talk.
jvehent 13y ago
Fantastic lecture indeed, and very well delivered!
UNIXgod 13y ago
I love this! Thank you for linking it up. This also how to do a talk proper.
hsitz 13y ago
"It has a lot more actionable advice than this Slate article." I enjoyed the talk, but I don't really see how actionable the advice is. Or, rather, I think it's either wrong or what he says is incomplete. As he sets things up creativity is unleashed in sessions where you have "open" mind and you do the more mundane work in sessions with "closed" mind. This bifurcation, at least as he sets it up with (e.g., "set aside at least 1 1/2 hours for your open mind session"), doesn't really fit with how creativity gets expressed. In many endeavors -- e.g., music, acting, sports -- the opportunity for creativity comes about only because of huge amounts of practice, in which the endeavor is developed to a point where it becomes second nature. Then, when placed in a situation where you have to perform, creativity comes out. I can't see how this fits with the process of switching from open mind to closed mind, as Cleese describes it. I also have problems when I think of how creativity comes out in process of writing, whether it's writing fiction, non-fiction, or software. This process of getting work done is much more fluid than Cleese describes. People don't brainstorm for ideas for an hour or two, then sit down to do the mundane work. The work gets done in sessions that are better described by the concept of "flow", where if you still want to use Cleese's concepts of "open mind" and "closed mind" then it is best said that you drift frequently perhaps imperceptibly between the two. Cleese's characterization in the talk is much more like brainstorming, where you just ponder, daydream, think things up, for an hour or two to find a right "answer", then go to work with "closed mind" implementing your answer. That doesn't seem to me to be how creativity happens, at least not for wide variety of different "creative" endeavors. Creativity comes out when you're in the flow, getting work done in single long session that is not characterizable as an "open mind session" or "closed mind session".

mcguire 13y ago

I would really suggest reading the paper mentioned first in the article[1]. Although it has a good deal of the usual statistical ranting, it's short and reasonably well-written. From the conclusion: "Our results show that regardless of how open minded people are, when they feel motivated to reduce uncertainty either because they have an immediate goal of reducing uncertainty, or feel uncertain generally, this may bring negative associations with creativity to mind which result in lower evaluations of a creative idea. Our findings imply a deep irony. Prior research shows that uncertainty spurs the search for and generation of creative ideas, yet our findings reveal that uncertainty also makes us less able to recognize creativity, perhaps when we need it most." The key finding is two-fold: in a normal, non-uncertain, state, creativity has positive associations and is easier to recognize and assess. However, when people attempt to deal with an excess of uncertainty, creative ideas have negative associations. That's something to think about the next time everything is on fire. Oh, and the final bit is interesting: "In addition, our results suggest that if people have difficulty gaining acceptance for creative ideas especially when more practical and unoriginal options are readily available, the field of creativity may need to shift its current focus from identifying how to generate more creative ideas to identifying how to help innovative institutions recognize and accept creativity." [1] http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1457&context=articles http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ar... [PDF]

toddmorey 13y ago

Catchy headline, but I feel it's an inaccurate generalization. From my experience, there is a spectrum of people between two different viewpoints: creative people who are energized by new ideas and non-creative people whose default posture is to be skeptical about them. Neither bias is either completely right or completely wrong. Most new ideas fail, so it's healthy to know critics who can help counterbalance creative enthusiasm and perhaps see potential pitfalls. But new ideas—the right ones—are hugely valuable. I've heard creativity described as a tolerance for the cognitive dissonance—that is, the natural mental pain and discomfort—of combining unrelated or incongruent ideas. This process likely bothers a skeptical person a lot more and they tire or frustrate out earlier. Less creative people can be difficult to brainstorm with because they don't enjoy the process and want to "get to the answer." But creative people can be difficult to execute with because seemingly everything at every moment is up for reinvention. The point here is that we need people on both ends of the spectrum and they need to understand each other and the value they bring.

ffrryuu 13y ago

Because they are the trouble makers. Now get back in line and do your work as you are told!

calinet6 13y ago

People love creativity, as evidenced by our love of the results of creativity. Our systems however, are not set up to reward creativity. Our systems at work, at school, and in life in general are set up to maintain a status quo, to result in the least amount of risk possible (especially as those systems become larger), and in general to reward predictability, consistency, and obedience. All of which describe the opposite of creativity. The reasons the systems are this way is due to our style of management, primarily in the US. Carrot-and-stick styles, with emphasis on short-term goals and comparison of employees to each other (bonuses for the top 5% etc) result in short-term thinking styles and discourage creativity in the workplace. Bonuses and employee evaluations also tend to focus on measurable goals, and creativity is difficult to measure and difficult to quantify, therefore it's optimized away. Just one of the many negative unintended consequences of our default individual-focused reward-and-punish management style. Deming-style management process would likely fix this and encourage wider thinking and creativity, with less of an individual focus. Read more and spread the word: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming

Brakenshire 13y ago
> People love creativity, as evidenced by our love of the results of creativity. I don't think this follows. Just because you like the result of a process, doesn't mean you like the process. For instance, just because people use the fruits of scientific and engineering processes, that doesn't mean they actually think, or want to think, like scientists or engineers.
randomdata 13y ago
I would argue that work does favour creativity. If you go to work just like everyone else does, you'll make an income just like everyone else does. It is only the people who reject the status quo and find their own way to work that actually are able to make incomes that rise well above the typical worker.

colmvp 13y ago

"In the documentary The September Issue, Anna Wintour systematically rejects the ideas of her creative director Grace Coddington, seemingly with no reason aside from asserting her power." Having watched it, t's entirely possible that they cut the explanatory bits to frame Wintour as even more cold as she is in public persona. I wouldn't be surprised. But in any case, she's the Editor-in-Chief, which makes her the final filter. She's goes a lot by her hunch which is based on taste, a palette that revitalized Vogue and kept it relevant in the fashion industry. Taste is hard to justify. In such cases, I don't think it's so much about people not digging creativity so much as the idea isn't there. That's just part of being creative. Sometimes you think you're doing interesting work and it's actually not as good as you think it is.

Millennium 13y ago

People generally want to be convinced of an idea's value before implementing it, and this is reasonable. For tested and tried ideas, this value is generally a known quantity, or at least one that can be estimated reasonably well. As long as that value is high, convincing people to do it is relatively easy: it's mostly a matter of presenting that value in ways they'll accept. For untried (i.e. "creative") ideas, this is much harder. Further complicating the process is that the creators of ideas inevitably place a very high intrinsic value on them. There are many reasons for this, but a lot of them are tied into the ego, either directly ("I had this idea, so it's good") or indirectly ("This idea reinforces beliefs I hold, or advances a cause I favor, or lets me practice my favored hobbies, or may answer a question I'm personally curious about, etc., therefore it is good"). Other people just plain don't find these ego-tied arguments compelling, nor really should they, and so they cloud the process of convincing people to go along with a new idea. It would seem, then, that the trick is to remove one's ego from the convincing process, and argue solely based on what's left. But the ego still complicates things. Even when more observer-independent arguments can be found, they never shine as brightly in the eyes of the creator as the ego-tied ones, and so it feels like you're selling it short: not something creatives like to do, and for obvious reasons. Worse, though, are the many ideas that just plain don't have many (or even any) arguments that don't tie straight back into one's own ego. No one else will ever be convinced to go alongside these, but to attack them is to attack the creator's ego, leading to accusations of sour grapes and headlines like "People don't actually like creativity."

trustfundbaby 13y ago
This is true and more important than it sounds. There is also the problem that a lot of people think that they will have to invest a lot in an idea to see if it will work which means that unless something sounds completely brilliant, there will always be friction to try it. This IMO is what causes creativity to not respected, because people try to use their opinions or common sense to evaluate ideas (because of the perceived high cost of actually evaluating ideas by implementing them) instead of relying on cold hard data. We know is that a good number of the best ideas start out sounding really silly at first, if not they would already exist (right?) So it stands to reason that people would scoff at creative ideas because they would generally not "make sense" to the average person. That is why it is important to come up with a process or culture that allows you to quickly run an idea through its paces, to validate or invalidate it using data. Making it cheap to entertain ideas in the same way git makes it easy to create and throw away branches. I think that this is why you find that at the most innovative companies this is exactly what happens, and as soon as this culture of quickly validating ideas goes away, the company starts its slow decline.

johnohara 13y ago

It's important to distinguish the difference between elegant design and creativity. Elegant design is often easy to recognize and appreciate. We celebrate its creativity and thought because it "looks right" and "feels familiar." But true creativity is abrasive, uncomfortable, and many times, divisive. It doesn't often look right or feel familiar, especially when it comes from persons or sources not easily understood. Which is why it struggles in environments where the goal is to stay focused on the task at hand.

the_cat_kittles 13y ago

Another simple reason I think lots of people don't like creativity: It is an affront to tradition. Lots of people subconsciously (or otherwise) think you are arrogant for thinking you can improve on the status quo.

overdrivetg 13y ago

"If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats." - Howard Aiken I suspect many here can relate.

Pxtl 13y ago

People like results. If you demonstrated good results in a creative fashion? Then they like creativity. If you did it conventionally? They like that too. The problem with the "creative" way is you have to go through the process of eliminating all the bad ideas again, which the conventional approach has already done. But the ideas are the fun part. Being creative means producing lots of bad ideas that nobody wants to deal with. Dragging unwilling participants through your creative process of throwing out all the bad ideas? That's your dirty work. That's housekeeping and laundry. The few good new ideas? Prove them, then bring in others. Unless somebody is paid to put up with your crap. They laughed at Einstein, but the also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

wrongc0ntinent 13y ago
Most of the comments so far, this one included, evade one aspect of creativity in the sense of unconventional ideas. The risk associated with testing out a truely original hypothesis is often greater than we can actually comprehend even far into the experiment; but failure doesn't mean the hypothesis was incorrect. We often speak of an idea "before its time", etc., - sadly, in retrospect. These are the ideas we drown by not sharing the risk as a group, ideas that could spare us great amounts of everything from discomfort to pain.

njharman 13y ago

I don't know how most people define creativity. The author seems to be equating creativity with independent, non-conformist risk takers. Which is not how I'd define creativity, but maybe that is what makes people "creative".

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

gwern 13y ago

> Unfamiliar things are distrusted and hard to process, overly familiar things are boring, and the perfect object of beauty lies somewhere in between (Sluckin, Hargreaves, & Colman, 1983)... (More details in http://lesswrong.com/lw/i0b/open_thread_july_1622_2013/9f1o http://lesswrong.com/lw/i0b/open_thread_july_1622_2013/9f1o )

j2kun 13y ago

Who says that creativity implies risk? This article treats the two as equivalent.

normloman 13y ago

Copywriter here. Sometimes clients ask me to create slogans for their company. I screw around for a bit, generate a list of maybe 25 slogans, then present them with the 5 best. I always have a favorite out of the bunch. A slogan that's so memorable, because it's so out of the ordinary. One that gets to the point, and really delivers the benefit of the client's product. And that slogan never gets picked. Business owners are afraid to stick out. So they pick the most tame slogan from the bunch. Example: A web design company wanted to target a display ad to small businesses without websites. I wrote the ad with the headline: "If you're not online, you don't exist." Client changed this to "If you don't have a good website, we can help." Most people don't know what they like, or they are afraid to admit it. So instead, they pick the same thing everyone else is doing. It simplifies making decisions. No feelings, no uncertainty. Just a quick Google of your competitors to see what they do.

ritchiea 13y ago
I have one of those awful people as a client right now. We spent hours with a truly fantastic marketer (and I don't throw that kind of praise around lightly, especially in marketing), who not only helped us identify great copy, but also helped us identify some broader values to give the company character. I sat in that meeting with the 2 founders. We took notes, raved about the meeting, had a bunch of great concrete stuff to move forward with. A week later the CEO designed the startup's landing page. None of the good stuff from the meeting was there, just a generic uninformative slogan and a generic long parallax marketing page that doesn't tell anyone what the product does. Sigh.

Mikeb85 13y ago

I think a lot of it comes down to the way societies have evolved, and our 'survival' function. We don't want to risk our limited resources and time on ideas that, more than likely, will yield nothing. Furthermore, a lot of 'creative people' are just hipsters that use it as a crutch to never get anything productive done. I mean, shit like this isn't a particularly great expression of creativity: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/6/63/Robert_Delaunay,_1913,_Premier_Disque,_134_cm,_52.7_inches,_Private_collection.jpg/260px-Robert_Delaunay,_1913,_Premier_Disque,_134_cm,_52.7_inches,_Private_collection.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/6/63/Robert_D... We should encourage creativity, but also temper it with realism. While the life of the 'starving artist' is alluring, it's really not all that...

jgeada 13y ago

I heard somewhere an interesting distillation of creativity: - if something is obviously a good idea, it would already be the way things are done. Creativity largely ends up coming up with good approaches that are not immediately obviously good and, in that respect it is inherently difficult to tease apart the good ideas from the bad ideas.

emhs 13y ago

They're right that people don't like creativity or dissent. There was a good post on Less Wrong about this [1], and about how the rejection of creativity, the rejection of what to you, is blindingly obvious, is key in the break between the creative person, the independent thinker, and their trust in society's expectations and sanity [2]. Seeing the things that the established process missed requires valuing finding a better idea more than how many people you might piss off along the way. It make take several ideas to get there, but you have to learn to reward your brain for producing ideas, and you can't expect society to provide that reward. You have to produce that reward all on your own, until you find the right idea and succeed with it. Then everyone shuts up for a moment, before talking about how they knew you'd figure it out all along, and they were starting to think in that direction just the other day. [1] http://lesswrong.com/lw/mb/lonely_dissent/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/mb/lonely_dissent/ [2] http://lesswrong.com/lw/qf/no_safe_defense_not_even_science/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/qf/no_safe_defense_not_even_science/

simonsquiff 13y ago

Reminds me of Shanks law: "Because people understand by finding in their memories the closest possible match to what they are hearing and use that match as the basis of comprehension, any new idea will be treated as a variant of something the listener has already thought of or heard. Agreement with a new idea means a listener has already had a similar thought and well appreciates that the speaker has recognized his idea. Disagreement means the opposite. Really new ideas are incomprehensible. The good news is that for some people, failure to comprehend is the beginning of understanding. For most, of course, it is the beginning of dismissal."

danielharan 13y ago

What circular rot: because creative people have historically faced rejection, that rejection is good, because you'll need it. "Perhaps for some people, the pain of rejection is like the pain of training for a marathon—training the mind for endurance. Research shows you’ll need it. Truly creative ideas take a very long time to be accepted. The better the idea, the longer it might take. Even the work of Nobel Prize winners was commonly rejected by their peers for an extended period of time."

drawkbox 13y ago

I agree with this, it is mainly people's plight against change. Don't ask for approval for creativity, noone will let you. Do it and ask for forgiveness later. If you are waiting for approval for creativity you are doing it wrong. This is the same problem that plagues big companies who had a large market share, without creativity/prototypes/new innovations those companies are dead. The people in those companies are shut down when asking for approval. See the pirate flag days at Apple and what Steve Jobs had to go through for a high level at what happens, even if you start the company they won't let you be creative without a fight. The very definition of creativity is thinking different and with that comes resistance.

spiritplumber 13y ago

Heh, about the part where it goes “I even say, ‘I’ll do the work. Just give me the go ahead and I’ll do it myself,’ ” she says. “But they won’t, and so the system stays less efficient.” I get that at least once a month. What I generally do now is tell people "You are wrong" when I'm told no. This has caused a few surreal situations (one was a bunch of NASA guys listening to a presentation on how Widget T was badly behind schedule and needed a lot of work done, with the first production batch of working Widget Ts in a heap on the conference table).

hyp0 13y ago

I've never seen a job ad for "idea people". Usually, idea people are made fun of, like Michael Keaton's character in Night Shift (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084412/quotes http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084412/quotes) - or Scriber, in A Fire Upon the Deep (http://books.google.com.au/books?id=uRjpxtbshBYC&lpg=PT110&ots=aorLn0iZxN&dq=scriber%20%22a%20fire%20upon%20the%20deep%22%20that%20had%20always%20been%20his%20problem%20too&pg=PT110#v=onepage&q=scriber%20%22a%20fire%20upon%20the%20deep%22%20that%20had%20always%20been%20his%20problem%20too&f=false http://books.google.com.au/books?id=uRjpxtbshBYC&lpg=PT110&o...). "[...] It's that, the actual doing, that's going slow." Scriber nodded knowingly. That had been the central problem in his life too. The "big" problem is the space of ideas is huge, expanding exponentially, each variation admitting many more ways of varying. And... the vast majority are no good. So youth's easy enthusiasm for ideas quickly turn to caution, doubt, ridicule, and they become bitter cynics before their time, getting very angry with youth's easy enthusiasms. The exception is an idea that actually has a verified concrete benefit. A good idea. But here, people don't care about the idea; but they care about the benefit. A common problem is when the greatest benefits of your wonderful idea are not yet verifiable... the solution is to find (or work to create) some benefit - perhaps much smaller than the dream - that is concrete and verifiable. Then, people will adopt it. Ideally, as time goes on, you can add more and more benefits which comprise the dream til it is complete (or at least give you time to work on making real your dream's benefits.)

chacham15 13y ago

“I even say, ‘I’ll do the work. Just give me the go ahead and I’ll do it myself,’” That's the difference between a leader and a follower: if you strongly believe that you are indeed correct, work on the system on your own time and then you either learn a valuable lesson that youre not as "good" as you think you are or you teach the others a valuable lesson that you're better than they think you are. This way people who are good will become leaders and have a better say in what goes on and people who are not will learn and one day be good. The shame is in the people who are good, but remain inactive because they dont figure out if they are actually correct and neither does the management.

plumeria 13y ago

This reminds me of The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand...

anigbrowl 13y ago

Though her company initially hired her for her problem-solving skills, she is regularly unable to fix actual problems because nobody will listen to her ideas. So true. Half (or maybe more) of being successful as a creative person is learning to play politics and sell your ideas.

liotier 13y ago

"Here’s to the crazy ones. The rebels. The troublemakers. The ones who see things differently. Please do it somewhere else and just give us the benefits once you are established" - Steve Jobs (the quote usually truncates the last sentence)

dredmorbius 13y ago

Reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance again, Pirsig hits on this among other themes: Schools teach you to imitate. If you don't imitate what the teacher wants you to get you get a bad grade. Here in college, it was more sophisticated, of course; you were supposed to imitate the teacher in such a way as to convince the teacher you were not imitating but taking the essence of the instruction and going ahead with it on your own. That got you A's. Originality on the other hand could get you anything --- from A to F. The whole grading system cautioned against it. The book of course is all about Quality, Creativity, and Innovation. Highly recommended.

rumcajz 13y ago

Consider how hard is it to push through a "sane" solution in corporate environment. "Creative" solution is out of question.

Ideka 13y ago

Relevant: http://youtu.be/9C_HReR_McQ http://youtu.be/9C_HReR_McQ