He mentions the connection between creativity and 'play', which I think is spot on. We do this effortlessly as children and then it sort of gets 'bred out of us' as we get older and start developing more traditionally 'rational' skill sets and ways of thinking about the world.
This sense of play hit home for me when I was a late teen and bought a 4-track multitrack recorder in the mid-80's. I had no preconceived notion of a song I wanted to write/record. I simply plugged in my guitar and hit 'record' and laid down an idea. I may have had a few false starts but didn't sweat it. By itself it wasn't very interesting. I added a second track with the only goal of "it should work with the first track" and was surprised at how easy it was to achieve that goal. Suddenly, with the two tracks an idea began to emerge that wasn't present in the first track by itself. Rinse and repeat with the remaining 2 tracks and I had a musical idea that I never could've imagined I would have created.
I still use that same method to generate ideas today, and summon that same sense of 'play'. Of course the real work, much harder than creating, imo, is editing.
Also, the difference between children and adults when it comes to creativity is a bit deeper. I agree that it's bread out of us. Two semi-random examples:
- shaming kids for making mistakes or just doing things differently, but also
- just the mere fact that they're starting to learn how the world around them operates and responds to their actions,.
At the same time it's likely that children achieve it through different internal processes, without a strict split between divergent and convergent thinking demonstrated by CT scans.
Interesting. I was recently stuck trying to think of a new side project idea. I basically built all the stuff I wanted and now was in this territory of trying to find things to make.
I spent some days messing around with various ideas. How about data? How about games? How about... uh... physics simulations? But I can never force myself to make an idea that won't give me utility in life. My solution was to lay in my bed for a hour and a half, thinking about stuff. Really, anything. I got a good idea out of it that I'm now working on and excited to continue working on. And you know when you get a good idea, it sticks in your head.
Stephen King said it best: "My idea about a good idea is one that sticks around and sticks around and sticks around."
I agree that play is very important to creativity. However, the problem is how does one play? For an adult play does not come naturally... we have forgotten the craft. When I teach creativity, I encourage students to employ devices to release (or simulate?) play, most of which involve some form or other of applied accident. For example: finding ways to randomly select words, then finding ways to randomly combine those words.
Artists have employed such devices since forever. Leonardo DaVinci spoke about seeing landscapes in the stains on walls and faces in clouds.
> watch toddlers playing with toys—their imaginations are boundless and they are able to imbue even the most mundane objects with a sense of wonder and magic.
This example just annoys me. I can still out-create a toddler, that isn't hard. The issue with creativity is that toddler-level creativity isn't useful. The important part of creativity is being able to apply it while achieving adult-level goals.
The article doesn't ignore that as such, but this is like saying babies can handle the concept of abstract variables so we can all be programmers. True enough, but not at all a useful observation and it'll just depress the group of people who, for whatever reason, struggle hard and yet never become programmers. There are minimum standards that toddlers do not reach.
> > watch toddlers playing with toys—their imaginations are boundless and they are able to imbue even the most mundane objects with a sense of wonder and magic.
Also a lot of that "play" is "merely" epistemic and phenomenological research, i.e. hard work. There is a lot of creativity in designing and selecting experiments that work with what is at hand. And of course discovery is fun -- that same "wonder and magic" is still experienced in adulthood when you validate something you've believed for a while or just realized.
Piaget discusses this extensively, though not in the vocabulary I used. And for the mandatory AI/CS linkage: Piaget was Papert's thesis advisor, so every RNN user or practitioner implicitly depends on Piaget's insight.
Sure, but the toddler is doing it because they are not mentally capable of walking, synthesising visual data into a coherent world model or communicating with words and evolution has prepared them with the understanding that it is do-or-die on those fronts. Their motivations are urgent and important, but not adult. And the point of their creativity is to figure out how to conform ASAP - adults can't really harness that energy because by and large they are all already great at conforming (vs a toddler, anyway).
I suspect these others are motivated by different concerns. It is the difference between a baby dropping a block to work out gravity - which everyone does - vs Newton dropping a block to work out gravity. One of those is an adult motivated by an interesting form of creativity, and the other is something that everyone can do at any age, they just don't need to because they figured it out at the time. The motivation here is critical to assessing the action.
This is the distinction between working and hacking: working is what one does while achieving adult-level goals; hacking is what one does while either not goal-directed at all, or while pursuing anti-adult-level goals.
> Your tiercel’s too long at hack, Sir.
He’s no eyass but a passage-hawk that footed ere we caught him,
Dangerously free o’ the air. —JRK
Logical deduction is not at all creativity. Toddlers create interesting and unexpected things because they remove the rules-- in fact have no rules to begin with.
Using a bunch of deductive logic to come up with a good solution is quite different, and don't worry a sign of good intelligence.
I played with manual typewriters and mechanical calculators, back then electronic versions were virtually unheard of.
But I was already intrigued by electronics and figured it would take over in the future. Vacuum tubes were still the only option almost universally. Didn't touch them as a preschooler, high voltage and all that.
With the typewriter, the possibilities were endless, but for the calculator there was only so much you could do to make the right numbers show up in the little squares.
Which led directly to number theory, something that can be learned without being taught.
> There are minimum standards that toddlers do not reach.
I guess there's a grain of truth there, never did get much further ;)
No one seems to go beyond that statement. Yet the common "everyone can be creative" ignores what people and their colleagues do with a real creative idea.
If you censor yourself too relentlessly, you won't be "creative."
And especially: if you're in a conformist environment (most businesses and schools) where "you're so weird!" is the worst insult imaginable, then you won't be "creative."
It's only a few places where the audience is willing to play with the idea, and it's only a few people who don't mind being called "weird" that really nurture creativity.
The best thing that one can do for themselves to develop the creative "muscle" is to _own_ their time.
Unfortunately, I am yet to feel even close to such a breakthrough. I think very few are fortunate to afford such kind of luxury (as the author alludes to as well). There is always something to deliver for, a deadline to meet (although many would argue deadlines are a forcing constraint); a life waiting to happen. With a tiny bit of envy, I feel very happy and inspired when someone does achieve the "flow" state.
On the subject of "tools" to spur creativity, I have always been skeptical. It feels similar to believing that there is a productivity app right around the corner that will unleash your potential. For me, the only true indicator of my productivity has been actually putting in the _time_, making any kind of progress along a chosen direction and then re-evaluating.
What are fellow readers here doing to _own_ their time?
I remember when I last owned my time, in 1994. I started college in 1995 and didn't pay off my student loans until around the time I hit 40 in the late 2010s. Most of my years have been spent under the yoke paying bills and making rent in one form or another, and I live in a relatively affordable city in the northwestern US. I can't imagine how challenging it must be for teen moms and single mothers for example, getting paid 75% what I did, while having to provide for at least another person. I look at society and all I see is the stifling stagnation of opportunity cost, as those that could change things spiritually bypass their own potential by pointing the finger and lecturing the rest of us about our life choices.
Which brings me to my point. My creative freedom has been so curtailed by running the rat race that I consider my productivity to be no more than 10%. I only got about 3 years of real work done in that 30 years. I made one shareware game that took me a year, and I only had the time because I was living with my dad. I had a blog briefly but took it down because I couldn't look at it anymore once I realized it was all projection about my lack of accomplishment. The things that I really wanted to do, like write a programming language and a web framework, not to mention implementing the hundreds of inventions I have written down (many of which got made by someone else anyway) would take so much time that they're effectively out of reach. Like stars slipping off the event horizon of our observable universe because the space they're on is expanding away from us faster than the speed of light.
I consider the idea of owning one's time to be a fantasy under capitalism. Like in Shawshank Redemption: hope is a dangerous thing, hope can drive a man insane. So I cope. I work out a lot to age backwards in a vain attempt to avoid the inevitable. I used to party a lot seeking connection until it led nowhere. Now there's just the bittersweet realization that salvation can't come at an individual level. It requires a community.
As lame as that sounds, it's the only answer I've come up with. If we want to own our own time again, it will require revolution. Starting with spiritual revolution, that since there is no logical way to achieve our goals, we can only shift into the reality where they manifest. Then cultural revolution, like we are seeing today post-pandemic, nearing a critical mass of awakened souls as the powers that be do everything they can to divide us as they watch the world burn. And finally the revolution which will not be televised, when we all come together and toss out our current leaders and their ilk, using our spirituality and technology to bring actual prosperity to everyone through a gift economy and automation.
Short of that I might say, reject everything. Rent's too high? Don't pay it. Opt out. Live in a van down by the river. Cancel all subscriptions. Go solarpunk. That's what I should have done 20 years ago when everyone told me not to. But I was too worried about achieving the good life and finding a girlfriend. So my potential got diluted into responsibility, residual income into wave slavery. Attachments create suffering. Letting go promotes peace.
Creativity (and imagination) are the aspects of cognition that most intrigue me in terms of the advancement of AI. Probabilistically, it's easy to be creative; you just generate many variations on a theme. But it's choosing the theme imaginatively and exploring those ramifications of the change that lead to surprise and intrigue in the mind of the audience that make a variation fruitful and compelling. The cognitive skill to choose just the right variation that leads to wonderment is ineffable. I think it exists NOWHERE in words, thus the essential cost function needed to be creative is both unstated and unintuitable (at least by a mind that lacks the ability to reason). Thus I see no way a LLM will be ever able to acquire that skill through stochastic parrotry from the available fodder -- the human narrative.
Even after the impressive advances we have seen in the fluid expression of natural language in LLMs, I remain convinced that blindly generating and testing variations in prose will NEVER create a Shakespearian sonnet. So whither superintelligence if it lacks creativity?
I've been involved in a product review at my work. The tool hits a sweet spot of identifying a real problem and demoing impressively. I have little doubt we will purchase this tool unless the beancounters simply reject the expense.
But I find myself against it. This is somewhat ideological; the tool is, at its core, a telemetry tool, and I don't believe we have the maturity to manage and leverage that data effectively. And the data and features to product enables? We already know where the problems are and have other tools to address them. It's just that everyone is always "too busy" to actually listen to the customers and do anything about it.
Pondering how to express this then, I ended up labeling the product (at first a "luxury", but realizing people want those and doesn't help my argument) a "toy," like a jewel-encrusted hammer: It's pretty, but if a plain hammer isn't solving your problem this isn't going to either. Worse, the extra time and care needed to maintain this tool, in an organization that's already "too busy", is likely going to be even less effective if not a net loss.
However, it occurred to me, knowing one of the people trying to push this tool, calling it a "toy" would only be an opportunity:
Toys can be incredibly powerful in the hands of a good imagination.
And, I agree.
And this is where I struggle. Collectively, we don't have a "good imagination." We're all too busy being busy to do anything creative and solve the problems we have. But individually there is a lot a creativity that just lacks the means to express itself. And enabling these people is why _I_ do software.
I'm still not sure this tool is the right way about it, but that fact we're even here is testament that the current technologies aren't inspiring anyone.
Creativity can be expressed as impressionistic art, super realistic art, punk rock, baroque quartet, skyscraper design, or even homeless temporary shelter (anyone who has ever seen the homeless shelters at Shinjuku Station, knows what I mean). Lots of subjective opinions.
I have seen really great code, done by very repressed folks, with limited verbal skills, but unique thinking. I have seen absolutely awful, bland, crud code, written by folks that affect a really creative vibe.
I have found, for myself, that I'm most creative, later in the day, but most productive, earlier.
I would recommend that anyone who is interested in exploring these ideas read "The Act of Creation" by Arthur Koestler. He explores how things we think of as creativitity are fundamentally similar to how humour works in that they discover connections between things we previously thought of as being seperate.
This is thorough contemplation. Time and time again we are reminded that no idea is wholly original in and of itself, down to the most minute aspect of its thought all the way through to its physical manifestation...Yet hubris, for many, prevails over these evidences. Ah.
Everyone thinks that because they have thoughts that they’re good at thinking. But learning to think is the foundation of knowledge. Similarly, learning to have ideas is the heart of creativity.
There are multiple senses of the word “creativity”, and this post focuses on one of them: divergent thinking. The other sense is that of constructive, goal-oriented creation, which ideas alone cannot achieve. It’s too bad we don’t have have more commonly used terms to make this distinction. I see a lot of comments here focusing on that distinction rather than the post’s central thesis.
I do have a comment on the thesis, which is:
> The purpose of this article is to challenge this assumption [that creativity is binary] and discuss aspects of ideation, i.e. the process of coming up with ideas.
I support/agree with this challenge and all of the article’s ideas. “And yet”, right?? “And yet” some people are perceived to “have something” which others do not.
Honestly, the explanation is rather simple, or at least, simply stated. It’s neurodivergence. I’d further claim that cognitive styles gravitate to certain “attractor points”. (That’s scientific lingo for: certain patterns which fit well within the environment and which reinforce themselves. Like the pattern of wheel-ruts which attract wheels, which makes them stronger. The “environment” in this case is all sorts of things, including both the brain’s biological details, and the body’s physical+social environment.)
The strongest of these attractor points, we give labels: ADHD, various species of autism, etc. And of course the “normal person” attractor - not a point, but a broad area with its little micro-attractors and, sometimes, niche wormholes leading to more divergent areas.
People tend to clump around the strongest attractor points, and sometimes get pulled into other more smaller ones. This easily explains the perception of binary other-ness, especially when you consider that deviation from the norm - in any of the many directions - is, itself, a strong, influential force in this dynamic. To the extent that we try to build society to work well enough for the majority, anyone who deviates will have different and novel experiences of those systems.
But look, people are complicated and dynamic. We sometimes work to push away from these pattern-ruts, and other times we let ourselves be pulled into them.
This article is saying: YES. You can do things that make you ideate more divergently. You can also do the work to explore your own cognitive-behavioral niche, and which pushes your idea output into more novel, “creative” realms. Play is a certain type of work, when you need to push yourself to do it.
The article also addresses this:
> Good ideas do not have to be completely novel
> A hallmark of creativity is the knowledge or intuition of picking ideas that make suitable combinations. [more worthwhile to pursue]
…which brings us back to the other sense of creativity: not just divergence, but convergence; pursuit of a vision or goal or “gut feeling” intuition. I think this is the better, fuller meaning of the word. The author describes interaction between convergence and divergence very well. In the best examples of “creative genius”, both of these forces are at play. (No pun intended but perhaps that’s revealing.) Fluid, progressive creativity is at the edge of these two forces, and a “creative” person steers the ship, aware of both convergent goals and overarching visions that can only be reached by leaving those same goals behind.
The general skill of steering is quite meta-learnable by, probably, nearly everyone with any ounce of cognitive control. It takes time and support. It’s easier in more specific contexts, more well-suited to one’s situation.
For what it’s worth, toddlers absolutely do exhibit this full version of creativity, when you consider that they are pursuing the instinctive, hard-wired goal of learning and adapting to the world.
This sense of play hit home for me when I was a late teen and bought a 4-track multitrack recorder in the mid-80's. I had no preconceived notion of a song I wanted to write/record. I simply plugged in my guitar and hit 'record' and laid down an idea. I may have had a few false starts but didn't sweat it. By itself it wasn't very interesting. I added a second track with the only goal of "it should work with the first track" and was surprised at how easy it was to achieve that goal. Suddenly, with the two tracks an idea began to emerge that wasn't present in the first track by itself. Rinse and repeat with the remaining 2 tracks and I had a musical idea that I never could've imagined I would have created.
I still use that same method to generate ideas today, and summon that same sense of 'play'. Of course the real work, much harder than creating, imo, is editing.