
Why Creativity Is a Numbers Game (2015) - julianshapiro
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/why-creativity-is-a-numbers-game/
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vezycash
>creative greatness appears to be doing things differently

I've done things differently just out of boredom caused by doing a task, the
same way repeatedly.

Example: I sometimes get tired of a particular food and tweak it by adding a
new ingredient or eating it with something different.

>Edison was unlucky—he failed to invent fuel cells. The first comercially
successful fuel cells were developed in the mid-twentieth century, long after
Edison moved on to pursuing other ideas. >Edison always had somewhere to
channel his efforts whenever he ran into temporary obstacles

This is completely different from the "Edison never gave up and kept working
till he succeeded" talks.

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dkersten
> This is completely different from the "Edison never gave up and kept working
> till he succeeded" talks.

Yeah.. Its actually better, IMHO, because knowing when to move onto the next
thing (and not letting your previous failure deter you from the next thing) is
an important part of success. Sometimes the diversion lets you come back to
the original thing with new insight later (or after your subconscious has
worked on it for some time).

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adzm
Personally I feel that creativity is something like saturating a solution with
ideas until you get that one seed crystal and then everything just comes
together. If it wasn't already full of thoughts and ideas already, that seed
would simply dissolve.

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mads
Which is also why creativity suffers in totalitarian regimes like China. One
or two of those ideas are bound to step on the toes of the establishment, but
they need to be explored as part of the process.

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indigochill
Totalitarian governments are just one flavor of repression of creativity.
Every culture has its unutterable heresies. In totalitarian societies it's the
government that enforces this. In free societies it's the people themselves.

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sysbin
I view humans in a universe like a computer program that brute-forces to find
a better solution. You can have some people do everything right and nothing
ever works out for them. While you can have the opposite happen. The
anomalies/survivorship bias gets the most media attention and keeps the rat
race going. Sometimes this makes me think the universe is just the outcome of
brute-forcing as well.

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seppel
Yet, a million monkeys at a million keyboards would not produce the works of
Shakespeare.

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saberience
But would a million humans at a million keyboards?

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m1sta_
Some people have the ability to synthesise and evaluate particular ideas
faster than average.

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burnte
This is definitely a help. I've created a LOT of crap, but I've had a good
number of successes solely due to quantity. However, 80% of success really is
showing up. You have to try, and not get discouraged. I was dirt poor as a
kid, homeless twice before age 9, and I've had to rebuild my life twice as an
adult. Simply pushing forward was a huge part of my success today.

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. And once you succeed, KEEP
TRYING.

~~~
fzzzy
The difference between a failed businessperson and a successful one is the
successful one tried again.

~~~
TeMPOraL
The same could be said about lottery winners.

~~~
bryanrasmussen
Definitely the problem with the "The difference between X and Y" anecdotal
structure is that often there are more than just one difference between
things, even if they are somewhat alike.

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libertine
Isn't this true only through the optics of economy?

You can have creative endeavors that serve no purpose, and you still do it for
the sake of the activity. Maybe it's the by product of practice, but it's
still creative work.

Or even the a problem solving situation, it might solve a problem but no be
the optimal solution.

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smallstepforman
It makes sense that it’s a numbers game. If statistically I try 100 projects
and only 3% succeed, I am obviosly doing better than someone putting in 1/10
of the effort and having no success. The key ability is not genious but
ability to iterate many many times despite failures.

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swsieber
I'm the crazy idea guy at work. They are usually bad ideas. But occasionally
we have to pause and say "that might be a good idea", and sometimes an idea
turns out to be really good, attacking an issue from an unexpected angle.

So for me, definitely a numbers game.

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Emanation
"Success is a numbers game," would have been a more appropriate title.

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whiddershins
I don’t dispute most of the factual claims in this article.

But this whole lens on what creativity “is” smacks of someone really hoping
something so mysterious can be explained using concrete and easy to understand
concepts.

I’ve personally known and worked with some real creative powerhouses.

This sort of article doesn’t really address what makes them effective. It
especially doesn’t describe how they seem to think about it, which, I would
say is the most interesting topic.

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andrei-mircea
Out of curiosity, what were some of your observations from working with these
creative powerhouses?

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whiddershins
So many,

But most salient might be the irrational belief that what you are doing
matters.

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ghostcluster
Creativity is a numbers game, and some brains have a higher batting average

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chiefalchemist
Numbers, if your lens is statistics. But human behavior is about um...human
behavior. Creativity is about a willingness to experiment; to not fear
"failure"; and to learn.

Nothing has triggered more creative ideas than asking "what if?"

~~~
chiefalchemist
My point is, "numbers game" is correlation. The root cause is the fearless
application of "what if?"

Trying repetitively, is the the same as asking "what if?" over and over.

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ydb
Creativity is as much a numbers game as Monopoly (the literal board game) is a
numbers game: it is and it isn't.

Sure, I mean you can use statistics and wave your magic eugenics wand around
but I see right through you. It's a disgrace that in the modern neoliberal
hegemony a crock of shit like this gets published in an outlet like Scientific
American.

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codingslave
"It's a great myth that creative geniuses consistently produce great work.
Whereas consistency may be the key to expertise, the secret to creative
greatness appears to be doing things differently—even when that means failing"

Genius is genetic. Some people just seem to "stumble" upon ideas and methods,
but its not random. Why there seems to be such pervasive efforts to prove
anything other than the obvious is a mystery to me.

EDIT:

wikpedia page on it:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jewish_intelligence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jewish_intelligence)

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wanderingstan
> Genius is genetic.

Citation? This seems far from obvious to me. I get that intelligence is some
percent heritable, but that’s not the same.

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codingslave
It's just politically incorrect, so mainstream scientists wont publish
it/arent discussing it in public. Read about ahskenazi jewish people. Both
founders of FB and Google are ashkenazi for example

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nitwit005
The assertion you're making is a testable idea. You can check if some apparent
trait is genetic or cultural by looking at children adopted by other
ethnicities.

They've done quite a number of studies like that, including studies on
identical twins adopted by different parents, which gives you matching DNA.

The reason scientists aren't saying such things, is because it's pretty
clearly wrong.

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codingslave
Just google ashkenazi genius, jewish Nobel prize, its all over the internet.

Heres a wikipedia page on it:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jewish_intelligence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jewish_intelligence)

~~~
nitwit005
I hope you do realize there are many claims which are both entirely wrong and
all over the internet?

You can't judge evidence based on a popularity contest.

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phr4ts
Jews in general are known to be special. But he's emphasizing on Ashkenazi
Jews alone. A quick research shows that their history is quite complex. They
were banned from most occupations - restricting them to money lending
(banking), health care (doctors), crafting...

You can find some in the link he supplied
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jewish_intelligence#...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jewish_intelligence#Proposed_cultural_and_historical_explanations)

