
Creative Genius Driven by Distraction - wglb
http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2015/03/creative-genius-driven-by-distraction.html
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dropit_sphere
I always hate reading things like this because I find myself saying things
like, "Oh, just like me," \---even if I read a similar article with opposite
findings the day before. Then I point out to myself my biases, and feel bad
for, basically, being human.

Back to work.

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imjk
Don't spoil this for me! I'm a creative genius damnit, and my inability to
focus on work proves it!

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udev
My observations about a different kind of noise ...

There are people who have focused, surgical thinking. They solve a hard
problem by trying to follow a chain of logic arguments, and give up after a
few tries. When they don't fail, they find the solution quickly.

There are also people with "noisier" thinking, who can stray from the chain of
logic arguments, or even get lost. These people throw everything and the
kitchen sink at the problem, can think of almost unlimited ways of attacking a
hard problem, and often discover unexpected properties.

The "noisy thinkers" take a longer path to arrive at the solution, but they
often manage to go around barriers in a way that is impossible for the former
group.

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unabridged
>The "noisy thinkers" take a longer path to arrive at the solution, but they
often manage to go around barriers in a way that is impossible for the former
group.

creative annealing

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rndn
And people in the opposite regime basically suffer from a strong Einstellung.
They can recall more easily, but that also means that they are strongly primed
on things they've learned, it's perhaps similar to overfitting. I'd wager
there is a golden mean.

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spdustin
I humbly submit that many folks "driven by distraction" may have an attention
deficit disorder. The creative sorts described in the article strike me as
people with AD/HD.

"Driven to Distraction" by Drs. Hallowell and Ratey [0] changed my life. The
big moment for me was learning that AD/HD doesn't mean that you can't pay
attention ... it's that you have little conscious control over where your
attention goes unless the novelty factor is high.

Seriously. Changed my life.

[0]:
[http://www.amazon.com/dp/0307743152/](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0307743152/)

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Retra
It's not really a disorder if it doesn't cause problems.

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spdustin
It caused problems until I sought treatment.

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dsfsdfd
The brain is an antenna. A poorly tuned radio connected to a large antenna
picks up a lot of nonsense - but it sometimes also picks up novelty. It can
sense and concentrate the signals/ideas that others miss.

Creating an intelligent thing is like creating a garden, all that is required
is to prepare the soil and remove those plants/ideas which do not serve the
purpose of the garden.

Perhaps the idea that is contained in this message will find a home in the
garden of another mind - give it a chance to grow, it needs a particular kind
of soil. But once you get it started it's a corker.

Perhaps someone with a different set of skills to mine can make this idea
manifest. I strongly believe that formalising this notion will lead to strong
AI.

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chops
So if I understand you correctly, what you're saying is that if one were to
bury a radio in rich soil, it will grow a large antenna and eventually become
self-aware.

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Terr_
We're part-way there:
[http://www.pbase.com/trip/image/107161981](http://www.pbase.com/trip/image/107161981)

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fnordfnordfnord
I take Adderall and it's kind of a trade off between the ability to be
creative and the ability to be persistent and methodical. Before I had the
Adderall, in order to complete methodical tasks, I had to have either the kind
of silence described in the article, or I could find certain types of noisy
environments that would also help.

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heurist
Has your creativity changed since starting adderall?

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spdustin
Speaking for myself - no. I compose music and write creatively, and Adderall
(and Vyvanse) give me the ability to choose where my focus/attention goes.

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dwarman
"leaky" filters are also characteristic of ASD and ADD/ADHD. I have often
wondered if these conditions occur at a higher frequency in the creative
thinkers vs general population. I wonder if they will look at that too?

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walterbell
They do. Also at higher frequency in pilots, ER staff, accountants,
salespeople, entrepreneurs. At least before kids started being medicated.

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spdustin
Kids being medicated - now that's an unfortunate generalization. Please don't
assume that all medicated children are being fed drugs to make them conform to
a group norm. There are some kids who legitimately have problems with managing
their attention, and who could benefit greatly from a medication that offsets
the neurotransmitter imbalance that prevents them from doing so.

~~~
walterbell
No assumption made. Just noting that medications are a relatively new input
into the ongoing data on choice of profession, so frequency will likely be
impacted.

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Sealy
Is that saying that the easier you are to distract, the more likely you are to
be a creative genius?

Sweet. There's still hope for me...

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TeMPOraL
Reminds me of yvain's "Negative Creativity"[0]. The gist of it is that maybe
building "creative machines" is actually an easy task - because even if our
first AI will have zero creativity, humans seem to have a negative amount of
it - because we need to induce random noise in ourselves to get out of a
mental rut.

[0] - [http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/05/negative-
creativity/](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/05/negative-creativity/)

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mtgentry
This sounds awfully similar to being a highly sensitive person. I.E. covering
your ears when a siren goes by, being exhausted after being around too many
people, being aware of subtleties in your environment.

I encourage anyone who identifies with the above to take this HSP quiz:
[http://hsperson.com/test/highly-sensitive-
test/](http://hsperson.com/test/highly-sensitive-test/)

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kendallpark
> The study suggests that creative people with “leaky” sensory gating may have
> a propensity to deploy attention over a wider focus or a larger range of
> stimuli.

I've always thought that creativity and chaos go hand in hand. At least in my
experience. The inability to draw barriers between categories and subjects.

I think the bigger struggle is being able to retain focus on an idea once
you've conceived it. You can have all the innovative ideas in the world,
doesn't really amount to much if you can't pull it together and ship.

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digi_owl
Yep, many discoveries recently seems to come from someone glancing over the
category fence and going "hey, that looks similar to xyz".

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kendallpark
Yeah. I was sitting in my PHIL 101 class way back in the day and was like,
"Wait, this argument doesn't work because it assumes too low a level of
computational complexity." Made for a great paper.

I also took some advanced creative writing courses. I was the only science
major in my Novella class. So of course I wrote sci-fi. Had the most original
story out of the group.

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digi_owl
Reminds me of Peter Watts. Educated as a marine biologist, writes hard sci-fi
for a living. Seems to have a very cynical world view to boot. The latter
could be in part because he is apparently a trouble magnet.

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utxaa
i am the exact opposite. ha ha ha ... once i get going on a problem, you could
fire a cannon next to my ear and i may notice. as a matter of fact, i _prefer_
noise around me when i'm working. i'm not being sarcastic. i'm pretty good at
my job, although no genius (not even that smart) by any stretch in any way :)

but i feel that this ability to hyper-concentrate helps me overcome an
otherwise average intelligence. anyone else experiences this?

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praveer13
It's impossible for me to focus if I am not interested in something, but if
something is fascinating to me, I forget to eat, drink water and do normal
tasks and keep at this thing for hours. It has nearly ruined my life.

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utxaa
yeah. same. but for me it doesn't matter. if it's a puzzle (from number theory
to computational geometry and everything in btwn) if i start, game over. it's
a problem.

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walterbell
search 'hyperfocus'

set timers

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spdustin
And read "Driven to Distraction", seriously.

[http://www.amazon.com/dp/0307743152/](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0307743152/)

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Kortaggio
Here's the original paper (PDF):
[https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-_F9a3KJf3LWmlWdzd6OU5MM28...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-_F9a3KJf3LWmlWdzd6OU5MM28/view)

I'm surprised this wasn't linked anywhere in the press release.

