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Why Are Some People More Creative Than Others?

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Re: Why Are Some People More Creative Than Others?

#41

Post by strawcomb »

rankam wrote: post #20
losteric wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that matter? Do you take pride in what you've accomplished, or is the focus on who's better? I'll never "catch up" to Musk, but I'm better than most people simply by trying my own business ideas.

I don't know, doesn't the outcome matter? Trying is admirable, but if a person tries and fails and I never try; at the end of the day we're both in the same place, no?

> if a person tries and fails and I never try; at the end of the day we're both in the same place, no?

What a bizarre statement. This is a generalisation that can easily be shown to be false. If I try and win Gold at the olympics, but fail (only winning silver), I am in a completely different place from you who never tried. There's a million other counter examples.

Re: Why Are Some People More Creative Than Others?

#42

Post by Isamu »

People have horrible notions about what it is to be "creative" that really just serve to prevent them from attempting something.

Linus Pauling said that when he is asked how he comes up with so many great ideas, he says he just comes up with a lot of ideas and then throws away the bad ones.

People are discouraged when they sit down to a blank sheet of paper and their first few efforts seem like crap.

The truth is that many "creative" people started younger, when their first crappy efforts weren't so stinging.

You can start something new when you are older. But you have to tolerate your errors, and you have to bother to identify your problems and fix them.

Also: you don't have to be Mozart to be creative. Garden-variety creativity is pretty much available to most people who are willing to brave the slog and self-embarrassment.

Re: Why Are Some People More Creative Than Others?

#43

Post by mooseburger »

noahc wrote: post #6
Judgmentality wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but anyone who trains will be better than someone who does not, regardless of any innate potential I disagree. The genetic lottery is unfair; and some people are just better than you no matter what you do, and no matter what they don't do.

Do you really believe this? Genetics help, sure. But it is just potential. Can you provide an example where one person was so genetically talented that they didn’t train and still were competitive at some semi-professional level?

One sees this with some frequency in art. Consider Haruki Murakami:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haruki_Murakami#Writing_career

"Murakami began to write fiction when he was 29.[19] "Before that", he said, "I didn't write anything. I was just one of those ordinary people. I was running a jazz club, and I didn't create anything at all."[20] He was inspired to write his first novel, Hear the Wind Sing (1979), while watching a baseball game."

Re: Why Are Some People More Creative Than Others?

#44

Post by rankam »

strawcomb wrote: post #41
rankam wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, doesn't the outcome matter? Trying is admirable, but if a person tries and fails and I never try; at the end of the day we're both in the same place, no?

> if a person tries and fails and I never try; at the end of the day we're both in the same place, no? What a bizarre statement. This is a generalisation that can easily be shown to be false. If I try and win Gold at the olympics, but fail (only winning silver), I am in a completely different place from you who never tried. There's a million other counter examples.

I think you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who considers winning a silver medal to be failing - but yes, failure is subjective. The original premise was about a person who tries being "better than" someone who doesn't try - my argument is simply that the act of trying doesn't automatically make you better.

Re: Why Are Some People More Creative Than Others?

#45

Post by iskander »

saulrh wrote: post #35
twoquestions wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't think of an instance where this is true for normal people. I can see an untrained 250lb person beating a 100lb one-armed boxer, but outside such extreme disparities, training >> innate ability, at least in my experience.

> for normal people Sure is a good No True Scotsman you've got there. And I'm not even sure you'd be right ignoring that; recall that sports like boxing and MMA separate people into weight classes that are ten pounds wide . In other words, those sports think that, within the bounds of "professional", there is no amount of innate ability or training that can balance out a 25-pound difference in weight. But even if you…

>Sure is a good No True Scotsman you've got there. And I'm not even sure you'd be right ignoring that; recall that sports like boxing and MMA separate people into weight classes that are ten pounds wide. In other words, those sports think that, within the bounds of "professional", there is no amount of innate ability or training that can balance out a 25-pound difference in weight.

That's actually a bad example. UFC got its start with the spectacle of watching comparatively small Royce Gracie beat fighters with significant weight advantages who didn't know how to grapple.

There were some really extreme weight mismatches in 90s MMA: http://www.espn.com/extra/mma/news/story?id=3513974

Re: Why Are Some People More Creative Than Others?

#46

Post by indubitable »

noahc wrote: post #6
Judgmentality wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but anyone who trains will be better than someone who does not, regardless of any innate potential I disagree. The genetic lottery is unfair; and some people are just better than you no matter what you do, and no matter what they don't do.

Do you really believe this? Genetics help, sure. But it is just potential. Can you provide an example where one person was so genetically talented that they didn’t train and still were competitive at some semi-professional level?

The problem with this is that people like this then tend to train and go on to do phenomenally well with extreme ease. In the physical domain, Mike Tyson is a good example. He was 'discovered' by a detention counselor when he was 13. 2 years later he would be the junior olympic world champion for two years in a row. Then he went professional and won his first 19 fights by knockout, 12 in the first round. He then went around and won every world championship belt there was - getting his first world championship title 8 months before he was old enough to legally buy a beer.

For the mental realm you have people like Srinivasa Ramanujan [1]. He had next to no formal training in mathematics yet would contribute immensely to a wide array of mathematical fields before the end of his brief life, dying at 32.

Re: Why Are Some People More Creative Than Others?

#47

Post by munchbunny »

Judgmentality wrote: post #5
chillwaves wrote: post #2

Some people are better athletes than others, but anyone who trains will be better than someone who does not, regardless of any innate potential. I see creativity along the same lines. Many folks are conditioned to memorize, follow processes, follow norms and paths laid by others, it may not occur to them to seek out originality. It is another form of learned helplessness. Creating is hard, especially when judged in a…

> but anyone who trains will be better than someone who does not, regardless of any innate potential I disagree. The genetic lottery is unfair; and some people are just better than you no matter what you do, and no matter what they don't do.

Some people will just start a standard deviation above others, but when it comes to talents or traits you build careers on, those people are rare.

I think the important point is that most people can move themselves up a standard deviation or more with dedicated practice, even in areas like creativity. While they might not become geniuses, they can certainly develop quite a respectable level of talent.

Re: Why Are Some People More Creative Than Others?

#48

Post by phyller »

twoquestions wrote: post #9
Judgmentality wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but anyone who trains will be better than someone who does not, regardless of any innate potential I disagree. The genetic lottery is unfair; and some people are just better than you no matter what you do, and no matter what they don't do.

I can't think of an instance where this is true for normal people. I can see an untrained 250lb person beating a 100lb one-armed boxer, but outside such extreme disparities, training >> innate ability, at least in my experience.

Since all you need is one instance, let me share. I am a runner. I run a lot to stay in shape. I am not particularly slow, and ran track in school. I ran once with a friend of mine who had a natural runners build, but wasn't a runner and hadn't run in years. He smoked me, trotting along effortlessly while leaving me behind absolutely breathless.

It depends on what you are doing but sometimes people are just wired for something better than others. But everyone can almost always get much better with training.

Re: Why Are Some People More Creative Than Others?

#49

Post by twoquestions »

saulrh wrote: post #35
twoquestions wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't think of an instance where this is true for normal people. I can see an untrained 250lb person beating a 100lb one-armed boxer, but outside such extreme disparities, training >> innate ability, at least in my experience.

> for normal people Sure is a good No True Scotsman you've got there. And I'm not even sure you'd be right ignoring that; recall that sports like boxing and MMA separate people into weight classes that are ten pounds wide . In other words, those sports think that, within the bounds of "professional", there is no amount of innate ability or training that can balance out a 25-pound difference in weight. But even if you…

In MMA, pretty much everyone who gets into the octagon is already training as hard as they can, so in this case you're correct that innate advantages dominate outcomes.

I was more thinking outside the top 1% of any particular skill, for example when you're hiring a designer or sales staff in a normal company (as in, a not-1% company, such as a refrigerator manufacturer or something).

I'm willing to concede that if you're looking exclusively at top 1% or top 0.01% candidates, you may profit best by taking their innate abilities into account, but if you're trying to find a top 80% or top 70% candidate (if you're trying to play moneyball with your organization or something) I personally would weight the depth and breadth of experience most.

Re: Why Are Some People More Creative Than Others?

#50

Post by johnfn »

pmoriarty wrote: post #26

As an artist and musician, I often encourage my friends to draw something, paint something, or make some music. The reply I hear over and over again is, "oh, no, I don't have the talent" or "oh, no, I'm awful at drawing". It's like they don't realize that what they attribute to "talent" is attainable through practice and hard work. When I point that out and encourage them to just try, that it might be fun, they make…

> I've come to understand that what all their excuses amount to is that they're just not interested in creating.

I don't think this is true. If they were uninterested, they would simply say so, rather than making a series of excuses. What seems more likely to me is that they are (on a deep level) scared of creating.

Creativity of any sort requires you to project your personality and be vulnerable in a way that people don't normally do. This can be pretty scary when most actions people do don't open themselves up to possibly being criticized on such a personal level. I think when people aren't creative it's not that they don't care, but rather that the fear of being judged (whether conscious or unconscious) is too strong to overcome. This is why people "don't have any creative ideas" - it's not that they don't have ANY, but instead that they reject the ideas that they do have because they think they are not good enough.

This is also the basis of writers block.

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