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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?

#51

Post by pmoriarty »

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.

"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."

This is clearer in some fields than others -- particularly in fields where there are child prodigies, like in chess, music, or mathematics.

In other fields, child prodigies are rare or perhaps even non-existent.

There are, to my knowledge, no child prodigies who've written brilliant novels, or earned the Nobel Prize for Literature (as flawed a measure of talent as it is). There are no children who've composed poems which are considered to be among the greatest in the world.

These fields tend to draw upon a whole life's worth of experience -- something that children obviously lack and can't make up for through "winning the genetic lottery".

Re: Why Are Some People More Creative Than Others?

#52

Post by moufestaphio »

mannykannot wrote: post #32
moufestaphio wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty bad example. Dude was a semi-retired PROFESSIONAL tennis player. Who had been ranked as high as 38th in the world. He obviously had a fuck ton of training, was just 'retired' when he played the game.

Given the punishing training regimen the Williams sisters follow, it is good evidence of biological limits on the boost training can give in tennis. I doubt it has much relevance for creativity.

I think it's pretty well accepted that Men better at physical activities almost across the board. I don't think that's what the original point was about though.

The original question was asking for an example of a "genetically talented that they didn’t train" losing to someone who was a "pro" and this is clearly not an example of it.

That said, I'm not trying to make the argument that there aren't 'genetic' limits.

Re: Why Are Some People More Creative Than Others?

#53

Post by TeMPOraL »

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?

This ties in with the "Reality has a surprising amount of detail" article that's currently on the frontpage (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16184255). In my experience, I discovered that when I first learn about something and then try to do it, I usually find that a lot of the things I've learned were irrelevant, and a lot of the important things weren't even on my radar when learning. That's why, I believe, a mixed approach is more efficient than just blindly trying, or just blindly learning.

Re: Why Are Some People More Creative Than Others?

#54

Post by Retric »

pmoriarty wrote: post #51
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.

"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." This is clearer in some fields than others -- particularly in fields where there are child prodigies, like in chess, music, or mathematics. In other fields, child prodigies are rare or perhaps even non-existent. There are, to my knowledge, no child prodigies who've written brilliant novel…

Few books are written by kids which confuses the issue. If only one in 100,000 books is great and prodigies have written less than 100,000 books then you should not expect any great books.

On the other hand plenty of great books have been written by people in their 20's which is a long way from a full life.

Re: Why Are Some People More Creative Than Others?

#55

Post by pmoriarty »

Retric wrote: post #54
pmoriarty wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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." This is clearer in some fields than others -- particularly in fields where there are child prodigies, like in chess, music, or mathematics. In other fields, child prodigies are rare or perhaps even non-existent. There are, to my knowledge, no child prodigies who've written brilliant novel…

Few books are written by kids which confuses the issue. If only one in 100,000 books is great and prodigies have written less than 100,000 books then you should not expect any great books. On the other hand plenty of great books have been written by people in their 20's which is a long way from a full life.

So why aren't they writing books? They're making music, playing chess, and doing math -- often at much higher levels than many adults. Why not books?

Re: Why Are Some People More Creative Than Others?

#56

Post by phyller »

The article mentions alternate uses of a sock, citing its suggested use as a "water filter" as being particularly creative. In high school I had a project to make a water filter which I forgot about. The day it was due I managed to assemble a plausible filter by taking my sock, getting it wet, and draping it between the dirty water glass and the clean water glass, with the dirty water glass higher so the water would be sucked up and through the sock into the clean water glass.

Maybe there is a high correlation between creativity and irresponsibility or desperation :)

As this is Hacker News and full of curious people, I can tell you that it doesn't work very well. The dirty water just ends up on the other side, minus large pieces of detritus.

Re: Why Are Some People More Creative Than Others?

#57

Post by bluedino »

iskander wrote: post #45
saulrh wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

It's a good example because the training disparity was huge back then.

Re: Why Are Some People More Creative Than Others?

#58

Post by Retric »

pmoriarty wrote: post #55
Retric wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Few books are written by kids which confuses the issue. If only one in 100,000 books is great and prodigies have written less than 100,000 books then you should not expect any great books. On the other hand plenty of great books have been written by people in their 20's which is a long way from a full life.

So why aren't they writing books? They're making music, playing chess, and doing math -- often at much higher levels than many adults. Why not books?

There are plenty of books written by people under 18. Some are even above average relative to adult writing. But, unlike chess, math, or music it takes a long time to write a book so they get less practice. On top of that books take a long time to write so they need to be good at a young age simply to finish by 18.

On the other had there is some IMO great poetry written by kids.

Re: Why Are Some People More Creative Than Others?

#59

Post by bluedino »

twoquestions wrote: post #49
saulrh wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 yo…

And at the elite level, that disparity is still huge.

The NFL has 32 football teams. Any quarterback outside the top 10 or so is considered 'bad' by most people. Assuming each team has a backup quarterback, out of the 64 'best' people in the world to do that job, only the top ten are so are safe from being called 'bad at their job' on any given Sunday.

There's also a story about a UFC fighter who went 0-3, and people called him a terrible fighter. Someone from his hometown mentioned how he was the toughest guy in town and one day beat up 4 guys and 5 cops at a bar all by himself, and he was only a 155lb fighter.

Re: Why Are Some People More Creative Than Others?

#60

Post by mbrumlow »

chillwaves wrote: post #30
mbrumlow wrote: post #23

This is something we as humans are going to have to deal with at one point or another. While some people would have it that "we are all the same" - the fact is that we are not. It tends to become a touchy subject when you suggest that brain functionality differs between people but we seem to blindly accept that some people make better athletes than others. It is particularly hard because you can't simply look at some…

How many people train up to even a tenth of their physical capability? Consider applying the same to creative effort. Yes, your absolute best effort may beat my absolute best, but we live in a world where most people are not even trying.

Its tricky, but consider the function of "trying" just another brain function. Many brain functions are required to achieve a outcome. So pure aptitude in one area might require cooperation of another. So we might be able to group different functions and map their dependencies.

You might end up with something like (effort * raw_aptitude) = actual_aptitude for a given function, and there will be crossovers where where raw_aptitude is less in one person but their effort is more. And again one could arguably assign one being better than the other.

When we talk about these sorts of things there are not many "gotchas" because you can't use one brain function to discount the other brain function as they really work together. So I really don't feel like somebodies lack of effort negates anything I said in the original post, as it is just another brain function.

This does bring up a interesting crossover where mental faculties does play a role in physical performance. There was a study that showed that "smart" people made poor solders. The notion was that the smarter person was able to think further in the future about how their actions, or orders may play out. It was their ability to ponder the possibilities that ultimately caused them to shut down. On the flip side somebody who did not think as far into the future, or was not keen to pondering on future possibilities executed orders without hesitation -- making them a better solder. I don't know if I agree with this study, or their notion of smart, as "smart" can be subjective and is not really well defined. But it is fun to think about and wonder how these things do play a role in every day life.

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