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Caffeine boosts problem-solving ability but not creativity, study indicates

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Re: Caffeine boosts problem-solving ability but not creativity, study indicates

#101

Post by zackmorris »

jermaustin1 wrote: post #19
k__ wrote: post #5

What boosts creativity? I sometimes used alcohol for song writing purposes. Are there healthier methods?

I'm no artist, but I've always felt creativity comes from dysfunction/chaos. My wife (a psychologist) and I discuss this regularly around poetry, music, painting, etc. Some of the most "beautiful" works come from unhealthy emotional states. And that a lot of the sameness we get today in popular culture arises when art is cultivated by large organizations which are inherently are devoid of emotion, and are pushing pop…

I tend to agree, for me the music died sometime around 2000 with the post-90s hangover of facing "reality" with 9/11 and consolidation of radio station ownership. In my city, we simply don't have any real radio stations. The only play top 40 and a pittance of alternative music, mostly from over 20 years ago.

Meanwhile, my Discover Weekly in Spotify and the channels spun from those artists have many thousands of songs that are considerably better than anything on the radio, but will never get airtime.

Here's a good example of what a real radio station would sound like today if we still had DJs and the freedom to play anything:

https://radioparadise.com/player

I asked Bill (the owner) 13 years ago about opening a station in my town to simply play his stream on FM but he broke the news to me that it's not really possible. It would cost something like $100,000 dollars (probably $250,000 today) just to get the license.

I also got the feeling that it would be so expensive to operate (in electricity alone) that stations are no longer viable as self-sustaining entities. They make their money by cross-promotion of other stations and businesses under an umbrella corporation.

The only way to break up this stagnation is antitrust enforcement IMHO. Bring back the Broadcast Station Cross-Ownership Rule at the very least, then go further to also break up the big media duopolies like CNN/Fox News (which of course will not happen in these times):

https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/fccs-review-broadcast-o...

In 2017, the Commission eliminated PDF Download its rule that had previously prohibited common ownership of a full-power broadcast station and a daily newspaper if the station's contour (defined separately by type of station) completely encompassed the newspaper's city of publication and the station and newspaper were in the same relevant Nielsen market. At the same time, the Commission also eliminated the radio-television cross-ownership rule, which had restricted the common ownership of broadcast radio and television stations located in the same market. These two rules -- the newspaper-broadcast cross ownership and radio-television cross ownership rules -- were eliminated due in part to the growth in the number and variety of sources of entertainment, news and information in the modern media marketplace.

Re: Caffeine boosts problem-solving ability but not creativity, study indicates

#102

Post by TACIXAT »

I wonder how they establish a control group. Most people regularly consume caffeine, so this is most likely measuring the effects of caffeine withdrawal, since the control isn't necessarily people who never consume caffeine. I guess you could test on Mormons for this.

Re: Caffeine boosts problem-solving ability but not creativity, study indicates

#103

Post by [deleted] »

claudeganon wrote: post #89
drenvuk wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah that's for most divergent thinking. In the art realm here's an example of Penny Arcade's Tycho talking about anti depressants and the usual lack of creativity that comes with them. https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2012/01/09/bedeviled Linkin Park's Bennington Talked numerous times about how his drug addictions helped him creatively despite him wanting to be sober. His later more sober songs kinds suck tbh. The…

We have to be careful about romanticizing mental illness though. As a professional illustrator, I’ve seen more people spiral out of the field from mental illness than succeed because of some visionary ability that illness provided them. There are of course brilliant artists who are nuts, many of whose work I admire. But most high-performing people I know seem to be pretty “normal” and disciplined.

[deleted]

Re: Caffeine boosts problem-solving ability but not creativity, study indicates

#104

Post by _pastel »

Ah, the classic confusion between not finding enough evidence to disprove the null hypothesis, and finding enough evidence to prove the null hypothesis.

The caffeinated group outperformed the noncaffeinated on all 5 creativity metrics. The sample size and effect size were too small to prove caffeine caused an improvement.

How did that turn into this title?

Re: Caffeine boosts problem-solving ability but not creativity, study indicates

#106

Post by MperorM »

orhmeh09 wrote: post #85
Cenk wrote: post #3

The paper in question: https://citationsy.com/archives/q?doi=10.1016/j.concog.2020....

It's a pretty poor study, to be honest. The pattern I tend to see on Hacker News with studies is that they go unread beyond the abstract (often not even that when a press release is linked, like here) and people just chime in with their anecdotes that confirm their own personal beliefs.

At least they read the abstract!

I can't really determine what the right cost/benefit trade-off here. Reading beyond the abstract is rather time consuming and is not something I can afford for every paper.

Re: Caffeine boosts problem-solving ability but not creativity, study indicates

#107

Post by leesec »

nscalf wrote: post #10
UtMan88 wrote: post #2

At Game Jams I would always start things off with my "2 beers, 2 coffees" method. After the theme was announced, we'd go out and discuss ideas over a few beers (just not enough to get trashed), then, come back, flesh stuff out, get our coffee and go back to work. Worked out pretty well for generating some pretty wild ideas while not making ourselves disfunctional. Drink responsibly.

Write drunk, edit buzzed, then?

Code drunk, commit sober.

Re: Caffeine boosts problem-solving ability but not creativity, study indicates

#109

Post by dana321 »

52-6F-62 wrote: post #65
k__ wrote: post #5

What boosts creativity? I sometimes used alcohol for song writing purposes. Are there healthier methods?

Some writer and artists would use the following: Hold a key in one of your hands and hang your hand down by your side while you let yourself fall asleep while sitting in a chair (honestly this first part sounds the most difficult). When you fall asleep—or rather the trance-like borderlands between awake and sleep— you should naturally drop the key (or whatever metallic, noise-making object) which should spring you ba…

Or just move next door to some noisy neighbors that randomly wake you up with bangs.

Re: Caffeine boosts problem-solving ability but not creativity, study indicates

#110

Post by ssully »

DantesKite wrote: post #57

On a side note, I really enjoy the taste of coffee. I try not to drink more than one cup a day, but I wonder now about what would happen if I stopped cold turkey. Maybe a couple days reset wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

I drink a cup of coffee in the morning, maybe have a green tea in the afternoon. I've gone off caffeine and the only negative impact is I just take a little longer to wake up. I am sure everyone's tolerance is different, but I think I would need to start drinking more coffee to feel any kind of withdrawal affects.
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