New study shows highly creative people’s brains work differently from others' • Hacker News Board

Re: New study shows highly creative people’s brains work differently from others'

#31

Post by inglor_cz » Mon, Jul 04, 2022, 8:50 PM UTC

robonerd wrote: post #24

I believe that everybody has the capacity to be creative, and those who think they don't are impeded not by a lack of creative spark, but rather by their own inhibitions and belief that they aren't creative. Part of this is cultural; engineers are told by society that an engineer/artist schism exists and incorporate that meme into their self-image, writing off their own ability to be creative. This becomes a self-ful…

"I believe that everybody has the capacity to be creative"

Maybe, but I am almost certain that this capacity is highly unequal. Some people are like walking geysers of inspiration and you cannot suppress them culturally anymore than you can prevent the July sun from baking the sand. Others are decidedly low-voltage even when it comes to private creativity (such as decorating your own home).

It is the same with muscles. We all have some muscles, but only some people do really have the potential to be good athletes.

Re: New study shows highly creative people’s brains work differently from others'

#32

Post by robonerd » Mon, Jul 04, 2022, 9:02 PM UTC

inglor_cz wrote: post #31

robonerd wrote: post #24

I believe that everybody has the capacity to be creative, and those who think they don't are impeded not by a lack of creative spark, but rather by their own inhibitions and belief that they aren't creative. Part of this is cultural; engineers are told by society that an engineer/artist schism exists and incorporate that meme into their self-image, writing off their own ability to be creative. This becomes a self-ful…

"I believe that everybody has the capacity to be creative" Maybe, but I am almost certain that this capacity is highly unequal. Some people are like walking geysers of inspiration and you cannot suppress them culturally anymore than you can prevent the July sun from baking the sand. Others are decidedly low-voltage even when it comes to private creativity (such as decorating your own home). It is the same with muscle…

I think you're speaking of interest and motivation, without which you won't try to be creative or hit the gym. But I believe the capability still exists within you, even if you choose to ignore it. Nobody is unable to be an artist because of the way they were born.

Re: New study shows highly creative people’s brains work differently from others'

#33

Post by mensetmanusman » Mon, Jul 04, 2022, 9:02 PM UTC

I am one of these highly creative types, and I would say I do not understand my biology. After my PhD@MIT I joined the materials industry and filed over 120 patents in nine years.

I definitely did not expect this to happen, and I have no idea where the ideas come from. I’ll just be doing my routine lab work and get showered with ideas occasionally.

Edit: Someone below mentioned schizophrenia and its association, and it’s true in our family history that there is a lot of schizophrenia. An ability of mine that seems interesting is an ease of very clear mental visualizations and object manipulations. Main problem now is trying to filter out what to do now and what to wait for in terms of viability. Have had ideas that are definitely 10 years too soon…

Anyway, life is interesting for sure!

Re: New study shows highly creative people’s brains work differently from others'

#34

Post by ezekiel11 » Mon, Jul 04, 2022, 9:03 PM UTC

One of the key indicator of creativity is how they modify their behavior after mass novelty is achieved. It's distinctively a schizoid behavior, where you shun something that becomes widely known or appreciated by "too many ppl".

It's knowing esoteric facts/connections that allow neural pathways to discover unbeaten path, however its often not without risks. Many artists/actors/engineers/any line of work really remain undiscovered and then there is a sudden wide recognition of their work, much to their disliking.

You know what they say about genius artists, they straight up jack somebody else's work and claim it as their own.

Re: New study shows highly creative people’s brains work differently from others'

#35

Post by pm90 » Mon, Jul 04, 2022, 9:04 PM UTC

bergenty wrote: post #29

robonerd wrote: post #24

I believe that everybody has the capacity to be creative, and those who think they don't are impeded not by a lack of creative spark, but rather by their own inhibitions and belief that they aren't creative. Part of this is cultural; engineers are told by society that an engineer/artist schism exists and incorporate that meme into their self-image, writing off their own ability to be creative. This becomes a self-ful…

I’m right there with you. I thought I wasn’t creative. The magic insight was that you just start doing the thing and creativity comes as part of the process. Don’t know how to start? Just start and the process automatically becomes breaking down the task into thousands of tiny parts that you then just do.

A CS centric way of looking at this is that spending (brain) cycles exploring the problem is a necessary but not sufficient condition to solve it.

Most people don’t believe they can and don’t even try. But the brain is very fascinating and imo anyone is capable of problem solving.

One practical reason I am really sold on diversity in Tech is that I believe peoples experiences shape the way they think about problems. Having different kinds of minds looking at the same problem can result in different solutions. And that’s amazing. We can’t predict how it will work in advance, all we can do is create the right conditions which precipitate this result.

Re: New study shows highly creative people’s brains work differently from others'

#36

Post by inglor_cz » Mon, Jul 04, 2022, 9:05 PM UTC

robonerd wrote: post #32

inglor_cz wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I believe that everybody has the capacity to be creative" Maybe, but I am almost certain that this capacity is highly unequal. Some people are like walking geysers of inspiration and you cannot suppress them culturally anymore than you can prevent the July sun from baking the sand. Others are decidedly low-voltage even when it comes to private creativity (such as decorating your own home). It is the same with muscle…

I think you're speaking of interest and motivation, without which you won't try to be creative or hit the gym. But I believe the capability still exists within you, even if you choose to ignore it. Nobody is unable to be an artist because of the way they were born.

I am not sure if this is distinction without difference. A part of being an artist is, for me at least, the drive to do something.

Myself, I write quite a lot (in Czech), I have published 7 books so far. I am not claiming to be a big artist, merely a mediocre one, but I notice that I don't really have a choice. I have to write something almost every day, much like a full toilet bowl has to overflow.

Re: New study shows highly creative people’s brains work differently from others'

#37

Post by tgflynn » Mon, Jul 04, 2022, 9:12 PM UTC

mensetmanusman wrote: post #33

I am one of these highly creative types, and I would say I do not understand my biology. After my PhD@MIT I joined the materials industry and filed over 120 patents in nine years. I definitely did not expect this to happen, and I have no idea where the ideas come from. I’ll just be doing my routine lab work and get showered with ideas occasionally. Edit: Someone below mentioned schizophrenia and its association, and…

I used to have lots of ideas. The trouble is none of them actually worked.

Re: New study shows highly creative people’s brains work differently from others'

#38

Post by robocat » Mon, Jul 04, 2022, 9:16 PM UTC

bergenty wrote: post #29

robonerd wrote: post #24

I believe that everybody has the capacity to be creative, and those who think they don't are impeded not by a lack of creative spark, but rather by their own inhibitions and belief that they aren't creative. Part of this is cultural; engineers are told by society that an engineer/artist schism exists and incorporate that meme into their self-image, writing off their own ability to be creative. This becomes a self-ful…

I’m right there with you. I thought I wasn’t creative. The magic insight was that you just start doing the thing and creativity comes as part of the process. Don’t know how to start? Just start and the process automatically becomes breaking down the task into thousands of tiny parts that you then just do.

> the process automatically becomes breaking down the task into thousands of tiny parts

One way I categorise artists I have met is engineer-type artists versus discovery-type artists.

* engineer-type artists: definite goal. The artist has a defined goal in mind for a piece of art, they plan towards achieving that goal, and they produce their artwork. Learning and creativity within some of the steps.

* discovery-type artists: no defined goal. There is a huge mount of play and seemingly random experimentation with their medium, almost searching for random discovery. Often playing within a chosen restricted domain. They might say something like “the work discovered itself as I did it”.

I am an engineer at heart, so I have really appreciated learning how discovery-type artists create. Disclaimer: not an artist.

Re: New study shows highly creative people’s brains work differently from others'

#39

Post by varispeed » Mon, Jul 04, 2022, 9:20 PM UTC

robonerd wrote: post #24

I believe that everybody has the capacity to be creative, and those who think they don't are impeded not by a lack of creative spark, but rather by their own inhibitions and belief that they aren't creative. Part of this is cultural; engineers are told by society that an engineer/artist schism exists and incorporate that meme into their self-image, writing off their own ability to be creative. This becomes a self-ful…

It also quite depends on environment. When you try to think about something, the observer may think that you are just being lazy and doing nothing. I can't count how many times I've been told by parents or other people that used to be close that I should do some work rather than just sit and stare at the wall. And I would have some really great ideas of how to make something or how to solve something. Then those people would say - you are just stupid, you can't do this and that. I can imagine many people will try to shun such thoughts and associate it with something unpleasant. As I did for many years. This may sound brutal, but only when I cut contact with every single person that was negatively affecting my creativity in the past and present I stopped being depressed (not completely, sometimes it's coming back), but also started getting successes at work and eventually I was able to start doing things on my own. Some people don't realise how toxic they are and there isn't even point talking to them about that, because you are going to get ridiculed and attacked.

Re: New study shows highly creative people’s brains work differently from others'

#40

Post by cgio » Mon, Jul 04, 2022, 9:21 PM UTC

szundi wrote: post #27

tomc1985 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you calling all creatives schizophrenic? Because, uh, citation needed, and that goes against my experiences of hanging out with nothing but creatives 90% of the time. Us all being schizophrenic would be pretty revelatory if it was true. Artists may be weird, but...

A schizophrenic cannot really stop/even know the association jump is weird, but a prodigy will know. Difference is the people who see prodigies as schizos are narrowminded. There is a big difference between not understood and being random.

I don’t believe schizophrenic thinking is random either. Unproductive maybe, but schizophrenic creative minds are not uncommon either, so cannot really define one against the other. In the process of being offended sometimes we indicate our biases.