Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The science of having ideas in the shower

nationalgeographic.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 178 posts

Re: The science of having ideas in the shower

#131

Post by eyelidlessness »

Waterluvian wrote: post #75

Maybe I’m discovering the obvious, but I began using THC for sleep in my 30s and as a side effect, I kinda get a little bit high for about 20 mins before bed. I’ll be having a shower that usually turns into a bath for safety and I just close my eyes and think. And it’s truly miraculous… My brain just wanders so freely among the ideas of the day. But what interests me most are these “eureka!” moments. They’re so fast…

I’m so glad I have this experience before I get out of bed. Each day I have a morning “what do I remember from before getting out of bed” review, right after I greet my pup for the morning. It’s mostly lost, but a lot of times during the day something will come back to me.

Re: The science of having ideas in the shower

#132

Post by rolenthedeep »

boredemployee wrote: post #69
diemes1 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never seen John Carmack described as an artist before

could writing code be considered as an art? genuinely asking

There is "code as art" where the code itself is art. A while back there was a program floating through the nerd community that was C code laid out in the shape of a giant C, which actually compiles to a valid program.

Then there is "code as an artform". Think code golf, or other such challenges that encourage incredibly creative solutions.

Then my personal favorite is simply "beautiful code". Sometimes an algorithm or a function will just be elegant in its construction or simplicity. Sometimes you have a real hairy problem that seems very complex at first, but the solution ends up as a small, clean function with no frills, no bugs. It's about beautiful solutions more than the text of the code.

Code can be art, but it usually isn't. The first two categories are something done intentionally as a form of expression, but the last is more akin to a sunset or a rainbow. Sometimes beauty appears when we don't intend or expect it. But I think that still qualifies as art.

Re: The science of having ideas in the shower

#133

Post by ranger47 »

sammalloy wrote: post #130
velcrovan wrote: post #128

I still have not read anything on this topic (models of human thought, creativity and emotional affect) so clear and interesting as David Gelernter’s “The Muse in the Machine” (1994).

On my official reading list now, thanks to you.

I'll bite. What's on your unofficial reading list?

Re: The science of having ideas in the shower

#134

Post by ahzhou »

mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #105
Waterluvian wrote: post #75

Maybe I’m discovering the obvious, but I began using THC for sleep in my 30s and as a side effect, I kinda get a little bit high for about 20 mins before bed. I’ll be having a shower that usually turns into a bath for safety and I just close my eyes and think. And it’s truly miraculous… My brain just wanders so freely among the ideas of the day. But what interests me most are these “eureka!” moments. They’re so fast…

Weed is the secret behind my ability to debug really gnarly problems that others get stuck on. I'm not the best coder, and I'm incapable of finishing projects, but most workplaces I've been at I've quickly become the "hey could you look at this heisenbug" guy. I never smoke in a professional setting of course. I read the code, set breakpoints, debug prints, yadda yadda. Then when I get home I smoke some hashish and s…

I used to believe this was true, but I tested it and found that I was performed noticeably worse while high across a variety of tasks. The weed made me feel like a million bucks, but actually put me at ~80% capacity. I don’t know your brain chemistry, but I’d encourage you not to sell yourself short and believe that you’re only capable of performing well in an altered start of mind. You’re probably better than you believe.

Re: The science of having ideas in the shower

#136

Post by mtlmtlmtlmtl »

ahzhou wrote: post #134
mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weed is the secret behind my ability to debug really gnarly problems that others get stuck on. I'm not the best coder, and I'm incapable of finishing projects, but most workplaces I've been at I've quickly become the "hey could you look at this heisenbug" guy. I never smoke in a professional setting of course. I read the code, set breakpoints, debug prints, yadda yadda. Then when I get home I smoke some hashish and s…

I used to believe this was true, but I tested it and found that I was performed noticeably worse while high across a variety of tasks. The weed made me feel like a million bucks, but actually put me at ~80% capacity. I don’t know your brain chemistry, but I’d encourage you not to sell yourself short and believe that you’re only capable of performing well in an altered start of mind. You’re probably better than you be…

Uhm, my post said explicitly it impairs working memory and focus and is limited due to that. It plays a rather small role in just providing an extra push for that aha moment. But the aha moment can't come without doing the leg work of digging into the problem first, and that's hard, thankless work that often amounts to hours, if not days of time spent sober and working. The drugs and the work happen mostly completely in isolation from eachother. I just smoke at home to unwind and then suddenly the thing I'm trying to figure out at work clicks for me and I know what to do, so I just jot down a basic PoC fix and then do it properly the next day, at work, sober, when I can hold something in my head for more than 5 seconds at a time. Not sure how that was unclear from my comment.

I could certainly stand to do less no doubt, but I'm on something of a sabbatical right now(personal projects and recovering from burnout) so the equation is different.

Re: The science of having ideas in the shower

#139

Post by ford »

b3morales wrote: post #33
ford wrote: post #6

Is there more research on how boredom relates to creativity in general? I've been wondering recently about how my default in most cases is to look at my phone (reddit, social media, texting). That must detract from my net new ideas. I know many a child driven to weird ideas, fun games, and general creativity from lack of anything else to do. It's probably a spectrum (reading reddit/HN/etc. is likely to introduce new…

I'm not sure "boredom" is the right way to characterize the state. Deliberately cultivating this quiet time for creativity is one possible aspect of a meditation practice. David Lynch has an interesting book about that, called Catching the Big Fish .

+1 boredom isn't quite right. I'll check out that book.
Post reply on HN