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Creativity fundamentally comes from memorization?

shwin.co

41–50 of 372 posts

Re: Creativity fundamentally comes from memorization?

#41
On the other hand, episodic memory (insofar as that is distinct from "3*9=27" memorization) is built on top of creativity.

The vast majority of what we consider "memories" are the creative brain doing an on-the-fly story generation, massaged until it "seems right" and serviced plus a big dollop of emotional confidence.

Re: Creativity fundamentally comes from memorization?

#42
post #28
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Appreciate you reading! But how do you know how to apply this acquired knowledge in this new context? It's some form of pattern matching right -- which imo is just a less obvious form of memorization i.e. you've memorized the match between inherent traits of the context with a specific application of that knowledge

> But how do you know how to apply this acquired knowledge in this new context? That question has a false precondition baked in. If you know how, it's not creative. > It's some form of pattern matching right -- which imo is just a less obvious form of memorization No. Sensing and matching patterns does not imply memorization. Everything you're saying is completely loaded. Did you just discover memorization? Because t…

But you must have knowledge of the basic units of your chosen art to apply that to the new situation right?

E.g. if you're an artist, at the very least you need the knowledge of how to draw a line

From other comments here it seems the definition of "memorization" seems to be where disagreements are

Maybe this is a better explanation: once I started trying to make whatI just learned is called "tacit knowledge" more explicit and then committing it to memory, I was able to cut learning times down significantly

Re: Creativity fundamentally comes from memorization?

#43
post #16

I disagree with elements of this article, but enjoyed reading it. True creatives do not subvert norms consciously or with an acute awareness as part of this article suggests, I agree they need to be exposed to the norms to generate their own interpretation, but I don’t believe that true creativity is a conscious exercise.

Completely agree -- but isn't internalization of their art (i.e. memorization) needed to achieve this subconscious creativity? That's the point I'm trying to make at least -- that unintentional creativity stems from learning, which at it's core is memorization

Well said - what's funny is that many creative ideas (from an outside perspective) are often very simple connections of two existing ideas for the person that actually did something creative! It's just that other people don't have the same context/knowledge as the creator, so an idea can seem extremely original to them

Re: Creativity fundamentally comes from memorization?

#45
Is there anything substantive here?

It’s just a bunch of arbitrary unprovable assertions.

Everyone here seems to have, broadly speaking; neither a) the qualifications to knowledgeably comment of the (honestly poorly understood, afaik) function of “creativity” or b) anything more meaningful than “here is my naive personal lived experience and opinion” to contribute on the topic.

It’s just armchair psychology.

If you want to wax philosophical, by all means, but I think anyone taking “thoughtful insight” away from this article or thread is fooling themselves.

Re: Creativity fundamentally comes from memorization?

#46
All very nice and handwavey, but then you see the user’s current venture is scammy deepfakes as a service, which is about as creatively bankrupt as it gets.

Shame about the national stereotypes as well. There is plenty of creativity in Asian countries. Just bizarre assertions all around.

Re: Creativity fundamentally comes from memorization?

#47

Is there anything substantive here? It’s just a bunch of arbitrary unprovable assertions. Everyone here seems to have, broadly speaking; neither a) the qualifications to knowledgeably comment of the (honestly poorly understood, afaik) function of “creativity” or b) anything more meaningful than “here is my naive personal lived experience and opinion” to contribute on the topic. It’s just armchair psychology. If you w…

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Re: Creativity fundamentally comes from memorization?

#49
post #31
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for reading and the response! One of the points I'm trying to make is that taste and elegance fundamentally stem from an internalized heuristic -- which at it's core is memorization. I understand the connotation of "memorization" evokes an image of blindly memorizing without connecting, but isn't the tastefully developed expertise just memorization of a better heuristic?

That's true if you broaden the definition of "memorization" to cover all learning, but "learning is necessary for creativity" would not be a particularly interesting thesis. Expertise is the result of learning from past experience, both in developing an internal intuition for what you're doing and in having past patterns to draw upon. To the extent that experts have simple easily verbalizable heuristics, these are la…

This happened about 20 years ago when they were trying to automate recognizing cancer cells. They showed photos to experienced diagnosticians and asked 'What features do you look for?' They couldn't articulate what they were seeing.
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