[HN Gopher] New study shows highly creative people's brains work...
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New study shows highly creative people's brains work differently
from others'
Author : NickRandom
Score : 79 points
Date : 2022-07-04 13:48 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.uclahealth.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.uclahealth.org)
| blueflow wrote:
| Whats the previous set of beliefs^H^H^H^H^H^H^H views that this
| is news?
| hans1729 wrote:
| The "news" are the findings of the paper. Not sure why beliefs
| should matter for the value of scientific work
| ziddoap wrote:
| Come on... An even slightly charitable reading of parents'
| comment would realize that they don't mean "belief" in the
| religious sense.
|
| It's pretty safe to assume they are asking what the
| previously understood and accepted academic stance on the
| matter was, and are asking how the findings of this paper
| differ in a way to make it newsworthy.
| blueflow wrote:
| If he can't figure that out, i'd regret having asked that
| question because i dont feel like the other replies will be
| of better quality. Ignore the thread please, y'all.
| hans1729 wrote:
| I simply wasn't sure what to make of your comment. I
| probably shouldn't have assumed the worst in the face of
| ambiguity. The sentiment that science needs to be
| newsworthy wrt actual beliefs is omnipresent online,
| indicating (to me) a wrong canvas for your post.
| blueflow wrote:
| But Science is still belief. Because belief is orthogonal
| to whether its researched, well informed, guessed or made
| up.
| hans1729 wrote:
| "Charitable reading" is something I should definitely lean
| more towards. Out of habit I usually assume the worst,
| maybe I should reflect on that.
| cutler wrote:
| This is why I disagree fundamentally with TDD - it kills the
| creative spark. Whatever happened to hiring dedicated testers in
| order to give the creatives freedom to do what they do best?
| Forcing a creative dev to constrain him/herself right out of the
| gate is an exercise in futility made even worse when you add the
| requirement to be a Docker+Kubernetes+AWS gun-slinger. Whatever
| happened to specialisation?
| curiousDog wrote:
| Very true. Though less "prestigious", the most fun I ever had
| was actually working as an SDET in the beginning of my career
| at Microsoft in Azure. I would spend hours dreaming up corner
| cases on how to break dev code in a distributed systems setting
| and came up with (for that time) quite a few unique frameworks
| that helped catch bugs that would've otherwise slipped through
| the usual unit, functional and smoke test archetypes.
| Unfortunately, I believe this job function has been removed
| entirely within MS
| kcplate wrote:
| cutler wrote:
| This is why I disagree fundamentally with TDD - it kills the
| creative spark. Whatever happened to hiring dedicated testers in
| order to give the creative freedom to do what they do best?
| dqpb wrote:
| I don't see why TDD would kill the creative spark, but I do
| think "Agile" development does.
| an9n wrote:
| > The artists and scientists in the study were nominated by
| panels of experts before being validated as exceptional based on
| objective metrics
|
| Hmmmmm
| robonerd wrote:
| 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-fulfilling prophesy because
| creativity is like a muscle that needs to be exercised.
| 62951413 wrote:
| Wouldn't that be a rather unique human trait not following the
| normal probability distribution?
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "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.
| robonerd wrote:
| 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.
| cutler wrote:
| Maybe we're all capable of being a mediocre artist but
| artistic genius is another thing altogether.
| BaculumMeumEst wrote:
| Pursuing art as someone of mediocre skill can be
| extremely fulfilling and worthwhile endeavor. Fixating
| over whether you are a genius is probably not.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| 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.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| There is difference between motivation and aptitude.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| True, but practice makes, if not perfect, at least
| better.
| fleddr wrote:
| Probably true, but as the article suggests, it may be more than
| just exercise. Some people seem to be given a creative brain
| from the get-go, whilst others must work very hard to produce
| creative outcomes, and indeed...may stop trying altogether
| because of this.
|
| If I take the least creative people in my circles, one pattern
| I can spot is that they lack curiosity. Interests are narrow,
| shallow and for pragmatic reasons only. Not ignorant, just
| cognitively passive. My pseudo-scientific take on creativity is
| that it's connecting dots in unforeseen ways. Without curiosity
| though, there's little to connect.
| varispeed wrote:
| 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.
| mattwad wrote:
| For sure. I have a bachelor's in Fine Arts but taught myself to
| code. I think the pendulum has swung too far, I need to get
| back to painting/drawing and exercise that muscle again :)
| redmen wrote:
| That might be much more true for children. Definitely not the
| vast majority of adults.
| baby wrote:
| To me it's a matter of investing time to learn an art medium.
| Painting, playing music, or writing code, all require some
| painful hours/days/weeks/months of learning before you can
| actually use the medium to "create". Most people don't get past
| that learning phase, and thus can never really have fun
| creating.
| bergenty wrote:
| 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.
| robocat wrote:
| > 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.
| jackvalentine wrote:
| I liked your two categories, they make sense to me.
|
| As a discovery-type it is sometimes really difficult to
| work with other people!
| Slow_Hand wrote:
| I find this distinction to match my experience with
| musicians (qualification: I produce records).
|
| I lean more towards this engineer mindset, but know plenty
| of artists who just dive right in and start molding and
| hacking away. One of the big takeaways that I've gotten
| from observing them is the importance of just starting.
| Even if I don't know where I'm headed. If I persist in
| generating bad ideas I will eventually fall into a creative
| groove that is rewarding. It might take an hour or more to
| arrive there, but it happens.
|
| The composer Carla Bley summed up the importance of her
| daily work routine succinctly in an essay: "If the muse
| strikes when you're in the kitchen, the best you're going
| to get is a sandwich."
|
| I believe I also say this sentiment described a while ago
| in a long-forgotten HN essay. The writer referred to it as
| AIC: Ass-in-chair methodology. Just sit down and start
| working.
| pm90 wrote:
| 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.
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| This doesn't say which comes first, though. Does the training of
| "creative" disciplines make the brain work differently from the
| "non-creative" disciplines, or is it a birth trait? The brain is
| an elastic organ.
| exmadscientist wrote:
| Speaking as someone with family experience with a very closely
| related thing... oh man, it's totally 100% visible from birth
| or nearly so. Some brains are just _different_.
|
| And, unfortunately, the schizophrenia thing discussed above is
| real too. Not that it's necessarily genuine schizophrenia or
| even some watered-down version, just that these things live in
| the same metaphorical neighborhood and you cannot pretend
| otherwise.
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| I only bring it up because I graduated from art school and
| now I code all day for my job (I'm older with a family to
| support) and the difference in my thinking styles is
| noticeable. Not only to me, but to my friends by the way I
| speak and in my personality.
|
| This leads me to the "chicken and the egg" question. So often
| people look at coding as an acquisitionable ability, where as
| they view creative ability as something you have to be born
| with, discounting the years if effort that goes into those
| abilities. Be they cooking, painting, writing, what have you.
|
| Even their test subjects had graduate degrees in creative
| disciplines. Generally that doesn't bide well for
| schizoeffective disorders... the comparison to graduate
| degrees in the arts with graduate degrees in mathematics with
| schizoeffective disorders is probably near equal, as many
| papers have linked schizophrenia to a pre-viral load:
|
| https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/newsroom/news-
| releases/....
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| 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!
| tgflynn wrote:
| I used to have lots of ideas. The trouble is none of them
| actually worked.
| markdown wrote:
| Do you actually make things, or is this just rent-seeking idea
| squatting?
| xeromal wrote:
| You could phrase your comments to be a little less hostile
| with some different word choices.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Make things, materials science...
| adfjalkfja wrote:
| Musicians often talk about songs appearing to them to the point
| they feel like they can't take credit for 'writing' them. They
| just appear out of nowhere and are finished in an hour or so.
|
| IME music written this way feels more organic and natural vs
| 'trying' to write a song over a long time period
| dv_dt wrote:
| I think this embodies the experience behind Greek
| mythological Muses.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muses
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| I find it interesting how brain works when we try to solve a
| problem. It is like we have to tell the brain "Here is the
| problem ... now come up with a solution". And then it does
| somehow come up with proposed solutions. But we are unaware of
| how it does that. It is the sub-conscious.
|
| How do we come up with thoughts? They just seem to appear out of
| nowhere. We don't decide what we will think next. Something
| guides what thoughts come to mind next, but we have no idea of
| the internal reasoning that must be going on under the surface.
| drigby wrote:
| Daniel Dennett has an interesting theory. Consciousness is a
| "pandemonium architecture" where clusters of neural connections
| (daemons) "shout" when activated. The more activations, the
| louder it shouts, and the higher it climbs in the unconscious,
| until it gains enough energy to irrupt through the threshold of
| consciousness.
| ezekiel11 wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| winReInstall wrote:
| To connect the unconnected, a feature also seen in which brain-
| disease, often associated with the erroneous associations
| (paranoia, over-association of noise as voices and faces). Show
| me your wunderkind and i show you the shizophrenia in the family.
|
| I wonder if you could even retrain active run-away shizophrenic
| people to produce meaningfull creative outcomes. So lets go to
| the tenderloin and connect random physics and science wikipedia
| articles to a megaphone.
|
| Schools out, but the learning is just getting started.
| plutonorm wrote:
| My mother was schizophrenic and very smart, I'm very smart and
| very creative, sometimes a little crazy, but not psychotic...
| yet, lol.
|
| So this checks out. Your second paragraph is a little word
| salady.
|
| My mind is always set to 100mph, until it's so tired that I
| fall into a mild depression. Then recover. Kinda bipolary. I
| think schizophrenia is what happens to creative brains with
| high connectivity and too much activation. The continuous
| activation causes excessive oxidative stress which eventual
| causes organic damage.
| xattt wrote:
| > So lets go to the tenderloin and connect random physics and
| science wikipedia articles to a megaphone.
|
| Is this word salad deliberate?
| Jgrubb wrote:
| The tenderloin is a neighborhood in San Francisco, one of the
| most interesting in terms of the street citizenry.
| xattt wrote:
| Oh jeez, I thought it was a take on the OP's mention of
| neurodiversity within the post.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| If you're familiar with Vancouver: replace with East
| Hastings
| zeruch wrote:
| If one lives in the Bay Area this is an all linear meat
| grammar meal.
| myth_drannon wrote:
| Nope, just someone who is familiar with San-Francisco.
| krono wrote:
| > So lets go to the tenderloin and connect random physics and
| science wikipedia articles to a megaphone
|
| That is scary good of a description of what goes on in ADHD
| brains all the time.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| I agree with the first paragraph, but think the second
| paragraph conflates genetically linked mental illness with
| drug-induced paranoia, delusions, and general brain rot (which
| is rarely particularly creative).
| tomc1985 wrote:
| 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...
| tiborsaas wrote:
| It was just implied that being a prodigy and being
| schizophrenic might not be far off each other.
| anonporridge wrote:
| Perhaps prodigy's are just the schizophrenics who are lucky
| enough to create value in their extreme heterodox thinking.
| tsol wrote:
| In some really basic way sure, but schizophrenia also
| causes definite excesses and deficiencies. They tend to
| be messy and bad at self care, they can see and hear
| things that aren't there, are subject to delusions, and
| can lack a normal affect
| szundi wrote:
| 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.
| cgio wrote:
| 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.
| Terry_Roll wrote:
| More Phosphatidylcholine, more connections. Tobacco is best for
| schizophrenia.
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