Creative Thinking (1952) | Hacker News Reader

Creative Thinking (1952)

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78 pointsnpalli15 comments

> This, we might say, is a matter of environment; intelligence is a matter of heredity.

Sometimes I think we're better off ignoring this premise because people, irrespective of how much potential they've, will kill themselves in self-doubt over whether they've won the genetic lottery. When I started programming, I had constant worry if I was made for programming—if I had "the right stuff" for it. Now, in the hindsight, that question just sounds silly. Everyone has a knack for programming, it just takes an effort.

I agree. It's really strange that so many people think IQ or intelligence is some sort of fixed value. There are definitely people that seem to come out of the gate at a faster gait while others have serious handicaps to deal with, but as a general rule if you assert you are not smart enough to understand something, you're kind of asserting you understand it to the extent that you can claim you won't be able to get it ... which doesn't make sense.

Also, here's a great article that explores the idea of IQ: https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2009/07/the-tru...

We can gain "lots" of intelligence by reading good books that forces your intellect like Logical Investigations from Edmund Husselr: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/312739.Logical_Investiga...

The other strange thing is that people think about this stuff in the most mundane of situations.

If there's an impassable genetic predisposition to intelligence, it's preventing you from becoming Einstein - not, you know, a mid level programmer at a mobile app studio.

I agree, the only profession that is worth considering whether you hit the genetic lottery would be theoretical physics or pure mathematics and other similar fields.

The first portion of Shannon's analysis of creativity, the creative person, reflects closely with past creativity research. However, IQ has been shown to barely correlate with creativity in most cases. Amabile has commentary on this topic in her seminal article, "The Social Psychology of Creativity". She argued that there are three components of creativity. Two are shared by Shannon, namely, task motivation and domain relevant knowledge (knowledge acquired in any field over time). The third, and focus of this article is creative ability. Coincidentally, the researcher E Paul Torrance created the oldest and most valid way to measure this called the Torrance Tests for Creative Thinking. Regarding the second portion of Shannon's article, ways of generating creative productions, there are many creativity techniques developed by Osborn, de Bono, and others. Shannon's particular tips are reminiscent of a divergent thinking tool called SCAMPER, an acronym that gives guidelines on how to look at any idea or challenge differently. The letters stand for, respectively, Substitute, Combine, Add to, Modify, Put to other uses, Eliminate, or Reverse.

"I don’t want to sound egotistical here, I don’t think that I am beyond the knee of this curve and I don’t know anyone who is."

I'm always so surprised when I read such statements from extraordinary people. Why the hell would Shannon of all people have such a distorted view of himself? Is this just hypocrisy, a kind of fake humility, or do most geniuses think they are average?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome

I don't know if this answers your question, but I'd say a great deal of intellectual strength can be derived from acknowledging the depth of our ignorance in the first place. Shannon seems to be getting at this in his descriptions of dissatisfaction and drive.

On somewhat of a tangent, in many ways science and creativity are fundamentally opposed. Science requires constant, humble resignation to reality. And, though creativity may work within the confines of reality, I'd say it tends to have a more rebellious attitude. Shannon doesn't explicitly say it, but he's definitely getting at the fact that the greatest intellectuals manage to excel at both somehow and I think his suggestions at problems solving are an attempt to give a potential equation for doing so.

All that aside I think your question has more to do with Shannon's personality than his intellectual achievements and I'm sure his personality type can be found evenly distributed across the population's IQ range.

I believe it's genuine. Many geniuses have had the attitude that there are other factors at play in their success, like passion or drive. Perfectionism combined with high passion can push you to great lengths.

He is judging himself in a different perspective than most people. And so not only is he genuine he is right.

I think it's a natural consequence of being really smart and knowing a lot about some field.

If you know a lot about some field, you become extremely aware both of all the things that you don't know that you wish you knew about that field.

If you're really smart you probably affiliate with a lot of other people who are really smart. You also have a sense of how much these smart folks know that you can barely fathom.

It's not an ironclad relationship, of course, but an awful lot of the smartest people I know are humbler than an awful lot of the idiots that I know, and that's my current working hypothesis as to why.

Understanding Shannon's lack of hubris in this essay requires some context.

Shannon places Isaac Newton & Alan Turing above the curve, so it a very high bar.

This is Shannon writing at age 36, still at Bell labs producing practical work for the military, often classified and mostly on crypto.

His seminal memorandum 'A practical Theory of Communication' had begun circulating only 4 years earlier and it's full impact was not yet apparent.

> distorted view of himself

What would be the correct view then? To be saying, "I am a genius"? But who says that and is ever a genius?

I think the point is, there is no such thing. Genius is a reputation, and an overblown one at that, but justified by context, such as being the best out of a group of people.

What we should be more concerned about is how ordinary people go on to achieve extraordinary feats.

We're all human with given the same amount of time in a day. Saying some are genius and are exceptions to normalcy is a cop out. Like the rumor that Bill Gates and Elon Musk both have photographic memories. Turns out, there is no such thing as a photographic memory. There are techniques to memorization, but they don't seem to be doing those either. It's shocking I know, but they're normal people.

This is interesting as it's Shannon's own writing. There was a recent Medium post listed here on HN about Shannon: "Claude Shannon: How a Genius Thinks, Works, and Lives (medium.com)"

> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14819377

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