But that's not what they're saying. They're claiming it's a creativity hack, not that you might learn some interesting stuff. That's the entire thesis of the post... which isn't backed up at all.
from https://edoc.hu-berlin.de/items/a8357c0b-1e41-4eff-8ad1-fe3b...
reading the obits might fall under "cultural exposure".
As opposed to OP. Which adduces so little evidence for the claim about reading obituaries that a rando like me could actually write a more persuasive argument for the benefits of reading obituaries (because I at least wrote one thing tenuously inspired by reading an obituary the other month: https://gwern.net/traffic-lights ).
Even the most shameless periodical usually tries for at least 3 anecdotes, no matter how dubious and strained, before declaring it the hot new trend or It Is Known fact.
* One of Sawyer's research topics, as it happens.
Interesting, what's your recommended resource for learning more about this?
I don't know if the concept of "point of no return" is really such an obscure thing. It was part of my standard Illinois drivers education in the mid-00s. Every drive I did with the instructor he'd ask me to call it out when we approached a signal.
We, since I will gladly agree with the criticism and add myself to that side, are asking for one example of the supposedly creativity-inducing action to have even perhaps tangentially produced some sort of creative insight.
As an example I would submit that the simple advice of "take a walk/shower" has much better attestation for prompting creativity than "read the obituaries". It hardly seems like a stretch to ask the author to provide even a single example of this achieving something.
1. "Functional fixedness" was explored in a classic Candle Problem[1] found that high drive (ie rewards on a deadline) led to fewer subjects solving the problem.
2. Quality versus quantity. Sadly I can't find the TED talk (likely a decade ago?) that I saw about this but the basic idea: give subjects some kind of design problem (paper airplanes, egg drop, bridge building) and a metric measure them by. Then split them into two groups; one you measure on how many they build and the other on how well their final product is. I think there may have been some intermediate evaluation step as well, wish I could find the original research. Paradoxically, the quantity group wins on quality scores. Lesson being not to focus on perfecting your first solution.
Everything the author said about creativity checked out from my experience, except that I'm not working in such a generalist field that obituaries light up relevant 'unrelated associations' for me. However, it seems completely plausible from my perspective.