Creative Genius Driven by Distraction
northwestern.edu
northwestern.edu
Back to work.
There are people who have focused, surgical thinking. They solve a hard problem by trying to follow a chain of logic arguments, and give up after a few tries. When they don't fail, they find the solution quickly.
There are also people with "noisier" thinking, who can stray from the chain of logic arguments, or even get lost. These people throw everything and the kitchen sink at the problem, can think of almost unlimited ways of attacking a hard problem, and often discover unexpected properties.
The "noisy thinkers" take a longer path to arrive at the solution, but they often manage to go around barriers in a way that is impossible for the former group.
creative annealing
"At Princeton he received complaints for regularly playing extremely loud German march music on his gramophone, which distracted those in neighbouring offices, including Albert Einstein, from their work."
So those two geniuses were opposite in this way, and I would describe their thinking verbatim as you claim!
That is, in this case, von Neumann being a "surgical thinker", he might have needed external noise sources to achieve breakthroughs ...
I still have trouble with trying to "conform" or find "the right way" to do something, though.
Assume the solution to the problem is simple enough that it can be found in five minutes. Then spend five minutes trying to find the solution.
If you found the solution, congratulate yourself. If you didn't find the solution, do the above procedure for fifteen minutes instead of five.
This approach gives direct, "surgical" solutions for simple problems, and leads you to more creative solutions to more complicated problems.
"Driven to Distraction" by Drs. Hallowell and Ratey [0] changed my life. The big moment for me was learning that AD/HD doesn't mean that you can't pay attention ... it's that you have little conscious control over where your attention goes unless the novelty factor is high.
Seriously. Changed my life.
Creating an intelligent thing is like creating a garden, all that is required is to prepare the soil and remove those plants/ideas which do not serve the purpose of the garden.
Perhaps the idea that is contained in this message will find a home in the garden of another mind - give it a chance to grow, it needs a particular kind of soil. But once you get it started it's a corker.
Perhaps someone with a different set of skills to mine can make this idea manifest. I strongly believe that formalising this notion will lead to strong AI.
Sweet. There's still hope for me...
[0] - http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/05/negative-creativity/
I encourage anyone who identifies with the above to take this HSP quiz: http://hsperson.com/test/highly-sensitive-test/
I've always thought that creativity and chaos go hand in hand. At least in my experience. The inability to draw barriers between categories and subjects.
I think the bigger struggle is being able to retain focus on an idea once you've conceived it. You can have all the innovative ideas in the world, doesn't really amount to much if you can't pull it together and ship.
I also took some advanced creative writing courses. I was the only science major in my Novella class. So of course I wrote sci-fi. Had the most original story out of the group.
but i feel that this ability to hyper-concentrate helps me overcome an otherwise average intelligence. anyone else experiences this?
set timers
When i was younger i could blast music and not get thrown off a line of thought. But these days even a notification ding will get me derailed.
Somewhat unintuitive too, but there it is. Low filter threshold and hyperfocus co-existing in the same brain. I'm waiting for the fMRI results on what is going on here.
I'm surprised this wasn't linked anywhere in the press release.