Group brainstorming is actually a pretty crappy technique for creativity; IIRC individual brainstorming beats the crap out of it. I suggest reading “Serious Creativity” by de Bono if you’re, well, seriously interested in creativity.
(Also, the post is terribly disorganized and unclear; it probably belongs in the Discussion section if it belongs anywhere on the site.)
My guess is that group brainstorming sucks because people are afraid of being judged for having crazy ideas by other members of the group. Seems like marijuana might solve this problem.
More generally, we could rank various brainstorming methods from least controlled to most controlled:
One person high alone.
One person high, being directed by a sober person.
One person sober alone.
Several sober people, all being afraid of each other’s judgment.
Current data suggests that “one person sober alone” beats “one person high alone” and “several sober people”, but we don’t have much data for the high person who’s getting directed. Furthermore, it’s plausibly the one that’s closest to the optimal level of controlledness.
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of what creativity is. Read “Serious Creativity” to dissolve the idea that creativity and craziness are related. (It’s actually an optimization and search process—and as per the Sequences, you can’t improve such a process much by adding randomness to it. That is, above a certain small level of randomness, you won’t be making things better, compared to changing the higher-level processes as per Serious Creativity. SC’s author offers a proper reductionist explanation of creativity, at the, “AI people wanting to implement creativity should read this” level.)
Does the book have a strong empirical basis? Does the author quote experimental studies and then draw conclusions from them or does he rely on intuition and personal experience in coming up with his thesis? I’m asking because the book’s Amazon page tells me that the author is a business consultant and the whole thing has a very self-helpy feel to it.
And there was a story some time back about scientists who found similarities in brain function of highly creative people and schizophrenics so the idea that creativity and craziness are related might be somewhat true.
Group brainstorming is actually a pretty crappy technique for creativity; IIRC individual brainstorming beats the crap out of it. I suggest reading “Serious Creativity” by de Bono if you’re, well, seriously interested in creativity.
(Also, the post is terribly disorganized and unclear; it probably belongs in the Discussion section if it belongs anywhere on the site.)
My guess is that group brainstorming sucks because people are afraid of being judged for having crazy ideas by other members of the group. Seems like marijuana might solve this problem.
More generally, we could rank various brainstorming methods from least controlled to most controlled:
One person high alone.
One person high, being directed by a sober person.
One person sober alone.
Several sober people, all being afraid of each other’s judgment.
Current data suggests that “one person sober alone” beats “one person high alone” and “several sober people”, but we don’t have much data for the high person who’s getting directed. Furthermore, it’s plausibly the one that’s closest to the optimal level of controlledness.
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of what creativity is. Read “Serious Creativity” to dissolve the idea that creativity and craziness are related. (It’s actually an optimization and search process—and as per the Sequences, you can’t improve such a process much by adding randomness to it. That is, above a certain small level of randomness, you won’t be making things better, compared to changing the higher-level processes as per Serious Creativity. SC’s author offers a proper reductionist explanation of creativity, at the, “AI people wanting to implement creativity should read this” level.)
Does the book have a strong empirical basis? Does the author quote experimental studies and then draw conclusions from them or does he rely on intuition and personal experience in coming up with his thesis? I’m asking because the book’s Amazon page tells me that the author is a business consultant and the whole thing has a very self-helpy feel to it.
And there was a story some time back about scientists who found similarities in brain function of highly creative people and schizophrenics so the idea that creativity and craziness are related might be somewhat true.
Similar point about intuition in “Strategic Intuition” by WIll Duggan