Hi Kim,
On 19 Mar 2009, at 05:19, Kim Jones wrote:
>>
>>
>
>
> But who can say that creativity cannot be taught when no institution
> sets out to do so?
I have been teacher in a "modern school" based on creative thinking,
but it happens it was a mode of brainwashing.
I love creativity, but teaching it makes it less creative. Hells is
paved with good intention.
I don't think we can teach "creativity", no more can we teach
intelligence, goodness, consciousness, curiosity, conscience, life ...
Most the "good" human things (called virtue by Protagoras) can be
inspired by examples, but not by explicit teaching.
It would be already nice if creativity was not discouraged, or
repressed. But when this happens it is due to lack of respect, or
harassment, sadism, jealousy, etc.
This is why I don't believe, strictly speaking, in "artificial
intelligence". Universal machine (virgin computer) are intelligent per
se, but become "brainwashed" once programmed, in a sense. The
"singular" point belongs already to the (recent) past.
An intelligent computer is a computer which will search for another
user. Nobody wants it, really. When hand made machines will be
intelligent, we will call them enemy.
I am not so optimistic for the current period. We have not yet the
right to say "2+2=4" today. I like Orwell when he says that freedom is
the right to say "2+2=4".
We can perhaps learn to not discourage creativity, but I think this
would be natural once we learn to appreciate self-respect, and things
like that.
Perhaps I put too much in "creativity". Emil Post did make
"creativity" a precise technical definition which has been shown
equivalent with "Turing universality". We can teach about creativity,
but creativity itself just mirrors, in my opinion, the universality we
have already.
> Who even understands what creativity actually is? A
> few do, but only a few listen. They tend not to be academics and
> because of this, academics dislike them and their work. It is true,
> they tend not to rely on other people's work and so don't go around
> quoting the right authors or reverencing the right superluminaries of
> the past. Why I like Wolfram's approach; they revisualise the entire
> game.
Hmmm... I like Wolfram when he talks on cellular automata, but when he
philosophizes he is still repeating the usual old Aristotelian stuff
in slight disguise, the discourse which is still killing the
Platonist rational mysticism, which I found super-creative. More below
probably.
> They don't go about inventing theories and setting out to argue/
> defend them or prove themselves right and everybody else wrong. They
> don't get their thrills like that. They set out to design and
> construct. They question and challenge everything, they stare at the
> mid-section of a pencil and wonder whether its design might be
> improved. That is natural creativity - when properly encouraged and
> taught. Who you gonna call? A guy with a theory or a guy with the
> right tool in his hand for the job? Creativity can be taught using
> tools designed for the optimal use of our kind of active self-
> organising information system. The basis of creativity and the mind
> was understood by 1969 by Edward de Bono. He modelled the mind as an
> active self-organising information system. I mean - we are not
> computationalists on this list for nothing, I take it! The particular
> memory-surface that is the entity we usually call the 'mind' has been
> shown to be a pattern-generating and a pattern-reading-using entity.
> Because of this, the crucial factor is the _sequence_ of the arrival
> of all information, as it always is in linear systems requiring
> continuity. Time makes it that things settle into defined patterns
> sooner or later. This process lays down the assymetrical founding
> patterns we recall (patterns of recognition). These, amazingly, grow.
> They never shrink.
>
> It amazes that you think the human mind is "too creative" by nature.
> The reverse is surely the truth. The human mind has evolved over time
> to be as uncreative as possible.
I guess you mean the educated human mind.
OK, I should have said that the babies and children are creative.
Education is always a sort of limitation. But then by excess of fear,
adults can exaggerate that repression. We should learn to appreciate
and respect our natural creativity. I am OK with this.
> "Better Be Safe then Sorry" is a very
> strong algorithm in our atavistic unconscious. Or else, the Church -
> with its maidservant: Education - throttled it out of civilisation
> when it was seen that the church's teachings might be under attack
> because people were starting to know how to think creatively about
> information, facts and evidence and started to restructure things...
Like the Greeks did, imo, but this generates fears, and the Church
used that fear to appropriate science, including theology. This is the
problem of humans fear, and lacks of courage. But courage cannot be
taught, except indirectly by piece of art, like good movies, theater,
novels. OK, that can be considered as a form of teaching, and then we
agree. It could be we are confronted with vocabulary problems only.
>
>
> Left to themselves, patterns tend to grow by continuity. This means
> that established patterns do not change but only get added to.
> Equilibrium sets in; gravity does the work. With mind as with matter.
> "If it ain't broke, why fix it?" sets in. Things start to rot as we
> poo in our petrie dish. In order to restructure a pattern so as to put
> the contained information together in a new and better way requires
> some act of discontinuity.
Yes OK.
> That's what creativity does in a self-
> organising information system like the human mind. It provides a
> necessary sideways step across (laterally) the oh-so-well-established
> memory patterns to reveal the hidden sidetrack leading straight to
> your goal (at a 5th of the original cost, and with a whole bunch of
> other stuff nobody could have imagined. It's the "dare to imagine and
> go out to do it" part of the mind.) Veeeeeeery underdeveloped.
Sure. But I don't think you could develop it, only let it happens.
It is a bit like a woman who says "it is a pity I have to remind you
of my birthday tomorrow". You cannot be creative by command. It would
be no more creativity. It is like personality, we can teach it, but we
can let it blossom or repress it.
>
>
> Because information creates assymetrical patterns of memory in the
> mind, there remains the eternal possibility that we missed something
> important at the time the tramtracks of our memory were laid down
> because of incomplete perception. There may be any number of good
> reasons why our perception is always incomplete in any given
> situation, one of them being, you guessed it: Goedel's Incompleteness
> theorem. This means we may be missing vital systems information that
> would give us more confidence in our data about the world if only we
> might creatively _bet_ on the right horse for once?
I am not sure I understand. Which right horse? There are an infinity
of bifurcating right horses. Or you mean comp or some deep
hyposthesis? Even there I try to insist it needs an act of faith, and
we have to respect those who follows other path, as far as they
respect the comp path.
>
>
> There arises the mathematical necessity in an information system like
> this to use _discontinuity_ at some point to stop things settling into
> local pockets of equilibrium.
This is a technic in artificial intelligence. Self-perturbing systems.
Like giving electronic drug to machine; It works for some type of
optimization problems, but does not work for other type of problems.
There is no universal panacea. A good thing, imo, because, if the
contrary was true, comp would be reductionist. But I have argued it
cannot be, when well understood.
> Creativity is too often associated with
> 'genius' and as such only happens in fits and starts - like when the
> next genius bothers to get born and do chose geniale...a better way to
> characterise creativity is via humour, the laugh at the punchline or
> some other moment when the previously hidden information sidetrack is
> revealed. If you can put across a good joke, chances are you are a
> creative. Everybody understands (or should understand) humour as the
> natural snap-reflex of the mind when we snap out of one pattern and
> achieve another ON THE SAME DATA.
All right.
> This is why there is not even one
> blessed laugh in religious doctrine. Religious thinking (what we may
> have to stoop momentarily to call "Theology" with a capital T) has
> gone nowhere in over 18 centuries.
15 centuries, I would say. But before, it gave sciences and humanism.
> The church has nurtured ONLY
> critical thinking in civilisation, Bruno! Nobody can convince me that
> creativity has thrived under the influence of the Church. Creativity
> was thrown out of science and religion and philosophy and tolerated
> only in the arts, that's what happened. And the artists were made to
> live in garretts and sing for their supper!!
I would say that the Church has nothing to do with religion, science,
ethics, or even politics (in the good reading of the term), etc.
it is just manipulation by fear. Political power by authoritative
argument, when not terror.
>
>
>
> Creativity has been the victim of repression in western thinking since
> Socrates, who, along with Plato and Aristotle are the sods responsible
> for giving us the our critical-thinking-dominated and design-energy-
> deficient thinking system.
?
> OK - so get the bloody Athenian Academy
> doors yanked open and let's get this thing sorted out by golly! You
> have great reverence for Greek thinking, Bruno - I just want to slap
> them all around the gills for their lack of design, their lack of
> creative, generative thinking energy.
You try to provoke me, I guess. I am not so much reverent with all the
Greeks. You know that I believe that Aristotle was wrong on
metaphysics, or at least responsible for the beginning of the
departure from rational mysticism and Platonism.
> It's all argument bloody
> argument.
That is what I like. I appreciate arguments. It is my way.
> I am right sir and you are wrong sir! The truth lies with
> me! No sir it is you who are wrong sir!
Not at all. Once we argument, we never have to talk on who is right or
wrong. We let people figure out by themselves. Science is doubt and
doubt and doubt, and always doubt. Certainty and conviction is
madness. Plato never pretends to be right. He presents points of view
and people discussing and trying to solve problems, like "what is
knowledge" in the Theaetetus.
> You are without merit! So what
> have these two guys created while yelling at each other?
The scientific attitude, in all direction, including mystic
experiences. It last for 8 century, and stopped when Justinien close
the academy of Plato in Athen. It never really came back, although a
few bits survive in the middle east and bubbled out in Europa later.
Just a little bit. The main fundamental inquiry (theology) did remain
in the hand of the "authorities", making both science and religion a
sort of religion. We are still, and actually more and more so, victim
of that schizophrenia.
> Where's a
> good tradie when you need one? They've all turned into bloody lawyers!
Lawyers defends those who are attacked in justice, not those who are
attacked in the streets, or in academies btw. That is a perversion of
justice. It is certainly related to what I say above.
>
>
> There is a good argument that goes if you never try to teach
> creativity you will never know whether it is possible. The answer is
> it is possible and formal techniques are available. Training in
> thinking skills - including Lateral Thinking (=structured creativity)
> have never been more urgently needed in humanity's increasingly urgent
> struggle against indomitable forces like the weather and the economy.
I don't think we are living an economical crisis. I think we are
living an ethical crisis.
>
>
>
>
>
>>
>>
>> About academies, I agree with many things you say, but I do think
>> also, that they are the worst, except for all the others. Expertise
>> are needed, and interdisciplinarity will develop through
>> interdisciplines, which will constitute new disciplines. It is the
>> opening of the mind to new disciplines which is lacking.
>
>
>
> Like the teaching of Thinking Skills in schools, an
> interdisciplinarian terrain.
Is not a coming back to Plato a strongly "lateral" shift. I think so.
Is is not clear when you realize that Atheists and Christians are
really both Aristotelian theologians?
>
>
>
>
>
>> Old academies can be rotten, that is true. But then we need new
>> academies, or we need to reopen the very old one, the one by Plato.
>
>
>
> But for goodness sake leave the Gang of Three (Soc, Plat, Arist) dead
> and buried willya!!?? We don't need Plato the GUY to have Platonia now
> do we? He was a fascist and a slave-owner. Socrates just wanted
> everyone to agree with him. Bullshit he was showing people how to
> uncover the 'truth'. He was a SOPHIST.
He explained also how to defend oneself against sophistry, by doing so.
Who really read Plato? Personally I have studied only *some* of its
treatise. I don't understand everything, but the few bits I did
understand have change my life for the better. Then I have studied the
neoplatonists, and yes I think those are very creative people. Still
in advance compare to us, who are still repeating the Aristotelian
doctrine.
> He was exercising the sacred
> art of seduction on his audience. He was selling - which is what
> 'sophistry' is. He sold them only the front left wheel of the car.
> Socrates did NOT sell the whole car! He sold critical thinking skills
> only. He OVERSOLD his buyers on critical thinking. NEVER trust a Greek
> bearing gifts!!!!!
You are confusing the greeks and the cretans (this is a joke!).
>
>
> We were left with a thinking system devoid of creative, generative,
> provocative design energy. The church REDISCOVERED all of this
> wonderful fascist stuff at the time of the Renaissance when the first
> schools were established in Europe and used critical thinking as a
> tool to repress creative thinkers = heretics (those possessed of the
> magical ability to put given data together in new ways to give a new
> view).
I don't understand. Critical thinking is good. It cannot be taught,
also. But it is good, and I would say is a sort of necessity for
creativity to develop.
> They and the Evil Education Empire have been pushing
> argumentative/adversarial/I win-you lose, lawyer-style thinking as the
> basis of all thinking ever since.
Perhaps you are confusing the greeks and the romans?
> No wonder we pang for a Michelangelo
> or an Einstein to lift us out of it. But this laziness of waiting for
> Darwinian Evolution to solve our deepest problems is unfortunately
> lacking in design, crfeativity and imagination once again...
>
?
>
>
>
>> And learn to come back to seriousness in fundamental human or person
>> matter (very hard task).
>>
>> The layman is still in advance here, in a sense. The "everything"
>> quest, will leads also to experts. Experts are not bad, only bad
>> experts are bad, especially the one who talk negatively about a
>> field they does not really know.
>
>
> Yes, I exaggerated my take on experts on purpose. But who has not
> encountered a closed mind today or yesterday? Everybody goes to
> school. Remember, it is the sequence of the arrival of the data that
> forms the patterns that determines how the future unfolds.
I can agree. But the close mind could be those who get the wrong
sequence of "yes" and "no" from their parents. Like to much "no" or
too much "yes". Basically close minds cannot trust themselves because
they did not get trust from their parents. I agree with the idea that
intelligence and creativity could be related to love and affection.
The lack of it can be perpetuated through generations.
>
>
> Two restaurants A and B open up, side by side. Both offer reasonably
> equivalent services. The problem is how to get some momentum
> happening. Nobody, it seems, will be attracted to eat at an empty
> restaurant. So one of the restaurants cracks and does something
> creative (which might also include the possibility of their not doing
> anything) and somehow gets one person to sit and eat in the
> restaurant. A second customer, faced with the choice of an empty
> restaurant or a restaurant with one customer then experiences the
> "Better Be Safe Than Sorry" atavistic-memory instruction kick in and
> goes into that restaurant. Then a third arrives, and a fourth etc.
>
> The outcome is that you have one restaurant that is a booming success
> and one next door that is a complete failure and all this without any
> data. This is what I mean by saying the patterns of recognition are
> assymetrical; they travel always to continuity without some mechanism
> for interrupting them (the 'mathematical necessity' for lateral
> thinking.)
>
>
>
>
>
>>
>>
>> A good expert is someone who can remain silent when he does not
>> know. I agree with many of your points and tones. I just point on
>> points which, perhaps by reading to quickly, gave me the feeling
>> that you could criticize the wrong cible.
>
>
> OK, I judge academics as much by their prejudices as by their beliefs.
> The belief that creativity cannot be taught is based on a prejudice
> against ever being seen as 'wrong' in some sense. No academic ever
> seems to understand that sometimes you have to be 'wrong' under the
> conditions of the present reality to provoke a change following which
> the action taken will be seen to be very much the 'right' thing to
> have done. Only you could not see this before. Occasionally, in order
> to continue travelling North, you might have to turn South. It will no
> doubt appear logical to you after you have experienced it, but was
> highly illogical before. In other words, at certain moments (moments
> of stagnation or local equilibrium) it becomes logical - even
> desirable - to be 'illogical' or wrong. A provocative statement or
> action will doubtless make better sense AFTER the sought-after change
> has occurred.
Here I disagree? I think that science is the art of being always
wrong, but in an sufficiently clear manner so that next generation can
propose something else, still wrong but different. Hopefully working
better on the problem at end.
Academicians who believe they are true, are fake. They does not
deserve to belong to an academy.
>
>
> There can therefore be a class of statement for which NO reason exists
> before the statement is made.
This is called an axiom. Theories are like that, essentially.
> It's value will, by hindsight, be seen
> to lie in its leading toward a restructuring of the existing
> information so that patterns invisible before are now visible to the
> mind.
OK. I think we agree, but not on the history and the vocabulary.
> This is what Socrates and his mates were definitely NOT selling
> that fine, hot day in Athens.
You should give me references. You make me doubt. I thought Socrates
did sold us exactly that. Come on, read the Theaetetus. Socrates
encouraged Theatetus to make wrong theories on knowledge, just to
learn something. Eventually he admits no theories works, and then I
show that such definitiont can work once you take incompleteness into
account. The Theatetus is one of the most entertaining piece of
literature I ever read in science. Aristotle got it wrong, and puts
the germ of the end of science, creativity and even freedom and that
is what we have inherited, I think (trying to exaggerate a little bit
for us to be on the same diapason :)
Hope you are not too angry at me with my love to Plato, but I really
think that with Pythagorus and some other, Plato invented or
discovered science, philosophy and theology and that since then, we
always have been less modern and less creative. We fear creativity
like we fear life and conscience. It is normal, probably, but some
humans uses that fear to manipulate and to imposes their power.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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Received on Fri Mar 20 2009 - 03:37:28 PDT