Where would we be without the likes of Da Vinci, Turing and Goethe?

Things mentioned in this podcast

• Jordan Peterson on the ‘curse of creativity’
• Wallas’ ‘The Art of Thought’
• Kaufman and Beghetto on types of creativity
• Guilford (1950) in an early attempt to characterise and measure creativity
• Article about factors that influence creativity
• A review of creativity literature

For more information on Aleph Insights visit our website https://alephinsights.com or to get in touch about our podcast email [email protected]

Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast produced by me, Fraser McGruer for Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm here with Peter Coghill and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights and this week we're discussing creativity. Nick, can you lead us in please?

Yeah well, for reasons to do with the YouTube suggestion algorithm, I get a lot of things popping up from intellectual dark web people including Jordan Peterson who is now a sort of bit of a celebrity psychologist guru type and so I'm not a particular fan of his but I gave this one a go. It was about creative people and why they find life difficult and he made the claim that creative people throughout history are always going to find themselves being persecuted because authoritarians don't like being questioned and I thought that was a very, personally thought that was quite a narrow understanding of what creativity is so I thought we'd look into that, you know, ask the question of where, I mean everyone bangs on about creativity and everyone seems to, everyone claims they want more of it in their lives and so on well what is it and is it good? You know, is it dangerous? That's what I'm asking really. Okay and I know this is not quite what we're talking about, who is Jordan Peterson again? He's a psychologist who sort of is one of these intellectual dark web people who talk about things that are a bit sort of controversial, considered to be you know a bit sort of non-PC. Has he had some like internet outlets? Yeah he's famous because he had an interview with a presenter on Channel 4 where he pretty, he kind of, yeah it was judged to be pretty much him one, Kathy Newman.

Okay so creativity, what is it? What's it all about?

Peter do you want to? Well not wanting to make this another moany podcast but I'm going to start with a gripe. Well this is because you're an engineer. Yeah well yes it is exactly right okay so I've got a beef with how some disciplines. You said that in quite a creative way by the way, I've got a beef with it but sorry go on. Some sort of disciplines or subjects are labeled as creative. Right. So arts and dance and painting things like they're often just created, they're creative things to do. Are you going to start to talk about creative engineering solutions? Yeah well yeah so what, so that sort of assumes that other things are non-creative so that all the sciences and all the engineering massy subjects are non-creative. Right. Well I think nothing could be further from the truth that those subjects are all about solving problems and coming up with novel solutions to things and novel ways of understanding the world. So they're no less creative. I think that this sort of is lazy language that's creativity is a big bunch of stuff that we can't codify as being a set of principles and disciplines. There's yeah that's so so winge over but yeah. Okay so I think I can go along with that to a

degree in that there's an element of you know lateral thinking of original thinking that can be applied to something like an innovative that can be applied to sciences maths etc. Great but that kind of doesn't get the juices flowing in the same way that if you're watching a live performance of some music for example. I mean it doesn't get the emotions going.

I get my juices get flowing if I look at a particularly interesting bridge I find that pretty evocative or I think about the marvellous world-changing things like penicillin you know that sort of that's pretty. Or even literally the person who invented the juicing

machine that probably gets his juices flowing. That very figuratively gets my juices flowing.

But let's think about this seriously for a moment let's think about this seriously for a moment so let's say you're going to see a concert for example. Fraser you're already you've got this

presumption that there's you and you know what creative things and you're assuming that the performance of you know a piano concerto is creative. I'm going to argue it's not right it's just sitting down and playing notes that somebody else has written down. When you by the time you go and see a concert you are not seeing the act of creation you're seeing an act of recitation. You make a good point. So I think we can't keep going on about this I think that's what we want to drill into is is is it right that people have this perception that you know that's sort of doing doing science and engineering is sort of in some important way not creative whereas art and you know pottery is. I'm going to argue very much that it isn't. Okay yeah no you make

a good point actually. So I don't know what to say then therefore. Well what is creativity right? Okay what is it? So creativity so yeah I'll have a stab at answering this. Go on then and I don't

want this to be circular. I don't want you to say creativity is when you start creating new things

right you have to actually define it in procedural terms. No I'm not going to no no no no I'm not going to define it in procedural terms because that's this kind of that's the kind of way you

would answer the question. I'm going to answer it in my way. It takes magic out right yeah and

magic's defined as creative stuff. So I think it's I mean I do think it's in whatever field whether it's in the arts or whether it's in sciences I do think it's about thinking about things in a new way in a different way and and not about yeah not just relying on past ways of doing things and thinking about things I think it's partly that. I do think there is actually an element and I'm making something new potentially. So I think there's a newness an originality either in the process or in the end product. That is my brilliant answer. Okay well that what you've described I

mean I think it pretty much goes along with what Peter was saying. Right. I'm happy with that. It's yeah that that process is something that actually is just any endeavour done well right.

So are there so here's the question then are there so are there are there people who are better at

doing that than others? Well we can yeah that seems to be the case. And there are absolutely. Right yeah but I mean so we know that intuitively but there's also evidence about you know and so the problem is nobody's really quite sure how to define creative. There's hundreds of different definitions of it. I've got my own. I just defined it. I did a good job. Yeah brilliant. Yeah you we can sweep away all of that you know 50 years of creativity research because all of that is now footnotes of what you just said. Thank you. So it's quite creative in itself. Yeah. Generally they try it they do these things where they try and get people to think of lots of ways of doing something. So they'll say you know here's find unusual ways of using a brick and a banana you know. Deal that business. I mean so the essence of from a cognitive point of view so this is where I'm coming at it from is that it involves the formulation of hypotheses about things whether that's hypotheses about things that could be true or hypotheses about things that could work. I know you're shaking your head because you're misinterpreting what I'm saying. No. The point is that it is from a cognitive point of view the role of creative thinking is to suggest possibilities right. Okay. And then critical thinking or experimentation or evidence gathering is going to find out whether those possibilities work. So the creative part of thinking involves generating those possibilities. I'm simply rephrasing what you said using different words and you now think you're disagreeing with me right. So it's not that I think you over intellectualize things sometimes. The process is of creativity. The red rag thing. Yeah it's poorly understood. The process isn't well understood. Obviously if we could understand it we would have been able to create tools to do it and we haven't by and large you know artificial intelligence at the moment cannot really do creativity meaningfully because it's all based on generally on existing data and the whole point of creative thinking is that it goes sort of beyond the existing data and tries to look at other alternative explanations or

ways of doing things. There are just mention there are a few techniques like genetic machine learning which are kind of doing that but in a very crude brute forcey kind of way. So they start the famous experiments where they have virtual simulated animals that are sort of evolving in a simulation. They start off with a set of parameters like they can grow a leg and it can move at a certain speed and then the computer works out a new generation by trying lots hundreds or thousands of different variations of that and keeping the ones that worked best to getting towards a certain goal. But it's a very brute force kind of way.

I mean that's the thing is that I feel like creative thinking in a way is a shortcut to some sort of brute force method. Once you can define the parameters along which you are trying to innovate and in this case it would be things like the shapes of objects which you can define on a continuum and you have enough processing power well you simply can generate all of those possibilities but we can't do that right human brains can't do that so the way that we do it is a totally different process which is you know as I said it's not very well understood but it does involve associations and trying to sort of you know draw analogies between one thing and another and you know so a human way of approaching that puzzle would be to perhaps you know experiment with different objects or you try to imagine different types of objects but based broadly on what kind of sort of works or to make a big leap and try a totally different shape whereas machines can simply enumerate every single possibility and look through it and so the creative process is a response the creative process in humans is a response to the fact that we haven't got the computational power to do that it's sort of yeah when you're generating ideas

you're generating ones that you've already kind of pre-selected by some earlier process that's gone in your mind you're not trying everything you're just trying the ones that you think were more likely to work it's a sort of it's a shortcut to that brute force method as you say look hold on but yeah I sort of agree but I sort of don't I mean look I can see this very

this reminds me you're gone I can see the sense and I can see the logic in what you're saying right however as I've said because I haven't said it flamboyantly enough you assume that I'm somehow missing the point of creativity no no the put a scarf on yeah exactly yeah where's your

beret um no but look I think it's I don't think that an individual necessarily goes through that thought process as as if they're drawing a painting but their brains do no yes no no because you I might just be there going right I'm going to draw a picture of a family member or I'm going to do a portrait um I mean I'm doing this at the moment and I don't just sit there and go I don't go through this process that you said yes you do otherwise you wouldn't know what to do there's

very good neurology you literally wouldn't know what to do with your paintbrush in the first place if you weren't going through some process of formulating possible courses of action no there's

some very good neurology to back it up that your brain is actually flitting between different modes of operation and the more creative people are able to uh brigade those parts of the brain in a more controlled way than the inverted commas less creative people um they they're more random or they are more dominated by one particular set of parts of the brain so that so it's the the the literature suggests that how they codifying creativity neurologically is the ability to flip between modes of brain more quickly but also maintain a control over that process you seriously you engineers and economists you're just taking all the fun out of this see I mean the thing is

you you I'm not expecting you as a mere creative person to have a good deal of insight into the operation of your own brain and I don't understand why you think you would the point is that you cannot when you decide to put a splodge of paint somewhere yeah with your hand unless you're saying it's literally random you wouldn't know which of those which type of splodge to put down unless some part of your brain had considered the options and chosen the one that you go for as being the best right that process of considering different options for what how you will approach the problem of putting this splodge of paint on the canvas no is creative I don't even like this

framing it in terms of problems and solutions and what is the best you you are trying you are

trying to produce something no oh you're not so you're not actually painting a picture of your family you're just randomly putting splotches of paint down and hoping it'll somehow resemble

them but I'm not trying to produce it in the sense that I think you mean which is that I've got this sort of or not just me but anyone has all I mean is that you are trying to achieve something

yes you're trying for a number of months to achieve a paper or scribbling away and eventually one of

them will create you're trying to achieve in your own naive way a likeness of something that is you something you can say is more or less achieved depending on how happy you are with yeah the point is that there are multiple ways of doing that and you along with your expertise in painting are able to flit through them without you being aware of it and select the one which you consider

optimal at that point in time I mean that's just a really dull depressing it's noisy amazing that

human brains are able to do that it's real majesty in that it's real majesty this reminds me of uh

of an argue I had one of the bitterest arguments I ever had with a guy uh almost fell out uh over it was a musician who absolutely he was adamant that nothing that was involved in the thought process of of maths or you know um or in my case you know economics uh or anything analytical that nothing involved in that thought process could conceivably equate to the kind of creativity uh that a musician has and I and I uh there's an element where he might be right but go on the reason I was so aggrieved is that I've considered myself a not incompetent musician and I improvised I'm aware of what musical creativity involves and I unlike him and unlike I have to say I suspect the majority of people who hold this view I understand what the mathematical process is like and he doesn't right him telling me that when I'm sitting down trying to get to the end point of a mathematical proof or you know which I know is a similar process right of sort of sampling the possibility space and looking for things that look uh like they work and drawing analogies and you know that it's not as non-mathematicians imagine a kind of rote process of just computing one line than another it is genuine creativity and I and but it is very common trope among kind of arty types that uh it you know it's it's a totally different thing and mathematicians and scientists and stuff they don't it's not real creativity is when you sit down and paint a painting of a blue square yeah that's real creativity yeah but actually I like I like Mark Rothko by the way I don't know it's I don't like this whole two tribes thing but listen

actually this is really good good good point because the thing is you are I think you're a really good musician and you're a better musician than I am um and I've not really seen you improvising that's not to say that you're not amazing at it um but I think improvisation is a good point um and so let's sort of I know you've slightly covered it there but um I know when I've been improvising badly and when I've been improvising a handful of moments in my life I think of improvising really uh well and I guess what that guy is talking about I think what he understands and I maybe you do as well this is what you're saying this is the bit I get is there is a thoughtlessness about it right there's a when it when it's going at its best right you're just not thinking about it right so and actually there often is just even even time to think about it your kind of mind is empty so what is going on there then that's why it's that's why it's not

understood not very well understood this process but essentially is some some in some way and it's very hard to describe without using analogy you are combining possibilities for for for to triage them to presentation if you like to your critical thinking faculties at which point you then go right let's test these expertise is the process of triaging better right so a person who knows nothing about playing the piano sits down and sees 88 notes and has no idea which one is better right but someone who has is trained to understand what they're doing is able to look at those notes and the possibility space is much much narrower because they know that you know there are a certain number of things that are going to work and some things that are definitely not going to work and you know the creativity is a when you get creativity at a particular thing is linked to expertise in that thing and and that is essentially what what the creative part of your cognition is doing is testing possibilities before they come out this might be an unconscious process but if it isn't happening Fraser then you'll be you're just performing randomly how can it how can it be that you're choosing the right no if you're not thinking about something happening behind

and picking the one that's better because to not to not accept that is to is to think magically and then there must be some other thing that's driving like that no but there is something magic about that moment yeah it's magical but it's not there's not magic it's not actually yeah it's

not actually it's not there is there must be some kind of structured process going on behind yeah otherwise it'd be just load of jangly dissonant notes essentially i'm sort of convinced i'm sort

of not our loyal loyal listener chris who has written to us a few times um told me he said sometimes he listens to fraser and can't believe that someone actually thinks like that no but

hold on isn't this the guy who think it's just weird that i don't um is it the same person who why don't i update my software oh yeah probably yeah yeah anyway but uh so um yeah so uh i don't know

where we where we got to with all that other than just i think we've actually just spent the whole time talking about what creativity is because that's what we're meant to be doing yeah yeah but i thought that would be quite straightforward but it seems that we've had to really convince you that it's an actual process and not just some magic magic thing that a fairy conjures up um but uh but yeah i mean so there is such a thing as there are such things as creative people right so that's been measured various ways that people are consistently kind of score highly depending on what kind of test they're um asked to do and um and they it's linked a little it's linked to intelligence a bit um in in ways that are reasonably slightly complex but actually it it isn't uh really just sort of it's not really closely linked to any particular aspects of personality other than openness to experience but that's very much a necessary rather than a sufficient condition for uh creativity as far as the evidence as far as i can tell but there is tons of evidence and tons of bullshit about creativity yeah tons of management bullshit about you know how to stimulate creativity and it always involves pool tables and bean bags

and very little evidence um we're actually quite close to uh finishing uh peters anything you'd

like to add at this point uh no i one thing i was well a little thing that i was rather taken by was the the the taxonomy for different types of creativity that hopefully for those new listeners who wonder or worry that they're not particularly creative don't worry there is there's a type of creativity for you okay so they they talk about the the c uh the the four c's or the three c's sometimes four c's uh taxonomy for different types of creativity so there's the start sort of it's on a sort of increasing scale of how external that that creativity becomes in a way if that makes sense so mini c is a sort of internal internal realization that might be that might be a fairly big epiphany or it might just be a new way of thinking about something that you have that you don't tell anyone it's intel or you may not be even aware of it yourself there's little c which is everyday problem solving so this would be like opening a door that you're not familiar with that's got a funny handle or uh finding your way around the tube network to a new place or some sort of some sort of problem basic problem solving everyday thing there's professional c or pro c and this is kind of uh being good at your job and solving problems in that so coming across an unfamiliar situation and calling on experience to come up with a solution and then there's big c and this is what i think creativity in the vernacular often gets labeled as and this is where someone's created something world-changing or genre defying defining that's the sort of how the hell up a creativity but there's creativity every single level of everyday life in how you know optimizing how one puts on their socks through to painting something incredible that that's uh that's um

revered you know i like that i think that's the sort of yeah um can i just say actually i remember when someone taught me how to put your socks on if they're inside out i remember that moment and it was like that is a bit of an how does one do that you get you you sort of put them uh you you put the inside out toe you sort of wrap it onto your toes yeah and then you kind of pull you pull the whole sock round your toes and up uh and it's really good it works really well actually but anyway that's the sort of thing where um actually for years people may have just not known how to put socks on if they're inside out and then someone invents it and it's world changing forget millions arrive yeah on time sold right off because in putting your socks on inside out has really affected the lives of more people than the internet yeah and who needs mozart

when you've got that um all right um let's close this down um what's the best way to do you can't think of a way to close it i absolutely can i've got so many going on my head that's the problem

just actually i'll pick you pick you up on something you said you'd never heard me improvise you know perfectly well that the theme tune to the cognitive engineering podcast was improvised you were there when i when i when i did it it's just a jingle it's it is just a jingle to some people so those to those with eyes to see or ears to hear he's working on the concerto

based on that that motif though yeah that was improvised yeah um so just to round things off what's the thing that you are most proud of creating uh when you're ready jump in

there was a thing i came up with it meets one of the definitions that peter was talking about there about sort of uh problems or thinking about things in a new in a new way or at least boiling down a bunch of complicated things into a simple thing that as i found really helpful which is this taxonomy of question types which um i worked really hard on i was basically trying to give people guidance as to if someone asks you a question like this here's some analytical approaches you can use and um i started out with a long list of about 25 different question types and was you know bunching them up in different ways and couldn't really see how i could make it simpler you know than having this complicated taxonomy and then uh you know i sort of had a couple of moments of realization and discovered it could be boiled down to just two dimensions and so therefore four fundamental question types and i've carried that with me forever it's really really helpful when you get a new question to be able to instantly diagnose it and say well yeah we're looking at this sort of approach um so yeah that's probably the thing i'm most a two by two matrix four squares on a page is the thing i'm probably most pleased with beautifully arranged

yeah nice uh peter uh i'm deliberately not gonna go into too much detail because i don't want to make the podcast adverty but there's a couple of projects that we're working on at the moment that i've had a big hand in coming up with the original concepts for they're both sort of software it related things uh highly practical um and they particularly one of them was sort of was the genesis of it was looking at the current state of how everyone else does it and and questioning one fundamental assumptions of why why do we assume that the the information is always going to be presented this way if we relax that constraint then we can come up with something much newer so i'm pleased with that and it's it's good it seems to have legs and um hopefully it'll

sell well yeah you've heard of google haven't you oh yeah in a year's time you won't have heard of google it's gonna be aleph yeah it'll be a you know just a kind of minor minor footnote in

history yeah people will be saying jf ai right that's um yeah i think the thing i'm proudest of in terms of creativity um is actually a good example of what we think of creativity is not necessarily that which is a few years ago as you as you as you two know i started a conference company um uh for filmmakers and actually i just saw an idea something the same conference in the u.s and i thought hey that's really cool let's do that over here in the uk because it didn't exist and because i wanted to go to it but it didn't exist so i said well let's do it um and i so i created a company that did precisely that and and the reason i'm proud of it is because it it it did change people's lives um you know no but what made a world a better place no but what i do mean is in a really prosaic you know very literal sense it it you know it did change how people knew one another it brought people together it did you see what i'm saying well done i mean i

presume you're waiting for your to be on the honors list at some point as a result thank you peter

so any royal royal listeners out there you know you know where to find us and i used to love

standing for example we used to have social events with the with this with this with this um with this conference i used to love standing in the bar just watching all these people talking to each other and i'd brought them all together because of something that i said i'm going to do this and i did it um so yeah that's my right um okay well let's wrap it up there um i do feel like you've taken something away from all this though with this with this slightly pedestrian yeah yeah you i don't want to peek behind that curtain um all right so thank you as always uh for listening to the cognitive engineering podcast i'm Fraser McGruer we've been here with Nick Hare and Peter Coghill of Aleph Insights until next time goodbye