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skeptical_lurker comments on How much do we know about creativity? - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (22)
What makes you think SA's ability to write interesting posts has anything todo with rationality? He's mentioned that at least one member of his family is very talented, and that he won writing contests when he was a child (and so, before he encountered LW).
In general, in many ways creativity is correlated with insanity, not rationality.
Definition and evidence? What do you mean by "creativity" in this statement and why do you believe it's true? (If by "insanity" you mean something other than mental illness, what do you mean?)
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creativity_and_mental_illness
There seems to be quite a lot of evidence, including a study with over a million participants (!). The primary correlates seem to be bipolar, unipolar depression/anxiety, and psychosis.
Interestingly, back when a certain very prominant LWer was 16 or so, he credited his maths ability largely to depression. (I don't know whether he still believes this). The idea here is that analytical problem solving is linked to depression, because the brain has evolved to dedicated more resources to problem solving when depressed, because depressed people presumably have problems that need solving.
Bipolar people would also have a drive to create while in the manic phase.
Rationality is about winning. That's an oversimplification, but if creativity is an important part of living well, then rationalists should look into it.
My guess is that creativity has something to do with a feeling that some passing thought is interesting enough to be worth pursuing, but that doesn't mean I know whether everyone has enough passing thoughts to pursue.
I was assuming you meant epistemic rationality. I certainly believe creativity is great and an instrumentally rational goal.
I dunno if there is anyway to improve the generation of thoughts, save good genes and around 10000 hours of practice.
Having said that, slatestarcodex did have some interesting thoughts on how creativity might be simply the mind moving out of the ruts it creates for itself, the opposite of focus, explaining why creativity is sometimes associated with mental states such as being half asleep, on drugs or bipolar/schizophrenic etc.
As far as passion and interest goes, I suppose that this should come naturally with general good mental health.