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Study: People Are Biased Against Creative Thinking
An anonymous reader writes "Despite how much people might say they like creative thinking, they don't, at least according to studies. 'We think of creative people in a heroic manner, and we celebrate them, but the thing we celebrate is the after-effect,' says Barry Staw, a researcher at the University of California–Berkeley business school who specializes in creativity. 'As much as we celebrate independence in Western cultures, there is an awful lot of pressure to conform,' he says."
Creative people just can't shut up and do what they're told.
50% of people are practically morons. You cannot blame them.
that 87% of all studies are completely made up.
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
Just like most mutations are unsuccessful, most creative ideas are not "welfare increasing", after all, the status quo came about for a reason and your idea has to be pretty clever to beat it in all, or even most, metrics.
Of course, on the off chance a creative idea *is* successful, we're all for it, but that's pretty hard to determine in advance. And more importantly, after the fact, all the discomfort from change (and one shouldn't underestimate how much change hurts psychologically) has already been paid for, so we can simply enjoy the benefits.
Makes sense that there is some animosity to creativity.
Being conservative, doing the same thing that worked for your ancestors, is generally a good way to survive. Thus evolution would select for people who tend to be conservative and stick with the tried and true.
On the other hand, the guy who makes a pointy stick and sticks said stick in the side of an animal in attempt to kill and eat it providing more food for his family is being creative but if he picks the wrong animal he ends up rather dead. If he wins then he stands a chance of becoming the new tried and true, the new way. But until he proves it the majority of his peers are wise to be a bit hesitant to follow his lead. If he shows a good history of creative successes then adaptable individuals will follow him because that is a good survival strategy.
The mention of Steve Jobs as an "innovator" makes the article suspect. E.G. the author does not know what she is talking about.
with so many bad ideas; some trying to do bad things.
People don't like those who risk. From where I stand, creative people risk resources, no matter how trivial.
Whatcha think you doing, smarty pants?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Isn't this basically the same as saying people don't like change, which anyone with life experience would already know?
I wish they wouldn't change the way they say it, it makes me scared and confused.
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
Sig ?
Culture and civilization are all great, but doesn't really change the fact that deep down we're social ANIMALS, and probably the greatest evolutionary advantage that we have had was that we could cooperate.
There's a clear Darwinistic pressure to confirm, so long as there's a little percentage of (expendable) individuals willing to experiment creatively - since for the bulk of history and prehistory, 'creativity' was a great way to get you and others killed.
-Styopa
For many people/sheeple, they derive comfort from the idea that they are (a) Right, and (b) in the majority (with "right" being determined at the time with incomplete information by who is either in the majority or who shouts loudest).
Things like the medieval opinion that the world is flat, that women or specific ethnic/indigenous groups are unimportant/inferior, or the Standard Model of particle physics, and even with religion, show that there is great comfort in being in the majority.
Choosing to go against the majority can be a brave decision to stick up for your principles, or it can simply be a sign of bloody-mindedness with no better reason than a desire to not conform (guess who usually plays the Devil's Advocate in one-sided discussions?)
In many instances, humans exhibit a profound "herd animal" instinct, where the outsider/outlier is attacked, from children in the playground picking on the smallest or the one who is different because one powerful individual does so, to the people in a meeting rounding on a dissenting voice because their manager does the same. For those people, conforming to another person's idea is an easy thing to do because then it is not necessary to think about the situation and come up with your own opinion, especially if that opinion might align with the one being attacked so that you either have to support that individual and yourself face attack or willingly go against your opinion... better to not think at all and "go with the flow".
The critical thinker who is appreciated in their own lifetime is typically the one who comes with a blindingly obvious idea which improves things all round, whose idea does not cause the loud shouters to lose prestige or influence because they did not themselves see that idea. Given that most critical thinkers' ideas piss off at least a few people and show them as being wrong, it takes time until those loud people lose their influence (or those people find a way to adopt the new idea without losing face) before the critical thinker's contribution has a real chance of being acknowledged and properly valued.
This is the kicker. Not only do people reject creativity, but they hamper their own responses by conforming to what they think the boss will like. So if you don't agree with your colleague or their interpretation of what the boss will like, you're screwed. What tends to then happen is a breakdown in communication, as you will want to present to the boss directly instead of via the misguided (in your opinion) minion.
If people stopped trying to predict other people's reactions, they'd be more likely to be themselves. Sadly in the corporate world this means that bosses only get a limited set of responses from anyone not directly below them in the hierarchy. Shame.
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
Everybody is a little bit crazy but usually creative people is prone to mood swings, egocentrism, lack of empathy, tendency to sociopathy, paranoia and even psicopathy. The more creative they are, the bigger the effect.
They will annoy you constantly with creative ideas that are completely useless 99% of the time and, of course, you really want to keep that 1% of geniality, but is really tiresome to deal with creative people every day...
Wether something increases welfare is a complicated issue. It depends on many things, like your point of view.
The state may want to build a hydroelectric power generator to provide power to a city, increasing welfare. But farmers may have their farmlands flooded (land next to rivers is often more fertile) destroying welfare as those farmers won't be able to grow food on that land.
Good article. Having dealt with it for years, I think it's a little more complex than a general native tendency, however. A large packet of society defers decisions (outsources) to a higher authority. Those authorities demand structure to order the size of the authority delegated to them, and tend to view "outliers" collectively as a threat to that order. The hostility to creativity is particularly intense when the question is "moral authority". In science, the "out of the box" thinker has scientific method and an option or hope to "prove" or "demonstrate" their alternative, creative, view. In religion, a creative morality is considered a threat but it's very difficult to demonstrate credibility with anything other than generations of experience (I did X, which the Priestatollah said not to, and no hair on my palms etc).
Where science is vulnerable is when a morality is attached. I'm not advocating for scientists to be immoral. But certain branches of science (e.g. Environmental) are susceptible to moral authority, which makes them more susceptible to Priestatollahs opposing creative thinking.
Gently reply
... I can attest to this bias against me, likely the cause of mega jealousy!
Non-Creative; "What do you make of this report?"
Me; "Well I can make a hat, an airplane or a little swan..."
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
with the 'new' (lost) hymen replacement procedure it's nobody's business as if guys really even cared hoping still that condoms are reusable.
free the innocent stem cells they have harmed no one
Until after the royalty check clears for the Patent Attorney.
You may never make good money as a creative, but darn it, you made someone happy and able to put their kids through college, so there's that to lift your spirits!
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
despite us fake heritage addicts like to pretend so
That's because most people non-conforming are just doing something really dumb to be, you know, non-conforming. I admit I fall into that category of people who don't appreciate people acting like idiots so they can be "non-conforming," and I'm not going to "celebrate their diversity." On the other hand, people truly thinking outside the box, and trying new things creatively, are always tops on my list - even when it doesn't necessarily lead to something beneficial... but then they are like 0.00001% of those "non-conformists."
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Weak troll.
-Fry
An idea can be judged on "creativity" and "practicality". A creative practical idea is a wonderful thing, but its also quite rare. Fairly often people use "creativity" to excuse not considering practical issues. Flying cars, stratospheric power generation kites, vacuum tube trains, etc. are all "creative" but are not currently practical. Some people, including me, get irritated when someone claiming to be creative effectively says: "here is my design for a flying car - just a few engineering details to work out", when in fact it is the engineering "details" that have prevented practical flying cars for the last 50 years.
How do they measure bias in this case? Don't you have to have a definable "neutral" point to measure bias from? How would you do that?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
"People are very open-minded about new things - as long as they're exactly like the old ones." - Charles Kettering
The article is close, but just barely misses the mark.
People don't mind creativity on its surface, but what they dislike is the change that inevitably comes from it. People resist change, for all the reasons outlined in the article. People like things to stay the same, not change. And creativity drives change.
tora
There is a great confusion about what creativity is.
Creativity is being able to build up an explanation in your mind of a particular thing. It is a complex process. It allows us to speak to other humans and learn things from them by building up explanations from the words they speak.
It just so happens that the creativity required to understand ideas passed from another human is the exact same process that is required in order to learn things about nature. When you talk to someone, they have an idea in their mind which is inaccessible to you, the only way you can access it is via their words. These words themselves do not contain the full explanation/understanding. Each word is a mass of implicit meanings. A creative process is what allows us to covert these words into explanations and real understanding. Nature is the same: there is an objective truth there (reality), which is hidden from you, all you can do is run tests on nature. Those tests themselves do not contain these truths; they are full of implicity knowledge. To be able to interpret nature via these observations and create good explanations of what is happening requires creativity.
Creativity is being able to extract knowledge from things, be it people (talking), books (reading) or nature (science). Creativity is building up good explanations.
Humans are the only species we know of that can generate good explanations.
In human evolution, creativity initially involved so that we could learn existing knowledge better and pass it on, not so we could create better explanations of the world around us. It was only much later when this ability to create good explanations happened to be useful for understanding nature.
TFA is basically a "creative" type whining about her kind not being appreciated for their brilliance. For example:
If _nobody_ is listening to her ideas, let's run down the possibilities of why not:
If option 4 is correct, then she should start her own company. I suspect 3 is more likely.
Generally, I consider it more valuable to have someone who is a good listener, a quick learner, and works well with others. If you have an idea about changing the way the company does things, the burden is on you to demonstrate the value of that change. If you can't, then the "creative" idea isn't worth much.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
There are outcomes in our life that we are happy with and with these processes we do not try to be creative.
There are outcomes in our life that we are not happy with. In this case we use creativity to help us come up with something better.
Ideas get shot down when you want to change something that other people are happy with. I don't think that it is a bias against new ideas. It is a bias when we feel someone is making change when we do not see a reason for it.
A good salesman explains why change is needed.
I believe the monolith in 2001, A Space Odyssey was the creative source of new food gathering, although it was more a club than a spear that was the idea.
Thinking creatively means thinking differently.
Thinking differently means challenging the status quo.
Challenging the status quo makes others, primarily your "superiors" nervous.
Nervous people make poor decisions, and frankly everyone is trying to protect their positions.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Just like most mutations are unsuccessful, most creative ideas are not "welfare increasing", after all, the status quo came about for a reason and your idea has to be pretty clever to beat it in all, or even most, metrics.
Of course, on the off chance a creative idea *is* successful, we're all for it, but that's pretty hard to determine in advance. And more importantly, after the fact, all the discomfort from change (and one shouldn't underestimate how much change hurts psychologically) has already been paid for, so we can simply enjoy the benefits.
Bad analogy since it is a myth that most mutations are unsuccessful. They have found that each individual has 60 to 100 genetic mutations...all quite functional.
http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/30692/title/Our-own-60-mutations/
this is loaner...my sig is in the shop
I don't understand. Are you suggesting that McCain lost because he was a creative thinker?
What where they communicating then?
At least it was creative. And you? Tearing down the creative because it violates your established worldview that informs, via memes, the words that flow from your mouth. This guiding field of ideas others have thought up, evolving them until it is an evolutionarily successful package that spreads, and defends itself by getting its constituent hardware units to regurgitate teardown phrases to competing memes.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Of course we are biased against creative thinking. That's why we celebrate it. Because they had the gumption to stick it out and overcome the adversity, they gave something to the world that makes life better. Any story with a hero (or anti-hero) is about a person that suffers and sacrifices for the greater good.
"Creativity" is not the opposite of "conformity". Creative thinking does not equate to risk-taking. People are not nearly as resistant to change as the article assumes (just look at all the radical changes that have been openly embraced in the last few decades).
what a stupid comment.
you think life would be BETTER with the R-guys in charge, right now? seriously?
we were screwed from the very start. the D's suck and the R's suck. we have a near-zero choice, effectively. either choose really_bad or horribly_bad.
I cannot blame people for picking the least of the suckiest candidates. we have no choice in real people; instead we get sockpuppets that are controlled by (someone else, who we cannot really know the ID of) and its all a game to keep us distracted and arguing with each other. they know this and some of us know this.
and the sooner you know this, the better.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Every innovative idea I've ever had at my company has been fought all the way, until it became standard operating procedure (which I now have to fight when I want to change something).
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
It allows us to speak to other humans and learn things from them by building up explanations from the words they speak.
What about someone stuck on a deserted island? They can be 'creative' and formulate some ingenious ideas to aid in their survival. And yet there is no one to speak with.
On the other hand, understanding nature doesn't automatically lead to building upon that understanding to produce novel ideas or concepts. Some of the peoples most in tune with nature are living (and dying) much as their ancestors have for thousands of years. Where's the creativity?
Have gnu, will travel.
that IQ is somehow different than creativity?
even though adults’ accomplishments are linked far more strongly to their creativity than their IQ. It
If you're "creativity" isn't solving a problem aren't you just shitting out whatever random brain fluctuations you just had?
And also explains why people think that I'm weird.
Most creative works has been done by people not conforming to what the general population thinks. Leonardo da Vinci, Alexander the Great, Steve Jobs, Einstein, Chaplin... All were very good in their specific way. Of course - creativity also has to be combined with hard work to succeed.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Not everyone is born with very creative skills. That does not make them soul-less automatons. The human brain provides a very wide range of skills and potential experiences, and creativity is just a subset of that.
The contributions made by creative people are valuable, and can be enjoyed by everyone. Also, they stand on the backs of the efforts of those who conform, and thus form a stable society in which creativity can find funding for its expression.
Show a little empathy, and get over yourself.
Griping about Obama is getting pretty old. Can't you come up with anything new?
Have gnu, will travel.
. . .readily explains why absolutely no one adhering to monotheism, spiritually, ever came up with any sort of intellectual innovation. Ever. Not once. Thanks!
Being creative is fine, but being creative while improving how things are done vs. the opposite is much better.
Albert Einstein was asked about the papers he published in 1905. The papers that turned the world of physics on its head. There were very many prominent physicists who rejected completely his ideas: this relativity stuff, uncertainty and all that. Einstein admitted that some of them would have to die for the physics world to come to a better consensus on his ideas. Likewise I've always thought the business world was living a cargo-cult existence "You must wear a jacket and tie, oh the tie!" The device which had a design goal of restricting the flow of blood and oxygen to the brain. You can call them clubby, or 'in the box', but MBA's are trained to eliminate creativity. CONFORM!
When critical thinking comes to the conclusions embraced by collectivism, it is called reason.
When critical thinking comes to the conclusions embraced by individualism, it is called indoctrination.
Prove otherwise.
It is easier to be an ant in an anthill than to be a grasshopper. There is security in collectivism. The world is dominated by those from a "the nail that sticks up gets hammered down" and not by those who embrace "the tallest tree gets the sun." The collectivist may take comfort in "the tallest tree gets struck by lightning".
At least I can properly metabolize alcohol.
Nobody wants to be called a racist...except those who will be proven correct in the end [grin].
"Creativity is being able to extract knowledge from things, be it people (talking), books (reading) or nature (science). Creativity is building up good explanations."
You mean like, inventing religions an shit
Most mutations we have fall within a range we are already adapted to. Our genotype has some inherent malleability within which it can deal with mutations. Call it "mutation tolerance" or whatever you want. First, most mutations are recessive, that means that the affected allel will not even be expressed in the phenotype. Only if we get for one gene the same mutated allel from both parents, our phenotype will be affected, and only then the mutation has a measurable effect on us. Then there are the mutations which affect properties like eye or hair color or height, which can have a wide range of possible outcomes without being letal or otherwise disadvantageous to us. A shoe size of 10 vs. one of 9, while still being genetically determined, makes no important difference. And even outcomes which actually affect our lives like the level of aggressivenes or intelligence or the talent for different sports, and which have a genetic component and are thus open to influences by mutations, will in the end, not hamper our general ability to survive and to procreate.
The analogy was talking about mutations which fall out of the adaptable range, which are really disruptive. And of those, most are bad for us.
Start your own company.
Agreed I don't even like him and I hate most complaints about Obama because they insipid, wrong, and have already been spammed to death.
even with ideas there is a survival of the fittest. young ideas aren't going to just be blatantly accepted. they must be challenged and also challenge what has been established. if they are as strong and as brilliant as they seem, they'll come out on top. also just thinking creativity means nothing, you have to execute creatively. sometimes that means playing your boss' ego against them to get the idea made. a person that can do that is seriously creative.
The objective function is value. If your solution adds enough value even disruptive change can be tolerated and accepted.
What is unacceptable is what almost always happens... a creative solution which while technically better than an existing solution in some aspect is in some way unmanageable, unprofitable or simply not worth anyone's trouble to change given the bigger picture.
I see this kind of thing all the time with people inventing things they think is all great to them but everyone else sees as impractical. Or fools whispering their brilliant ideas to you so others don't hear and steal it from them which while "creative" are half-baked reflecting their ignorance of technology and or that which is necessary to be successful.
If you can use your creative energies to create a battery with 10x density, 10x safety, 10x charge rate, 10x reliability at 10x lower cost of production vs current state of the art you are likely be taken seriously yet if you repeat the same with 40x cost of production your much more likely to be ignored regardless of how great and transformative your ideas are.
Sure there are barriers to showing of value to the excessively cautious or irrationally change adverse yet these are temporary conditions bypassed with creative diplomacy and ultimately market pressure over time.
Agreed. Most of my thinking has been directed towards different topologies of society. People aren't either creative or not, brilliant artists don't necessarily make brilliant civil engineers (as demonstrated by architects on a regular basis). Brilliant programmers aren't necessarily brilliant writers (as demonstrated by documentation). So the problem becomes one of encouraging creativity where it is real and encouraging standardization where, like Nero with his poetry and music, attempted creativity is the worst of all possible worlds.
Ok, how to deal with the inevitable flaws that creep in? Scientific method. Ideas should be tested, scrutinized, bugfixed, using known methods that work with creative ideas. If the idea survives, it is good. If the idea breaks irreparably, time for a new idea.
Schools? Dealt with that elsewhere. Recap, though: Stream, both above and below average, per subject. If you are not convinced ability in a subject is adequate differentiation, stream in two dimensions, with creativity being the second. Yes, this costs more money. Raid the bloody spy agency's orc division or something. They have far too much money and time on their hands, pump it into schools. All of it, if possible. But even a 9x increase in budget for education will allow enough flexibility to give you 5x the number of truly brilliant people in the workplace, and double the number of creative supergeniuses.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
TFA is basically a "creative" type whining about her kind not being appreciated for their brilliance. For example:
Which makes me wonder,
1) "[R]egularly unable to fix..." ranges from "Never able to fix" to "Able to fix up to 49% of the problems." TFA smells like weasel phrasing here (e.g. spin) to emphasize the hand-wringing tragedy of (millions?) of poor ignored creative souls across the land laboring away in vain...
I would like to know what %ge of their solutions were adopted, and what %ge of those actually improved upon the original problem situation; e.g. what exactly is this 'intensely creative and intelligent person's actual track record ?
2) The 'close friend' works for a tech startup, and was hired for their problem solving skills.
Which means friend (aka 'anecdotal data point') has a job where they get paid to sit around and do (apparently) nothing?
Sounds like a squandered opportunity for all involved parties.
Which leads me to agree 100% with your conclusion:
If you have an idea about changing the way the company does things, the burden is on you to demonstrate the value of that change. If you can't, then the "creative" idea isn't worth much.
isnt that why startups suceed?
Obama created 7 new states so he was the creative one.
If the individual never breeds, or by existing causes others to breed successfully, then the genetic the mutation is not successful.
In humans it is harder to measure the success of the genetic mutations alone, because of the large effect society determines human success.
*cough* bitcoin *cough*
Creative art is one thing.
Creative techie things are another. Especially in a life or death environment (cars) or a corporate environment (email down, fired).
So if say I was over all of IT for some big company, and then one guy says changing everything that is totally working fine to this new way of doing things would be better... I'm inclined to disagree with him. Why? If it fails, heads may roll. I would have to spend more time than him to get up to speed on whatever technology he is talking about (virtually impossible given the roles)... and then I'd have to trust him as much as the guy I trusted a year or two back that burned me when I trusted him.
So... while I love creativity in general,... no thanks, not at the work place. And not when it involves safety.
I think you've finally answered it, thanks. Looks like it's the act of deferal to a percieved "higher authority".
not for a couple more years. Although new will probably not mean better. But how do you follow Washington anyway?
I tested in the 95th percentile and I can't get a job.
Probably because I like to fix shitty ways of doing things for more efficient ways.
People hate that.
Like our entire lives (I'm >50).
I mean the blog.
There are people who are so locked in that they don't want to think creatively, sure, but there are also effects of the tools people have to use to think that stunt creative thinking. Most people aren't stupid, they just lack the stimulus to think outside of convention, they need help.
But they aren't getting help from technology that could really help them to think. That may be by design, or at best an unintended side-effect of technology being applied for one use while hurting another use.
If you look at most blogs, the discussion goes no where, people write their response and if they are lucky someone will challenge this but usually the discussion ends there, it is because the blog lacks a useful mechanism for replying in context by being able to quote something and speaking to it, a feature we have on Slashdot.
The conversations here are much more lively not because the people here are that much more creative that they are on other sites, but because blogs do a couple of things that stunt creative thought, the owner of the page set the agenda, and the replies don't generate subtopics.
I think that the entrapaneurs of social media, beginning with Google know all this and they want it the way it is because their model is that they want blocks of text only so they can run regular expressions looking for marketing keywords, only. They could care less about structures in conversations that facilitate directed discussion, real creative colaborative writing, even in a debate or contentious environment. How do I know this? Google took great pains to create an archive of USENET posts for the first decade of its existence. It would be good of all of you to look at that. The revealing thing is that Google and other social media companies didn't take away any of the wisdom of that approach, in fact they went in the opposite direction, and I think consciously, and to thwart badly needed public discussion. Some of that value is here on Slashdot but even Slashdot because of to web interface has not approached yet the richness that was possible with the USENET newsreaders.
Creativity is a value, but given the complexity and the peril to democracy in our time, it becomes essential, and the web-based and social media companies have not done enough, and they haven't done the right thing to get people to think creatively at least in written discussions.
The worst offtender by far is Facebook. Now, I know that people here love to bash Facebook and its users, and that the argument we get from Mark Zuckerberg is that he wants a simple interface, but that is the problem, there ins't enough structure there to hold any kind of intelligent discussions. I can understand one saying that Facebook is not intended for discussion, and surely most of what goes on there is family and friends gooing over baby and pet pictures. I have no problem with that. The problem with Facebook is that there are many attempts of people to hold topical discussions and there are pages there that get thousands of replies, but have you ever tried to read through all that stuff? I'll bet not, and the reason is because the blog breaks down after maybe ten replies. It is not practical to reply to blogs which is why blog pages often appear to be about the egos of the page creators. It is because the technology doesn't provide useful means to facilitate creative response, which is why most blogs read like a bunch of people not communicating, talking to them selves, and the energy to respond to content is mostly with the page owner. In Newspaper blogs, there is argument, but the lack of structure makes it hard to follow and the ignoring or loss of context is a big problem. That is why off-topic and trolls are so destracting and people who become afraid because of the intimidation are denied the freedom to think.
Interesting that last phraise "Freedom to Think." that is what led to our open institutions, the ability of individuals to deliberate and not be intimidated by manipulators, to be abl
I think a lot of this was covered in Colin Wilson's book, 'The Outsider' back in 1956. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Outsider_(Colin_Wilson)
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)
Honestly, creativity is overrated in our age because with scientific research over the last century a lot of good ideas have been already been flushed out. They simply are not practiced. The problem is not that people avoid creativity, it's they want their own creativity to manifest, not yours. This is true even in the face of peer reviewed, expertly written material.
Geniuses do not create new things, they copy things that already exist (I got this from Edward Tufte). Basically, they observe and then they apply intelligent design to what already exists to improve the status quo, in a way then does not rock the boat, but improves things gradually. Gradual improvement is all we are really capable of anyways, because you cannot observe and improve things without seeing the problems first.
However, this is what is seen as "creativity" by those who do not understand it, because understanding usually requires in depth abstract thought and an extremely good memory to put together the pieces of the puzzle together.
What is really easy is these people who are trying to be "creative" in their own right and ignoring the status quo making things horrible for those around them and creating very detrimental products of their creativity.
i.e. "Let's take advantage of people's superstitious nature." (forced spread and manipulation of religion, just glance at the inquisition...), "Let's issue to much currency and not protect the people, we'll make a huge profit in the end either way." (Several banks throughout history, perhaps bit coin will be the same, we'll see.), "Let's guess how much we are going to make based on business plans that have not come to fruition, and budget that way." (Enron) "Let's time our employees and pay them less, so they need more government assistance and assistance from family members. It's the job that is worthwhile to them." (Good Will) "Let's pay our employees so little and squeeze as much money out of them as possible instead of paying them what we can afford and investing into their futures. This way they go on welfare." (Walmart) "Let's do massive scale Agriculture" (Humanity)
I suppose I could throw in experts being told what to do by their bosses despite plenty of push back. If you have not experienced this, you should try getting a degree or specializing in something. Everyone is an expert except the practitioner and student of their discipline.
As far as I know, ALL of these things go against conventional wisdom, or did at some point in time. These things were never observed to be good, they were just done, they were created by creative people. Created against the tried and true wisdom established before hand.
Sorry I don't have the links, but I recall reading studies which showed that far and away the kids most despised by both their peers and teachers alike in high school are the ones that are very high in intelligence and very high in creativity, both.
You can be very creative and people will tolerate you (you're artsy, alternative weird whatever..or very intelligent - you're serious or the class president or a nerd - but not both.
can i get my rant on again about the bellcurve, and how the middle chunk is the remnant of the past cycle of evolution while the outer sides are constantly trying to invade that, eventually becoming what they dont like when they win ?
like fear of the unknown is a remnant from the eldest days of biology where anything unknown means something that might get you killed
ergo and q.e.d.
creative thinking is dangerous, its not that hard or deep to fathom how the homo sapiens works
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
Thoughtful, brilliant on topology, Nero is a great reference to "creative authority". Teeters a bit at schools reference, lost me when you got to the orcs. Maybe it distracted me, mental images of orcs and spies with authority compound my risk perception, especially in the same paragraph where my evolved nurture instincts had been stimulated by opening reference to "Schools?" Orcs, spies, authority and schools... Pink Floyd in Mordor.
Gently reply