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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.
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.
with so many bad ideas; some trying to do bad things.
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.
Indeed.
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
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!!!"
Stand a little closer to the edge so us creative people can just give you a little push into the chasm of doom and get you off the resources we can turn into something wonderful.
My favorite pastime as I get older is throwing people who don't like change under the bus.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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!!!"
Please, share your techniques
To be fair, he introduced a lot of innovation into the mainstream, even if the ideas already existed beforehand.
The problem is that technically innovative people often aren't talented or even interested when it comes to marketing or interface design. Steve was good at bringing new ideas to market in a way that people found attractive and easy to use, and thus the ideas became mainstream.
As I usually say in reply to comments like this: I don't want an iPhone, but I'm glad they exist.
which is totally what she said
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.
The mention of Steve Jobs as an "innovator" makes the article suspect. E.G. the author does not know what she is talking about.
It's arguably worse than that: Jobs (and Apple generally) don't really do 'innovative', in the sense that nearly everything they produced had some sort of less-well-refined immediate antecedent elsewhere, or was purchased, or or the like. However, Jobs is quite notable indeed for his willingness to take successful products out and shoot them in order to make room for something new(even when the new thing is still not a safe bet in competition with the older; but cheaper, widely adopted, and widely accepted thing), to tell people who demand backwards-compatible whatever where they can file their futile protests, and other behaviors that, while not innovative in themselves, are more or less required to take an innovation from 'tech demo' to 'product' in a reasonable amount of time. On the other hand, of course, his enthusiasm for ruthless focus would likely have been a very poor fit indeed for a 'blue skies' R&D operation(and indeed, stodgy old Microsoft is the company that has one of those, and seems to carefully avoid applying what it comes up with to anything they actually sell...)
If you want to look at 'innovation' in an institutional context, he isn't a good example of it; but characters like him are clearly relevant to how the broader institutional context interacts with 'creative' or 'innovative' people.
People don't like those who risk. From where I stand, creative people risk resources, no matter how trivial.
It has to be more visceral than rational risk management. Creative people may have a wider risk/reward spread than others; but so do some financial instruments that even fairly stodgy investment types like just fine (so long as they can be aggregated to moderate a given portfolio's exposure to any one of them). Either people suspect that 'creative people', even as a class, cost more than they are worth, or they are irrationally leaving potential gains on the table.
you're 73% funny
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
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
NO! Please keep all references to xkcd, and not to Dilbert as well ( http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2008-05-08/ ). ;-0
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.
Yes for the most part....
There can only be one.....
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Because they were the first mainstream devices (that I'm aware of) with displays that were actually pleasant to use - because of the capacitive touch and big finger-friendly buttons. Resistive displays were pretty horrible even with a stylus. Apple forced other manufacturers to put more emphasis on their UIs (though the first generation iPhones were horrible in terms of features, and so I didn't even consider getting one). I had been using Windows Mobile custom ROMs until I switched to Android around version 2.2 I think.
which is totally what she said
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
So what, less than 22% of the people know about it and/or care.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I don't understand. Are you suggesting that McCain lost because he was a creative thinker?
You don't? Hell, how else do you think your pension plan could work out?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"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).
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.
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.
Griping about Obama is getting pretty old. Can't you come up with anything new?
Have gnu, will travel.
Jobs (and Apple generally) don't really do 'innovative', in the sense that nearly everything they produced had some sort of less-well-refined immediate antecedent elsewhere, or was purchased, or or the like.
When Woz drove the product development, that wasn't the case. The Apple of early Woz era years was wildly innovative. If TFA had said "Steve Wozniak" instead of "Steve Jobs" he could have made his point a lot better -- Despite the fact that his technical brilliance gave Jobs something to sell and grow the business, he didn't really fit in to corporate culture once Apple became the very thing they loathed.
That's fair, Back when Apple sold "Apple"-line computers, they had a number of neat tricks up their sleeve. Once Woz got the shove, though, they still produced some very refined products(and some messes); but all in the direction of brutally refined and executed implementations of not terribly novel concepts (which isn't a bad thing, especially when the competition mostly has dubiously refined and sloppy implementations; but isn't "innovation").
Being creative is fine, but being creative while improving how things are done vs. the opposite is much better.
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.
My favorite pastime as I get older is throwing people who don't like change under the bus.
I'll make a note of that. (Hides his monthly pass as he spots Lumpy boarding the same bus).
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.
I only read 33% of your post so I have no idea what you are talking about.
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.
Innovation != Invention.
Wiz invents. Jobs innovated. When combined, that can be a powerful combination. You will find that the majority of the best work done has come from pairing inventors with innovators, in the arts as well as the sciences. (See John Lennon and Paul McCartney for details.) There have been successful solo acts (the guy who invented the clockwork radio, that Dyson fellow, Brunell, Thomas Telford, etc) but they are rarer and tend to be known for one or two key ideas, with everything else being variants. Successful variants, as a rule, but not genius ones. Just one Great, Original Idea. (The movie A Beautiful Mind broke with John Nash's actual history with that theme, but it is core to the solo creative genius.)
If you want an ideas farm (schedule: unknown, product: unknown), you need two minds, three at most, that can feed off each other constructively. Actually, it tends to be more a tornado than a farm. You do not want a think-tank, just two or three visionaries where the methods are rational and the madness quarternary (complex is old-hat).
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)
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*
The mention of Steve Jobs as an "innovator" makes the article suspect. E.G. the author does not know what she is talking about.
I.E., the AC doesn't know what E.G. means.
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".
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