Isaac Asimov Creativity

Probably more inhibiting than anything else is a feeling of responsibility. The great ideas of the ages have come from people who weren’t paid to have great ideas, but were paid to be teachers or patent clerks or petty officials, or were not paid at all. The great ideas came as side issues.

To feel guilty because one has not earned one’s salary because one has not had a great idea is the surest way, it seems to me, of making it certain that no great idea will come in the next time either.

Yet your company is conducting this cerebration program on government money. To think of congressmen or the general public hearing about scientists fooling around, boondoggling, telling dirty jokes, perhaps, at government expense, is to break into a cold sweat. In fact, the average scientist has enough public conscience not to want to feel he is doing this even if no one finds out.

I would suggest that members at a cerebration session be given sinecure tasks to do—short reports to write, or summaries of their conclusions, or brief answers to suggested problems—and be paid for that; the payment being the fee that would ordinarily be paid for the cerebration session. The cerebration session would then be officially unpaid-for and that, too, would allow considerable relaxation.

Isaac Asimov -> DARPA

To think that we only use a certain portion of our brain…and all that creativity losted…

Actually the notion that humans only use a small percentage of their brain is a myth with unknown origins, humans use 100% of their brain. Although most of the brain is dedicated to certain tasks such as muscle coordination. Perhaps the myth originated in that while we do use all of the brain only a certain portion of that brain, the frontal lobe, is used for higher level thinking such as reasoning, planning, problem solving and decision making. Perhaps it has something to do with the famous quote of Rene Descartes “I think, therefore I am” in so much as the thinking, and possibly the existence of one’s self, all happens in the frontal lobe rather than the entire brain.

Although I think the myth that humans only use a percentage of their brain is usually stated to be that humans only use a very small percentage of their brain, something like 5 or 10%, while the frontal lobe, I believe, is actually the largest of the four lobes.

Extended: Not all that dissimilar from a computer, although far more advanced technologically speaking, you could think of dedicated portions of the brain like a graphics chip or sound card and the frontal lobe like your central processing unit.

Obviously there are major differences between how a brain is wired and how a computer is wired, but from a basic standpoint one could see how the computer could easily be viewed as an early ancestor of the brain. Much unlike a computer dedicated portions of the brain sometimes take over the functions of other parts of the brain when damaged or missing.

Even comes complete with short term and long term memory which we might call RAM chips and hard drives. Your arithmetic logic unit, or ALU, is housed in your left frontal lobe while your creative units are housed in the right frontal lobe. The creative unit is most notably missing from a computers CPU.

There’s a lot of talk about AI and the possibility that humans may someday soon create an artificial intelligence capable of thinking at or beyond the level of a human being, but in reality we’re no where near this. We have absolutely no idea how creative thinking works, incorporating a creative unit into a computer is, at this stage in our evolution, well beyond our grasp.

We might be able to get a computer to tell us where Taco Bell is, but ask a computer to invent a Taco Bell and you’re left hearing “does not compute.”

Thinking machine algorithm

Step 1 goal - like eat, or find shelter or ???

Step 2 - node graph

Step 3 - populate node graph with randomly generated logic nodes (if you see this--------(random deviations)--------Do that)

Step 4 - Evaluate - Did you achieve your goal?

Step 5 - “Weight” randomness based on what worked last time

Step 6 - repeat while gathering new equations - about 6 billion times a minute,

Step 7 - attempt same process, but give values that you want to raise, without info on how to raise them (ie water > 30) (food >30) (sleep>30)

Step 8 generate rules on making goals.

Step 9 - underwear

Step 10 - profit.

There was a Mythbuster’s episode that took the 10 percent of the brain myth to task, while it is true that they busted it, the MRI data showed that not every synapse is firing at once each millisecond (but more like 15 percent on average). If you took a rolling average though, then every part of the brain that deals with thinking is eventually involved.

@BPR: Interesting, although it relies on whether one believes in the existence of random. From a programming and mathematical standpoint there’s no evidence to suggest that any thing is ever truly random as any random number generator is merely a mathematical formula where the output is solely based upon the input, usually called a seed although a lot of random number generators rely on both a seed and a second variable input that is usually the number of milliseconds past since Jan. 1st 1970 which gives the number an extra random feel. Nonetheless you will always receive the same output given the same input. If x + y = z then z will always equate to 4 when both x and y are 2.

@Ace Dragon: Very interesting, perhaps the myth has something to do with the average percentage of synapses firing over time. Usually when I hear the myth the person speaking of it is using it as a means to suggest humans aren’t operating at their full potential, however I would disagree with that assesment based solely upon the average number of synapses firing. It would be like saying we only use 15% of the highway system because not every square inch of highway is in use at any given moment, but if 100% of the highway was occupied by a vehicle at every given moment then the highway would be a useless immovable traffic jam.

For those of us that don’t dabble in programming a computers system clock is generally just a variable that stores the number of milliseconds that have past since January 1st 1970. For any given application that presents the date and time in a human readable form that number of milliseconds is converted using a series of formulas so that it reads in a particular date/time format such as 10/22/2014 4pm.

Exactly why that date was chosen as the standard for which system clocks are based off of I don’t know, I’m sure there was plenty of reasoning behind it when that date was chosen. However; for this argument let us assume that Jan. 1st 1970 was chosen at ‘random.’

I would suggest that no matter what it wasn’t truly random. For any given time-line of events so long as the conditions surrounding the decision were exactly the same at the moment the decision was made then the decision too would have been exactly the same.

You could repeat the moment that decision was made any number of times and so long as the ambient temperature in the room, the time of day, the positions of jupiter and mars, cycle of the moon, names of people present in the room, amount of information available to the decision maker, etcetera were all exactly the same then so too would the decision still equate to Jan. 1st 1970.

Because 2+2 will always equal 4.

Mathematics. A fundamental, unbreakable, undeniable, unchangeable law of the universe.

You could use radioactive decay as a source of randomness

Creativity involves finding the easiest way to do things.It also involves making things look similar but not the same way.
Along with making them move in a similar way and react in a similar way.A computer would have to imagine itself in the environment interacting with the environment.Before it does something.
This would allow it to test ideas out that it comes up with.Needs and desires drive creativity.So a ai would have to have that programmed in.

@Morio: Anything, including radioactive decay, that appears random is just that, only an appearance or an illusion. The only reason radioactive decay appears random is because we do not yet have the capability to determine exactly why one particular electron is lost over any other electron. In truth there’s a reason this particular electron is released, it is only that the number of variables in that equation is vast, so vast that it is well beyond our understanding.

Our programmed random equations make use of just one or two variables, so this suggests that it’s easy to make something appear random with a mere two variables. The equation behind radioactive decay likely makes use of a great many variables many of which dating back to the early universe and the time the radioactive element was formed.

@3d solar system builder: As many in the modeling world know it’s pretty easy to generate a cylinder with a few other cylinders sticking out of it and call it a tree. Adding in the variation found in a natural tree is the hard part. Interesting that creating what would appear to be a mathematically perfect tree is a piece of cake, but adding in all those ‘imperfections’ found in nature requires painstaking attention to detail.

The reason behind this is that our creative mind is currently more adept at recreating what we’ve seen then our logical mind is at recreating the equation behind it. In truth what some might call the ‘mathematically perfect tree’ is actually a mathematical simpleton, the trees we see around us in nature are mathematically perfect trees and the number of variables that go into the formation of all those ‘imperfections’ is vast, greater than is our understanding of mathematics at this point.

There are many mathemeticians that believe everything in the entire universe can be boiled down to a single equation. I agree.

While I’m sure we could simplify that equation for computational purposes, in the real tree equation everything is a variable, literally everything from the ambient temperature in any given moment during the tree’s growth period to the relative positions of galaxies we don’t yet know exist. Anything that effects the tree is a variable in it’s equation, gravity has an infinite reach so the gravity from a galaxy at the opposite end of the universe is a variable in all equations. Because of this anything that effects the gravity in the galaxy on the opposite end of the universe is also a variable in any given equation here on earth. So a mosquito in a galaxy trillions of lightyears away could just as well be the determining factor as to whether you catch a cold tomorrow or not.

The thing that makes it seem real, the thing that makes it all seem as though we have any control over anything at all is the fact that we do not know that equation. In order to know that equation one would have to possess literally all knowledge, one would have to know literally everything.

P.S. The ultimate answer to everything is easy, it’s 42 as written by Douglas Adams. What we really need to know isn’t the answer, but the question. Anyone can look at something and see the result, finding the equation that created that result is where the real difficulty lay.

1337
3+3=6
167=42
3(1+6+7)=42

In order to do that you would have to make mind that is composed of pure energy.

Ok, instead of calling radioactive decay random, let’s call it unpredictable. While not necessarily exactly the same thing as true randomness it has similar consequences. Quantum mechanical effects (such as radioactive decay) are inherently unpredictable to some degree due to the fact that it is impossible to exactly define all parameters of a particle at a given time (Heisenberg)

“Everything is theoretically impossible, until it is done.” -Robert A. Heinlein

There is one thing that generally supersedes all other motivations when it comes to humans and that is survival. If and when measuring and predicting the movements of sub-atomic particles becomes necessary for the survival of mankind we’ll see what is and what is not impossible.

“You just stick a cattle prod up their ass and you can get a horse to deal cards.” -Capt. Frank Ramsey (Gene Hackman Crimson Tide)

The Heisenberg uncertainty principle is not just speculation though, it has several practical applications that rely on it being true.

That being said, theories are of course only valid until someone disproves them

It depends on how open minded you are though. If you go into research with a strong intent to tear apart and debunk the theory, then it is possible for your method of logic to be led to a conclusion that is exactly that.

Don’t tell me that the vast majority of scientists can suppress any biased intent with the exact same caliber as Spock from Star-Trek, as it is an innate human tendency to not want to be wrong.

I’m not trying to say that radioactive decay can be used as a perfectly accurate measurement though in this case.


You might want to check out this vid, I’ll pass hours of time playing with the texture generators, math and vector nodes and sometimes I end up with effects that are very very close to what you find in nature. …If only I could do them at will though.

Quantum physics is a very new field with extremely limited understanding. I’m not saying that the uncertainty principle is or is not wrong, but theories are often disproven. It would be an exercise in futility to suggest that we know something for certain given that our current understanding of the laws of physics states that it should be impossible for the bee to fly, nonetheless bees do, in fact, fly. It only goes to show us that reality doesn’t care what we think of it.

“Impossible” Space Engine May Actually Work, NASA Tests Suggest

“Impossible” Stars Found in Super Close Orbits
@joseph raccoon: Yeah I think we have some great procedural generators that can do a really convincing job of recreating what we see in nature, but there’s a difference between a convincing replica and a perfect carbon copy. Heh, the weather station predicted it would be sunny all week, but it was actually completely overcast the last couple of days. A lot of the time the weather models do a pretty good job, but not always. :slight_smile:

P.S. Those articles are pretty cool if you’re into that sort of thing, especially the one about the space engine. One of the reasons I’m not really convinced on the whole global warming argument. Sure the globe might be warming, but just because some climate scientist says they think it’s warming doesn’t mean that it is, can’t even say for sure what the weather is going to be like next week let alone a hundred years from now. I’m not saying that climate scientists are wrong, just saying that I don’t think we should accept what they say as fact, they’re not always right.