Too bad opposites don't attract

Too bad opposites don't attract because according to The Creativity Post, groups that feature a mix of young and old, experienced and inexperienced, are more creative.

If we want to broaden our intellectual horizons it's important to remember our natural tendency to drift towards and eventually connect with only likeminded people. Stories of innovation and discovery throughout history illustrate how important this point is. My favorite, which doesn’t get told enough, is the discovery of Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMB), a key piece of evidence that changed our understanding of the origin of the universe forever....

The story of CMB reminds us that when it comes to solving difficult problems, a fresh set of eyes, even one that comes from a different field, is vital. The CMB story shows itself in one form or another many times throughout history. The world’s great ideas are as much about other people as they are about the individual who makes it into the textbook.

Before she became Tiger Mother, Amy Chua described the value of diversity in ideas and people to some of the "hyperpowers" in history. Ethan Zuckerman has written at length and critically on our tendency to seek out others like ourselves. Aside from the "opposites" link above, Jonah Lehrer has pointed to research on how diverse social neworks come with "real, tangible benefits" for entrepreneurs.

Each of these people have spoken at the IdeaFestival, by the way. If you've never been to the festival, why not make plans to be there this year? You're guaranteed to encounter people and ideas that will inspire and energize you.

Wayne

LED Cathedral

The 2012 Ghent Light Festival featured state of the art 3D mapping displays and one giant LED cathedral. The video comes complete with matching carnival organ. Hat tip: Colossal

Wayne

He talked and he talked and

"If you talk all the time about something, you stop knowing anything about it" - the poet Kazim Ali, in February's Poetry magazine.

I loved the counter-intuitive nature of this quote. When people complain about not having enough time, or of being overwhelmed by one email after another, they're having a perfectly rational response to an always-on world that more than ever seems to demand a performance. What they're saying is that they can't feel. The irony is that science is rapidly converging on the idea that what we feel is supremely important to intelligence, or at least the kind of creative far-sightedness that is so valuable today to art and business alike.

Very early in an otherwise forgettable book, The Social Animal, David Brooks writes:

The research being done today reminds us of the relative importance of emotion over pure reason, social connections over individual choice, character over IQ, emergent, organic systems over linear, mechanistic ones, and the idea that we have multiple selves over the idea that we have a single self. If you want to put the philosophic implications in simple terms, the French Enlightenment, which emphasized reason, loses; the British Enlightenment, which emphasized sentiments, wins.

Sentiment doesn't subvert reason. Sentiment makes human reason possible - the kind of reason able to hold out possible worlds for examination, to think deeply about the next move in a competitive market or a game of chess, to extend mercy when none may be merited.

I don't think it's a coincidence that The Onion, Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart offer more grown up insight than some putative news sources. Like Ali, they intuitively know that given a way to communicate with everyone on the planet and unable to stop talking, the joke, sadly, is on us. There is value in being able to stop long enough to know what we're saying, to feel something toward the object of our thinking.

Wayne

Flying humans buzz New York City

Colossal points out that the marketing team for the upcoming movie Chronicle has ditched the movie trailer for something bit more theatrical. Watch.

Wayne

What are you doing with the facts?

It's surprising, according to The Creativity Post, how little effort is given to the how of thinking. Creativity is about thought-in-action - far less about the facts than how those facts are combined:

We go to school and learn about Albert Einstein and his theories about the universe and we say he was creative. We are not taught how he thought. We're taught he was simply more intelligent than other scientists. We're taught nothing about his mental process of 'combinatory play' of visual images or the irrationality of his way of speculative thinking about 'damn fool ideas,' or the many dead ends and failures he experienced. We're presented with his idea as a product of superior intellect and knowledge. Analogically, as if we are taught how to measure daily rainfall by the rise of water in a pail without ever realizing that the rain arrives in individual drops.

But how much more difficult it is to think of creativity as a phenomena that results from a certain combination of relationships. This combination includes the principles of intention, belief, attitude, behavior, language, knowing how to change the way you look at things, knowing how to think in different ways and learning how to think inclusively without the prejudices of logic. We've been schooled to think of them all as separate and distinct entities so they can be described and explained. Despite the apparent separateness of these at this level, they are all a seamless extension of each other and ultimately blend into each other.

Like nature, the contents of creative genius aren't contained anywhere but also are revealed by the dynamics. (emphasis supplied)

Every speaker that appears at the IdeaFestival invariably shares stories from his or her experience. And in almost every case, they've changed how they looked at a problem or thought differently or "lived in the question" long enough to arrive at a solution that they might have prematurely excluded if "just the facts" were brought to bear.

I hope to see you in September.

Stay curious.

Wayne