Creativity in a Nutshell

Whatever the size of the space, someone who comes up with a new idea within that thinking-style is being creative in the second, exploratory, sense. If the new idea is surprising not just in itself but as an example of an unexpected general  type , so much the better.

Creativity is the ability to come up with ideas or artefacts that are  new ,  surprising , and  valuable . 

What’s difficult is to state our aesthetic values clearly enough to enable the program itself to make the evaluation at each generation.

For a computer to make a subtle combinational joke, never mind to assess its tastefulness, would require, first, a data-base with a richness comparable to ours, and, second, methods of link-making (and link-evaluating) comparable in subtlety with ours. 

Because creativity  by definition  involves not only novelty but value, and because values are highly variable, it follows that many arguments about creativity are rooted in disagreements about value. 

The deepest cases of creativity involve someone’s thinking something which, with respect to the conceptual spaces in their minds, they  couldn’t  have thought before. The supposedly impossible idea can come about only if the creator changes the pre-existing style in some way. It must be tweaked, or even radically transformed, so that tho