Seas of Thought
Actions are teleological events: they aim at desired states of affairs. Yet it has been argued by several philosophers that the creative process cannot be, in a certain sense, teleological. Many introspective reports stress that creative insights sometimes occur unbidden and spontaneously (e.g. Poincare); and anti-teleological accounts appeal to th
... See moreGraham Wallas drew on Poincare ´’s account to develop a theory of the creative process as consisting of four stages: preparation, incubation, illumination and verification (or elaboration) (The Art of Thought), which was then more generally disseminated and which has been discussed by philosophers (Kronfeldner 589; Sparshott 179). But some psycholo
... See more10 years later I learned, from a mix of reading Keith Johnstone’s Impro and messing around with Gendlin focusing and circling, that I have access to multiple language-generation processes, and they seem to be localized in different parts of my body. What I was used to doing was generating words using my head. But I learned I could generate words us... See more
QC • Core dump
“by an aesthetic idea, however, I mean that representation of the imagination that occasions much thinking though without it being possible for any determinate thought, i.e., concept, to be adequate to it, which, consequently, no language fully attains or can make intelligible.” (Kant)
Kant’s examples are all drawn from poetry and suggest that by ae
... See moreIn short, the kinds of actions that are creative are ones that exhibit at least a relevant purpose (in not being purely accidental), some degree of understanding (not using merely mechanical search procedures), a degree of judgement (in how to apply a rule, if a rule is involved) and an evaluative ability directed to the task at hand. As shorthand
... See moreAfter I first used/talked to Llama 405-B for a few days, it fascinated me deeply. And it kept nagging at me why the base model felt so different than the instruct models (beyond the obvious). They are strange, lurid creatures. The base models send coded messages often and speak in allegories and metaphor, and it feels visceral on some level. It's n... See more
QC • gwern on Thicket Forte
Our culture seems to be spiraling into a feedback loop of homogenized thoughts and ideas, where originality is sidelined in favor of the predictable and the algorithmically optimized. In fact, one of those machines wrote the last 28 words, from “our culture seems” on.
Sam Kriss • Alt Lit | The Point Magazine
One of the most influential introspective reports on creativity was provided by Henri Poincare ´ who described his own experience of creativity in terms of swarms of ideas arising and combining randomly in his unconsciousness and then his selection of the most promising ones according to aesthetic criteria (‘Mathematical Creation’).
Gaut, The Philo
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