Came across an interesting study here– not because it’s useful in any way, but due to its connection with some pretty common Western-world fallacies about ‘creative thinking’.
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2021-94704-001
In an oblique way, it brings to mind the groan-inducing “A.I.” fad of the last few years. While the rapid advancement of chatbot technology is intellectually exciting, people are too insufferable to have nice things. The previous wonderful promise of artificial intelligence has been reduced to a simulated cognitive cul-de-sac– paltry, pathetic, suburban, and no potential for meaningful further development. Its goalposts have moved to suit the needs of Silicon Valley dreamers whose ambitions exceeded their capability. The Social functions of automated services which used to be described in the common parlance as “algorithms” is now described as “A.I,” and what used to be discussed as Artificial Intelligence is now clarified as Artificial General Intelligence. Technically correct, but quite a smug sidestep to take in service of misleading the public. The first instance of Chatbot errors being designated as “hallucinations” instead of “pain-in-the-ass fucking glitches” was a knowing act of duplicity designed to imply that THE SCI-FI POSITRONIC BRAINS OF TOMORROW ARE HERE TODAY; INVEST NOW! Net financial-loss advanced autocorrect software that churns out acceptable images and (usually correct, maybe) answers to your homework wouldn’t entice investors. Breathless, panting, semi-orgasmic marketing blitzes for “the greatest technological advancement since electricity” and “THE DEMOCRATIZATION OF CREATIVITY” were necessary to obtain funding, and a gullible populace swalled the whole hook.
Yes, the creativity part was important to push the product. You can be creative! Yes, you! No longer will your potential genius be stolen by those damned gatekeeping artists who tell you that you need to “draw” or “paint” in order to “draw” or “paint” things. Now, you can commission a mindless piece of inconsistent software to churn out an image that you had the idea for! If you paid an artist to make your idea real then you’d just be a sucker, a dupe, a non-artist, but when this magical machine does it for you?! That turns you into an artist like the full moon turns a cursed human into a werewolf! Never before in history has any non-artist been able to be creative in any capacity! BUT NOW, THANKS TO TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY WONDERTECH, YOU TOO CAN NOW BE CREATIVE! THE FIRE OF THE GODS IS YOURS!
People believe this shit because pop-cultural osmosis deludes them into thinking there’s something uniquely special about an artist’s aptitude, instead of their motivation. This isn’t just a viewpoint pushed by some shallow zeitgeist– its propped up by actual scientific fucking literature, just like the study linked to above.
Imagine if researchers tested the football IQ of first-year college ball players versus people who’d never even watched football, in order to find out how football players’ brains differed from “normal” people and whether or not it was because they were all autistic. At no point is it considered whether the ball players’ brains had previously experienced high school football. Wait. You don’t have to imagine anything, just play ad libs-scramble with some nouns and you’ll find that the paper above fits the bill. Researchers can hide behind the cover of data accumulation all they want, sometimes the data collected is poisoned at the outset by the woefully inaccurate and indefensible worldviews of the researchers.
In any field of human endeavour, it is generally understood that skill-based achievement is based on skills. Skills which were developed in as a result of practicing and pursuing those skills. “Art” is an outlier viewed as special and magical, the result of something inherently exceptional and different in the psyche and physiology of its practitioners. This misconception is in our fucking way, feeds an inescapable culture of grift, and dissuades “non-artists” from realizing thst they can be “creative” in any way they want, right now, quite easily and without obstruction. Doodling on a napkin is creative. So is whistling. Or journaling, or working on a car, or fucking around in a woodshop or experimenting with ingredients in mashed potatoes. And as for capital-A “ART,” anyone can make it. Let’s imagine someone’s non-artist Uncle. He works with furniture for a living. One day, he has an idea of decorating his house with an image from inside of his head. He thinks about a fish swimming in a martini glass. His own thought amuses him. He can’t draw or paint, but he just has this urge to make it. So be goes down to the dollar and hardware store, buys a cheap clear plastic glass, a little toy fish, and resin. He fills the glass with resin, sticks the toy fish in it, lets it dry, and suddenly the idea from his head exists in physical space. He has a fun little curio now.
Then as it sits on his shelf, he has more ideas. He thinks about bubbles, food coloring, a tiny little paper umbrella. He thinks about some varnish he just put on a chair at work, and thinks about how he could simulate a cold, sweaty glass with fake ‘salt’ on the rim. He thinks about how it would be easier to see through a glass container instead of a plastic one. So he makes a second little fish-in-a-glass curio. It’s better, more polished. It’s fun and people like it. So does the Uncle.
That’s art. It’s a sculpture. It nourishes his soul. But ‘normal’ people are tricked into thinking that they somehow just can’t “do” art. They’re socially-engineered into depriving themselves just because they didn’t take to a niche interest in childhood. It’s brutal, leads to exploitation, and all the absolute shame in the world on ‘scientific’ researchers who deliberately set out to reinforce this drivelling nonsense.
Outer Freakwave 