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Is creativity an inborn personality trait or a set of learned skills? The answer determines whether we test for intrinsic talent or teach creative skills. Current research on screening for scientific creativity suggests why getting the answer right is critical to the future of women in science.
Creativity
On the Myer's Briggs test I'm an INTJ. This means I'm a Systems Builder Mastermind. I happen to be female. With my Asperger traits I see patterns everywhere. The universe is half chaos and half order. I can see the order. I can see the parts. I can see how the parts fit together. I do have a problem with neurotypical testing methods because they are created by neurotypical brains. I'm actually offended by them (in addition to having no interest in taking them.) My playground is the universe. Neurotypicals can't follow me there. I kind of like it that way.
Testing for Talent
Fascinating response. So we have some questions. Our most recent post is an open-ended kind of patterning puzzle. Is our puzzle also neurotypical? Can you point to any kind of testing (or puzzles) that you DO find enjoyable that might be adapted to identifying the unique kinds of thinking that you do do? Or are you saying that what we should be looking for is uniqueness, and that by its very nature, uniqueness cannot be identified by any kind of standardized testing? That true talent is what doesn't fit?
My secret is a "random walk"
I checked out your puzzle. I don't wish to offend. It isn’t the kind I like to play with. I would call it a “neurotypical” puzzle. I’m a pattern seeker in the canvas of chaos – a “Midas Touch Sewage Engineer.” I “random walk” (see wikipedia) to find patterns and solutions to problems. Here’s an example of my recent “random walk” on the human brain:
Neocortex, Limbic, Reptilian (Triune brain see wikipedia)
Thor, Hymir, Midgard Serpent (Thor Battering Midgard Serpent by Johann Fussli)
Eve White, Stable Eve, Eve Black (Three Faces of Eve)
Superego, Ego, Id (Freud)
Order, Me, Chaos (A pun and pattern)
Hero, Victim, Foe (Karpman Drama Triangle)
Triangle (Murray Bowen family systems theory)
I would call this grouping the same elephant as looked at through different eyeballs. It is the triune brain that ails us all. Art, history, psychology, religion, wars, science, history, come from this mess.
As a Midas Touch Sewage Engineer I would be arrogant enough to petition my Creator to come up with a much better design. I'm hoping for an evolutionary revision.
Aspies can't be "taped" like neurotypicals
Isaac Asimov was an Aspie. He understood that Aspies can't be "taped" like neurotypicals (see the plot to his short story "Profession") http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profession_(short_story) This will answer your last two questions in the affirmative.
The Creative Genius is in the Feeble-Minded. There's madness in that!
pattern finding
Dear Systems Builder Mastermind,
Thanks for the feedback on our puzzle. We thought it might be too structured for you, and that's what we needed to know. And thanks for the example of how you think. You might want to take a shot at our dear friend Todd Siler's book BREAKING THE MIND BARRIER. His thought processes, and the ways he makes connections, are much more like yours than most peoples's. See what your think. We're currently working with him to try to capture his unusual process. Perhaps along the way we can capture a bit of yours as well, so stay tuned as we continue to explore this topic in the future!
Todd Siler
I took a random walk on the subject of Todd Siler. His attempt to integrate science and art is an expression of seeking wholeness. I also observed the symbol of Ouroboros in one of his art pieces. Once he gives up searching for it in material gains and pursuits he might hear the call of the Daimonic from his heart, Take the Hero's Journey, and experience Dabrowski's Theory of Positive Disintegration. I see Individuation in his future. He's a like-minded soul.
His "metaphorming" is his metaphor for what I call "meme."
Random Walk
I just solved schizophrenia. If you would like to see it piece by piece then I might suggest you visit Shelley Carson's Life as Art blog and Stephen Mason's Look at it This way. My postings in those two blogs can be pieced together and show you the big picture.
Autism, Oedipus, Prometheus, Schizophrenia
On the Kiersey Type Indicator, I'm a Promethean NT Rationalist (INTJ). Prometheus was caught between a rock and a hard place! An eagle ate at his liver only to have it grow back the next day. I suffer as Prometheus suffers. It's the burden of a double-bound brain virus (always looking for the third way out.) You will find your autistics and later schizophrenics from my personality type.
I withdrew from the world at the age of four and descended into Hell. I took Carl Jung's night sea journey. Would you like to see what Hell looks like? View Henri Fusseli's painting "Thor battering the Midgaard Serpent." In that painting, the Midgaard Serpent pulled Thor (my father) from the boat and Hymir felt helpless, powerless, abandoned, afraid, and felt guilty as Hell! That's also known as the Oedipus Complex. This event precipitated the formation of my Superego, Ego, and Id. The Superego, Ego and Id are personified well in Fusseli's painting: It's the "triune brain" Neocortex, Limbic, and Reptilian. My autistic anxiety started the day after that dream. I've had 36 years of being too afraid to live and too afraid to die. That's a rock and a hard place. It's why I can see and you can't. Here's proof of that:
Explaining and inducing savant skills: privileged access to lower level, less-processed information
Allan Snyder
I argue that savant skills are latent in us all. My hypothesis is that savants have privileged access to lower level, less-processed information, before it is packaged into holistic concepts and meaningful labels. Owing to a failure in top-down inhibition, they can tap into information that exists in all of our brains, but is normally beyond conscious awareness. This suggests why savant skills might arise spontaneously in otherwise normal people, and why such skills might be artificially induced by low-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation. It also suggests why autistic savants are atypically literal with a tendency to concentrate more on the parts than on the whole and why this offers advantages for particular classes of problem solving, such as those that necessitate breaking cognitive mindsets.
A strategy of building from the parts to the whole could form the basis for the so-called autistic genius. Unlike the healthy mind, which has inbuilt expectations of the world (internal order), the autistic mind must simplify the world by adopting strict routines (external order).
Bateson was right about the double-bind
Welcome to my delusional world called autism. See Wikipedia term "double-bind."
"Bateson maintained that in the case of the schizophrenic, the double bind is presented continually and habitually within the family context. By the time the child is old enough to have identified the double bind situation, it has already been internalized, and the child is unable to confront it. The solution then is to create an escape from the conflicting logical demands of the double bind, in the world of the delusional system."
It takes the double-bind below to correct the "autistic world" created by the double-binds above.
When a person faces the paradox of believing his or her life important whilst thinking that human existence is meaningless and without purpose, cognitive dissonance occurs, overcoming many innate psychological and cultural defense mechanisms.
That's called Positive Disintegration.
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