Pipeline for Friday, December 5, 2025

You don't have to prototype everything. Just the part that's not believable.
David Kelly

A Swedish study found that dopamine systems in healty, highly creative adults are similar in certain ways to those found in the brains of people with schizophrenia. In both cases, there was a lower density of dopamine D2 receptors in the thalamus--a brain area associated with sensory perception and motor function, which also plays an important role in creative thought, suggesting one possible link between creativity and psychopathology.

Gentrer (?) and colleagues gave the ambiguous sorting task to Northwestern students from an array of majors and found that all of the students figured out how to group phenomena by domains. But fewer could come up with groupings based on causal structure.
There was a group of students, however, who were particularly good at finding common deep structures. Students who had taken classes in a range of domains, like those in the Integrated Success Program

From its earliest practice, craft knowledge has entailed knowledge of the "ways" of one's materials--that is, knowledge of their nature, acquired through disciplined perception. At the beginning of the western tradition, Sophia (wisdom) meant skill for Homer; the technical skill of a carpenter, for example. Through pragmatic engagement, the carpenter learns the different species of wood, then fitness for such needs as load bearing and water holding, their dimensional stability with changes in the weather, and their varying resistance to rot and insects. The carpenter also gains a knowledge of universals, such as the right angle, the plumb, and the level, which are indispensable for sound construction. It is in the crafts that nature first becomes a thematic object for study, and that study is grounded by a regard for human activity.

The Gruber team has uncovered a number of principles that seem to characterize the work of major scientists, like Darwin and Piaget. Such individuals engage in a wide and broad interconnected network of enterprises; exhibit a sense of purpose or will that permeates their entire network, giving direction to their daily and yearly activities, force the creation and exploitation of images of wide scope; and display a close and continuing affective tie to the elements, problems, or phenomenon that are being studied.

For their part, composers write complex harmonies only by instinct. It is simply too complex for textbook rules to be of much help.

There are three parties to every relationship. Person A, Person B, and the structure that governs them.

If you're tapped into your creative side, there's a good chance that you'll see yourself in at least one of Dabrowski's five types of overexcitability. Psychomotor, sensual, intellectual, imaginational, or emotional. Et seq.