WEBVTT - The Dark Side of Creativity 0:00:00.520 --> 0:00:03.160 Brought to you by the two thousand twelve Toyota Camera. 0:00:03.440 --> 0:00:11.000 It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind? 0:00:11.160 --> 0:00:18.560 From How Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, welcome to Stuff 0:00:18.560 --> 0:00:20.560 to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and 0:00:20.600 --> 0:00:23.240 I'm Julie Douglas. Julie, did you ever watch Tales from 0:00:23.239 --> 0:00:25.640 the Dark Side back in the day? What do you 0:00:25.680 --> 0:00:29.000 remember about it? Um? I remember it was creepy tails, 0:00:29.080 --> 0:00:31.160 and remember my brother and I love stuff like that 0:00:31.200 --> 0:00:33.760 as well as Tales from the Crypt, so like anything 0:00:33.760 --> 0:00:37.599 that we could amass of the horror genre, we were there. 0:00:37.840 --> 0:00:39.280 Of course, Talles from the Crypt you had to have 0:00:39.400 --> 0:00:43.640 HBO access for that. Yes, in our neighbors you have 0:00:43.680 --> 0:00:46.480 a Harrison's Thank you, Harrison's See. I had to watch 0:00:46.520 --> 0:00:49.720 it half scrambled, so it was sort of half imagination 0:00:49.960 --> 0:00:52.440 of what was going on with the Tales from the Crypt. 0:00:53.040 --> 0:00:55.920 But then Tails in the Dark Side that came on 0:00:56.000 --> 0:00:58.680 at like three o'clock on a Sunday afternoon or something 0:00:59.040 --> 0:01:01.840 on cable, and that one always creep the heck out 0:01:01.840 --> 0:01:03.800 of it, maybe more so than Tales from the Crips. 0:01:03.840 --> 0:01:05.360 I think Tales from the Crip came later for me 0:01:06.120 --> 0:01:08.800 and and there was always that fun, campy, you know, 0:01:08.880 --> 0:01:12.520 old school classic horror comics motif and all the puns. 0:01:12.840 --> 0:01:15.480 It kind of disarmed you, like right from the get go, 0:01:15.600 --> 0:01:18.200 you knew that you were entering a world where horrible 0:01:18.200 --> 0:01:20.039 things were gonna happen. It was okay because it's just 0:01:20.120 --> 0:01:24.160 the vibe, but tales from the Dark side. The intro 0:01:24.280 --> 0:01:26.680 I remember as being like super creepy because it had 0:01:26.720 --> 0:01:30.080 like this really haunting music that was like bum bum 0:01:30.120 --> 0:01:34.920 bum bum bum bum bump, and then this this really old, 0:01:35.800 --> 0:01:38.119 terrifying narrator would come on and we would talk about 0:01:38.160 --> 0:01:41.080 how how we live in this surface, sunlit world, but 0:01:41.120 --> 0:01:43.759 there's a dark side everything, and that's when these these 0:01:43.800 --> 0:01:47.720 colorful scenes of like rural America suddenly turn negative, like 0:01:47.760 --> 0:01:50.320 photo negative on you. And then the titles come up 0:01:50.320 --> 0:01:52.360 and they melt, and then some dark story begins, and 0:01:52.400 --> 0:01:55.160 sometimes the story was really scary as well. But that 0:01:55.280 --> 0:01:58.520 intro was always great because it was it was just 0:01:58.520 --> 0:02:02.600 setting you up for this reverse side of everything you 0:02:02.840 --> 0:02:05.400 take for granted and think is wholly and normal in 0:02:05.440 --> 0:02:08.720 your life. So for you, it was the psychological aspect 0:02:08.720 --> 0:02:11.639 of it that really sort of arrested your imagination. Yeah, yeah, 0:02:11.680 --> 0:02:13.320 right from the from the get go, because the narrator 0:02:13.400 --> 0:02:16.280 was saying everything you think, there's a reverse side to 0:02:16.360 --> 0:02:19.679 it that's creepy and awful and it will totally rock 0:02:19.760 --> 0:02:23.800 your understanding of reality. Okay, So we're going to attempt 0:02:23.840 --> 0:02:25.799 to do the same thing here. We're going to give 0:02:25.880 --> 0:02:32.280 a photo negative image of creativity the dark side, right, 0:02:32.280 --> 0:02:34.160 because creativity is one of those things that we tend 0:02:34.240 --> 0:02:36.960 to hold up at least, you know, in our society 0:02:37.080 --> 0:02:39.880 and in our lives. We hold up creativity is this wonderful, 0:02:39.919 --> 0:02:42.239 awesome thing and if you've got it, it's the best 0:02:42.280 --> 0:02:44.760 thing in the world, right, I mean, it's it's the 0:02:44.800 --> 0:02:47.320 stuff of art and the movies and music and everything. 0:02:47.360 --> 0:02:50.680 All the media we consume is born out of creativity. 0:02:50.960 --> 0:02:53.839 The jokes you hear somebody tell over dinner born out 0:02:53.840 --> 0:02:57.160 of creativity, the dishes you eat creatively presented to you. 0:02:57.320 --> 0:03:00.400 It's it's the font of everything that you want in 0:03:00.440 --> 0:03:02.120 your life. So how could there be this dark side 0:03:02.160 --> 0:03:04.440 to it? How could the tails from the dark Side 0:03:04.520 --> 0:03:07.119 narrator come in and mess this up for us? Yeah, 0:03:07.160 --> 0:03:09.600 you're right, because there are hundreds of books about creativity 0:03:09.600 --> 0:03:12.200 and how to bolster your creativity. And we've talked about 0:03:12.200 --> 0:03:14.960 it in an evolutionary sense too, that this was important 0:03:15.240 --> 0:03:19.679 to be a creative thinker for our own survival and 0:03:19.760 --> 0:03:21.880 also to attract mates and so on and so forth. 0:03:21.880 --> 0:03:24.840 And we've seen this in nature, we've seen creativity and animals. 0:03:25.280 --> 0:03:29.040 So yeah, how could it be dark? Well, there's this 0:03:29.200 --> 0:03:34.360 idea that the dark side could emerge because of our 0:03:34.400 --> 0:03:39.720 creative tendencies to be wonderful, fabulous, because essentially, when we're 0:03:39.760 --> 0:03:43.600 being creative, we're creating a kind of lie, right, we 0:03:43.720 --> 0:03:47.480 are altering our reality to a certain degree and telling 0:03:47.480 --> 0:03:51.240 a story about how things are or how they seem. Okay, 0:03:51.320 --> 0:03:54.200 like a fictional novel is essentially a lie about something 0:03:54.200 --> 0:03:57.240 that happened, even at like a finely prepared meal. You know, 0:03:57.280 --> 0:03:59.720 it doesn't taste like fish, because it's kind of lying 0:03:59.760 --> 0:04:02.720 to you that it's it's not really a dead animal 0:04:02.720 --> 0:04:04.880 that watched up on the shore. It's something else, delightful 0:04:05.160 --> 0:04:08.880 and wonderful. Umn just go down the list of things. 0:04:08.880 --> 0:04:12.640 Any actors performance, it's really convincing. They're kind of lying 0:04:12.680 --> 0:04:14.640 to you because they are putting on a show for you. 0:04:14.680 --> 0:04:16.680 They're pretending to be something there or not Yeah. We've 0:04:16.720 --> 0:04:19.640 even talked about this with language and semantic distance. We've 0:04:19.640 --> 0:04:22.120 talked about when we talk about our cuts of meat, 0:04:22.520 --> 0:04:25.159 we don't necessarily say a hey, i'd love a cow burger, 0:04:25.360 --> 0:04:27.359 I'd love a hamburger. The way that we sort of 0:04:27.440 --> 0:04:31.440 cloak what something means to us or try to portray 0:04:31.520 --> 0:04:34.159 it to another person as something else, and then we 0:04:34.200 --> 0:04:37.360 have all these these different words for lies and different 0:04:37.360 --> 0:04:40.280 shades of lies to like take hyperbole, which I love 0:04:40.320 --> 0:04:45.320 to watch hyperbole and science headlines, particularly space science, and 0:04:45.360 --> 0:04:48.039 I've been on both sides of this. I've also helped 0:04:48.080 --> 0:04:51.280 craft some rather outrageous space headlines before. But it's all 0:04:51.360 --> 0:04:53.279 you can't just you know, because you want people to 0:04:53.400 --> 0:04:55.799 see that headline and read the article. So it tends 0:04:55.839 --> 0:04:57.800 to get out of control really quickly, and you get 0:04:58.040 --> 0:05:01.680 you get headlines like mo Ster, black hole gobbles down. 0:05:01.720 --> 0:05:04.159 You know, we we tweak the language enough to where 0:05:04.160 --> 0:05:06.360 we're creating an image of this thing that is not 0:05:06.960 --> 0:05:11.040 the actual scientific content of the article. But that's not lying, 0:05:11.080 --> 0:05:13.920 and nobody argues that it's lying. But but there are 0:05:13.920 --> 0:05:16.919 all these different different levels of dishonesty, even in a 0:05:17.040 --> 0:05:21.480 creative headline on an otherwise scientifically accurate article. Well, it 0:05:21.560 --> 0:05:25.599 requires a novel approach rights draws directly on creativity. And 0:05:25.680 --> 0:05:28.080 so what we're going to talk about today is creativity 0:05:28.120 --> 0:05:31.000 in the sense of, um, you know, could could a 0:05:31.080 --> 0:05:34.480 creative individual be more dishonest than another person? And we're 0:05:34.480 --> 0:05:37.880 going to explore the idea of creativity and madness. We've 0:05:37.920 --> 0:05:40.480 touched on it before. Um, we're going to look at 0:05:40.839 --> 0:05:44.400 mental illness through the lens of creativity. But before jumping 0:05:44.400 --> 0:05:46.080 into all of that, I did want to mention that 0:05:46.120 --> 0:05:50.560 a good example of being an excellent, fabulous but perhaps 0:05:50.600 --> 0:05:54.440 someone who is going beyond the bounds of storytelling facts 0:05:54.839 --> 0:05:57.400 is someone like Jonah Laire, who I think is really 0:05:58.279 --> 0:06:00.800 a great journalists in a sense that he is such 0:06:00.920 --> 0:06:04.640 a good storyteller. And I don't know if anybody has 0:06:05.440 --> 0:06:09.360 heard about this dust up about some of his journalistic practices. 0:06:09.560 --> 0:06:11.200 It started off as a dust up. I think it 0:06:11.320 --> 0:06:13.280 kind of ended up as more of a blow up. 0:06:13.320 --> 0:06:16.000 I was gonna say, sort of Adam bomb. Now, he 0:06:16.200 --> 0:06:19.560 had actually written a book called Imagine How Creativity Works, 0:06:20.080 --> 0:06:22.640 and it was withdrawn from the market by Laire's publisher 0:06:22.680 --> 0:06:25.479 when they discovered that he had fabricated some quotations in 0:06:25.480 --> 0:06:28.440 the book, most notably one from Bob Dylan on his 0:06:28.520 --> 0:06:31.200 creative process. And he's worth noting at this point, he's 0:06:31.240 --> 0:06:33.920 already made a name for himself. He's already big news. 0:06:34.120 --> 0:06:37.120 He's been on Radio Lab multiple times at this point. 0:06:37.120 --> 0:06:39.560 I think he'd already been on Colbert. I mean, he's 0:06:39.360 --> 0:06:41.400 he was out there. He's a you know, he's a 0:06:41.400 --> 0:06:44.480 good looking young guy. He's well spoken. He's very much 0:06:44.480 --> 0:06:46.680 in the same vein of the sort of the Eagleman's 0:06:46.720 --> 0:06:49.320 and the Neil deGrasse Tyson's of the world where they're 0:06:49.600 --> 0:06:53.680 they're great at communicating science, both in print and in person. Right. 0:06:53.680 --> 0:06:55.400 And that's what I think is sad about the story, 0:06:55.400 --> 0:06:58.640 because here's someone who's really committed to the story of science, 0:06:58.640 --> 0:07:01.040 and he finds all these different gems and he kind 0:07:01.040 --> 0:07:03.200 of makes this the whole sort of theme of science 0:07:03.200 --> 0:07:05.960 sparkle for people. Um. And he does this because he 0:07:06.160 --> 0:07:08.680 is such a good storyteller. Again, though, the problem is this, 0:07:08.720 --> 0:07:11.960 he's going to be on the boundaries of storytelling and 0:07:12.000 --> 0:07:16.080 he has, you know, dabbled in some plagiarism um as 0:07:16.080 --> 0:07:19.080 well as recycling of his work, and people are are 0:07:19.120 --> 0:07:20.840 sort of awe struck by this, and I think I 0:07:20.880 --> 0:07:23.440 am too, because here's someone who is a Rhodes scholar, 0:07:23.880 --> 0:07:28.520 incredibly smart, and somehow got into this, I guess you 0:07:28.520 --> 0:07:31.720 could say, this vortex of lies that sort of spun 0:07:31.760 --> 0:07:33.720 out of control. And so we want to look at 0:07:33.760 --> 0:07:36.680 that a little bit today. Why would someone jump into 0:07:36.720 --> 0:07:39.480 that scenario when they had all the tools at their 0:07:39.520 --> 0:07:42.200 disposal and all the creativity that they wanted. Why would 0:07:42.280 --> 0:07:46.240 they sort of rationalize this step into the darkness? Yeah, 0:07:46.320 --> 0:07:48.200 because I mean another big story out of the ear 0:07:48.280 --> 0:07:50.880 was the Mike Daisy affair with the whole apple and 0:07:51.000 --> 0:07:54.720 uh Mr Daisy visit the Apple factory, which is part 0:07:54.760 --> 0:07:56.840 of a spoken word piece that he did on This 0:07:56.880 --> 0:07:59.960 American Life. But the ultimate excuse there, whether you buy 0:08:00.000 --> 0:08:02.960 either or not, was that he's a storyteller first that 0:08:03.120 --> 0:08:07.640 sort of found himself wandering into journalistic territory, whereas Joann 0:08:07.680 --> 0:08:11.040 Hlaire was already in the journalistic territory. He was just 0:08:11.160 --> 0:08:14.520 using storytelling a lot to it to his advantage, and 0:08:14.560 --> 0:08:17.040 then it all fell apart from there right almost In 0:08:17.120 --> 0:08:19.160 Layer's instance, you could kind of see him saying it 0:08:19.200 --> 0:08:22.560 wouldn't be awesome if if Dylan said this, or you know, 0:08:22.600 --> 0:08:26.600 amended his quote with this to make that story even stronger. 0:08:26.640 --> 0:08:28.560 In some ways, I see that with Daisy, But I 0:08:28.560 --> 0:08:31.160 think what's intriguing about both of them is that I 0:08:31.240 --> 0:08:32.880 think we can all relate to this. There have been 0:08:32.920 --> 0:08:36.760 instances in our lives where we maybe took some creative 0:08:36.840 --> 0:08:40.240 license and we distorted the truth. So it's sort of 0:08:40.280 --> 0:08:42.760 interesting to look at why we might do that. Yeah, 0:08:42.760 --> 0:08:46.400 because when Wired actually hired a journalism professor, Charles to 0:08:46.559 --> 0:08:50.480 look into his work for Wired, I found various instances 0:08:50.520 --> 0:08:54.520 of recycling this is right. This is lair recycling, which 0:08:54.520 --> 0:08:57.520 of course is just using bits from one article you 0:08:57.559 --> 0:09:01.320 wrote for another, often for any different employee, getting paid 0:09:01.360 --> 0:09:04.760 twice right. Press release plagiarism, which of course is your 0:09:04.760 --> 0:09:07.600 sent a press release and it it is a write 0:09:07.640 --> 0:09:09.920 up of something that somebody did, and then you're supposed 0:09:09.960 --> 0:09:12.240 to take that information and make it your own to 0:09:12.520 --> 0:09:15.840 gather some other sources, get some quotes, etcetera. But it's 0:09:15.840 --> 0:09:18.959 then just taking from the press release. And that's something 0:09:19.000 --> 0:09:20.880 that I guess can sometimes be lost on people who 0:09:20.920 --> 0:09:23.840 aren't actually handling press releases. On one side of the other, 0:09:24.160 --> 0:09:27.040 acquisitions of plagiarism, the quotation issues that we mentioned and 0:09:27.120 --> 0:09:30.560 some factual issues as well. So the errors there that 0:09:30.600 --> 0:09:33.360 were found by this guy, that they ranged from some 0:09:33.480 --> 0:09:36.000 things that some listeners may be surprised to learn that 0:09:36.000 --> 0:09:38.400 that's a problem, because, after all, what's wrong with reusing 0:09:38.440 --> 0:09:40.520 something you've said? We do it every time that we 0:09:40.720 --> 0:09:42.320 tell a joke and it works right, and then you 0:09:42.360 --> 0:09:44.440 maybe tweak it a little but reuse the same joke 0:09:44.520 --> 0:09:47.040 later on. But it's different if somebody is paying you 0:09:47.400 --> 0:09:49.760 for that joke and then you are re selling the 0:09:49.800 --> 0:09:52.839 same joke to someone else who thinks it's also bears uniquely. Yeah, 0:09:52.840 --> 0:09:54.280 and I think the problem too is that he was 0:09:54.320 --> 0:09:58.000 looking at something like eighteen different writings that were published online, 0:09:58.080 --> 0:09:59.520 and I don't I believe that he just sort of 0:09:59.559 --> 0:10:02.080 cherry picked them. I don't think that he potentially chose 0:10:02.160 --> 0:10:04.240 these ones, and you discovered that fourteen out of the 0:10:04.320 --> 0:10:08.920 eighteen had the recycled content in them. So, um, you know, 0:10:08.960 --> 0:10:10.880 this is not a condemnation of Layer, because again, I 0:10:10.920 --> 0:10:13.000 think this is someone who is incredibly talented, and I 0:10:13.000 --> 0:10:15.040 hope that he bounces back from this. It's just a 0:10:15.080 --> 0:10:17.680 good example of what we're talking about today. And in fact, 0:10:17.720 --> 0:10:22.520 some would actually say that Lair's predicament is really more 0:10:22.600 --> 0:10:26.120 of an indirect result of how things are published these days, 0:10:26.160 --> 0:10:28.800 because back in the day, you know, even twenty years ago, 0:10:29.480 --> 0:10:31.960 the content would have gone through at least five different 0:10:31.960 --> 0:10:35.360 people for you know, fact checkers to editors to make 0:10:35.400 --> 0:10:38.040 sure that that all of that was correct. So in 0:10:38.160 --> 0:10:41.800 some ways we have a much wider scope in which 0:10:41.840 --> 0:10:45.640 we can operate because of the technology available to us. 0:10:46.120 --> 0:10:49.520 And you'll see that across all sorts of fields like accounting, 0:10:49.640 --> 0:10:53.280 there's you know, there's a little bit more margin for Air. 0:10:53.280 --> 0:10:55.640 I guess you could say, right, yeah. And also he 0:10:55.720 --> 0:10:58.280 was obviously a big name, and so when he began 0:10:58.360 --> 0:11:00.680 to fall, a lot of eyes went on to his 0:11:00.760 --> 0:11:03.920 work and picked him to pieces. So you can also 0:11:03.960 --> 0:11:06.000 say that, say that there there are plenty of other 0:11:06.040 --> 0:11:09.520 cases of people committing the same journalistic crimes, if you will, 0:11:09.520 --> 0:11:11.600 out there. They just don't have as many eyes on 0:11:11.679 --> 0:11:14.439 what they're doing. All right, So enough of these transgressions, 0:11:14.480 --> 0:11:18.319 let's talk about where it all happens as creativity in 0:11:19.000 --> 0:11:22.240 our brains. Yeah, I guess the best place to start 0:11:22.600 --> 0:11:25.280 is with the old idea of left and right brain, 0:11:25.679 --> 0:11:28.440 and this came out of nineteen seventies. There are various 0:11:28.440 --> 0:11:31.480 studies of split brain patients looking at this idea that 0:11:31.559 --> 0:11:36.360 the right hemisphere of control creativity and that the left 0:11:36.360 --> 0:11:40.040 hemisphere is the seat of logic and mathematics. And also 0:11:40.440 --> 0:11:42.800 everyone loved this. I mean, there's the duality of it 0:11:42.880 --> 0:11:45.920 is is kind of beautiful. There's this star bellied sneeches 0:11:46.000 --> 0:11:48.040 kind of aspect of it too, where it's like, oh, 0:11:48.080 --> 0:11:50.319 are you are you part of Team Edward or team 0:11:50.640 --> 0:11:53.000 what's the other team Jacob? Team Jacob? You know, are 0:11:53.040 --> 0:11:55.079 you Team Creatives? You're pretending like you don't know what 0:11:55.120 --> 0:11:56.880 the other team is? I know, yeah, you can't see 0:11:56.920 --> 0:11:59.840 my T shirt. So everyone loved this idea. It was 0:11:59.840 --> 0:12:02.840 so bullet resonated and people like to try to decide 0:12:02.840 --> 0:12:05.440 which team they were on. But since that time, there 0:12:05.480 --> 0:12:08.199 have been a lot more studies into looking at exactly 0:12:08.200 --> 0:12:10.839 how the brain works and how the brain works with creativity. 0:12:11.320 --> 0:12:14.640 This whole field in fact of neuro aesthetics, right, which 0:12:14.679 --> 0:12:17.640 is a scientific attempt to understand the human brains aesthetic 0:12:17.679 --> 0:12:23.880 perceptions of art music. Yeah, at the neurological level. Um, 0:12:23.920 --> 0:12:26.679 there's an interesting study from the University of South Carolina, 0:12:26.840 --> 0:12:31.560 and again it just it exploits this idea that it's 0:12:31.640 --> 0:12:34.680 not just a you know, two party system in the brain, 0:12:34.760 --> 0:12:37.040 that it really takes the two halves of the brain 0:12:37.120 --> 0:12:40.679 to tango when it comes to creativity. And Lisa as 0:12:40.760 --> 0:12:43.359 the z A who is the assistant professor of neuroscience, 0:12:43.360 --> 0:12:46.480 and her team scan the brains of architecture students. And 0:12:46.480 --> 0:12:49.720 they did this because obviously architecture students are engaging what 0:12:49.720 --> 0:12:51.839 you would say is both sides, right, there's an art 0:12:52.040 --> 0:12:54.719 side to it, and then there's also engineering to it. Yeah, 0:12:54.760 --> 0:12:57.160 there's the spatial part of it. So they were showing 0:12:57.240 --> 0:13:00.360 three shapes, a circle, a c in an eight, and 0:13:00.400 --> 0:13:02.840 they were then asked to visualize the images that could 0:13:02.840 --> 0:13:05.800 be made by rearranging those shapes. So this takes a 0:13:05.800 --> 0:13:09.280 little bit of creativity, right, because for example, a face 0:13:09.400 --> 0:13:11.240 could be made with the eight on its side to 0:13:11.280 --> 0:13:14.600 become the eyes. The sea could be a smiling mouth 0:13:14.720 --> 0:13:19.760 or a frown, and then the circle could be a nose. Okay, 0:13:19.760 --> 0:13:21.680 so that requires a little bit of your brain to say, 0:13:21.679 --> 0:13:24.520 oh what, you know, what could I paint with these objects? 0:13:25.200 --> 0:13:28.560 It's interesting when you said those I kind of intentionally 0:13:28.720 --> 0:13:32.800 misheard C. Instead of picturing the letter C, I pictured 0:13:32.800 --> 0:13:35.720 an ocean, and so I imagine like this figure eight 0:13:36.040 --> 0:13:38.120 tower rising out of an ocean, and in the circle 0:13:38.200 --> 0:13:40.080 is an eye at the top of it. That's because 0:13:40.080 --> 0:13:43.240 you're a crazy divergent thinker, which we'll talk about later, okay, 0:13:43.320 --> 0:13:45.240 or my hearing sucks one of the two. Well, yeah, 0:13:45.320 --> 0:13:48.960 that's possible as well. Um, but I also sometimes talked 0:13:48.960 --> 0:13:52.440 really fast, yes, so that could be a problem. But anyway, 0:13:52.760 --> 0:13:55.280 they were then asked to engage in what would be 0:13:55.320 --> 0:13:59.040 a more spatial sort of task, and so they were 0:13:59.080 --> 0:14:02.400 asked to piece together three geometric shapes with their minds 0:14:02.440 --> 0:14:06.360 to see if they formed a square or a rectangle. Now, 0:14:06.400 --> 0:14:09.200 the creative task, even though it was mainly handled by 0:14:09.240 --> 0:14:13.480 the right hemisphere, lit up the left hemisphere hemisphere more 0:14:13.559 --> 0:14:16.720 than the non creative task. And this was really a 0:14:16.760 --> 0:14:20.440 surprise to them because you would think that the spatial reasoning, 0:14:20.560 --> 0:14:25.120 the geometric part of it, would engage less of the 0:14:25.200 --> 0:14:27.920 left side, but in fact they found that even the 0:14:28.000 --> 0:14:32.440 left side was there. Um, that it was more prevalent 0:14:32.520 --> 0:14:35.200 too in the creative side. So again you see that 0:14:35.280 --> 0:14:38.680 it's not just one seat of the brain where creativity 0:14:38.720 --> 0:14:41.800 is occurring. And it's lending again to this idea of 0:14:41.880 --> 0:14:44.520 neuraesthetics that there's a lot more to creativity than we know. 0:14:45.520 --> 0:14:50.080 In effect, duality is kind of a misnomer, especially as 0:14:50.120 --> 0:14:52.520 far as the brain is concerned, that than any kind 0:14:52.520 --> 0:14:55.680 of creative or even engineering task is not one side 0:14:55.680 --> 0:14:58.440 of the other, but both sides working in some degree 0:14:58.440 --> 0:15:01.160 of harmony. Right. And then to add to all of this, 0:15:01.440 --> 0:15:04.560 you have different aspects of what is happening inside of 0:15:04.560 --> 0:15:09.000 the brain affecting how data is being perceived and interpreted. 0:15:09.080 --> 0:15:12.600 And again this is where we have novel ideas being generated. 0:15:13.160 --> 0:15:16.440 So this is when we begin to talk about mental 0:15:16.480 --> 0:15:19.800 illness and creativity, because you know, this is a subject 0:15:19.880 --> 0:15:22.640 that has been explored a lot more like, hey, there's 0:15:22.800 --> 0:15:26.440 that ban go and so creative, but have this unfortunate 0:15:26.560 --> 0:15:29.960 side effect of hallucinations and cutting off his ear and 0:15:29.960 --> 0:15:32.600 so on and so forth. Yeah, I mean, it's the 0:15:32.640 --> 0:15:36.240 idea of the unhinged creative types and old notion, and 0:15:36.560 --> 0:15:39.120 we continue to to carry it along with us. Sometimes 0:15:39.120 --> 0:15:41.720 we use it as a means of forgiving our own 0:15:41.800 --> 0:15:45.680 problems or or to sort of to make sense of 0:15:45.760 --> 0:15:49.480 the catech lives of individuals whose whose lives are illuminated 0:15:49.480 --> 0:15:51.760 by the fame they've a missed. Yeah, and so I 0:15:51.760 --> 0:15:54.120 mean it just here's the thing. Being creative does not 0:15:54.200 --> 0:15:56.680 mean that you are mentally ill, right, What it means 0:15:56.720 --> 0:15:59.560 is that there are some markers that mentally ill people 0:15:59.600 --> 0:16:02.840 have with creative, highly creative people, and then vice versa 0:16:02.880 --> 0:16:05.560 as well. And I mean, certainly just like the average 0:16:05.560 --> 0:16:08.840 person who has some sort of severemental illness, it's not 0:16:08.920 --> 0:16:13.120 gonna translate directly into creative output. And will explore that 0:16:13.160 --> 0:16:16.160 a little more. Again, we're talking about is stimuli and 0:16:16.200 --> 0:16:19.680 the interpretation of that. Here's something that's interesting. High creative 0:16:19.680 --> 0:16:22.040 skills have been shown to be somewhat more common in 0:16:22.040 --> 0:16:24.760 people who have mental illnesses we've talked about. But the 0:16:24.760 --> 0:16:28.560 connection here, they think has to do with the dopamine system. 0:16:28.600 --> 0:16:33.280 Because researchers at the Swedish Medical University Carolinska Institute is 0:16:33.360 --> 0:16:37.400 to it have managed to show that this dopamine system 0:16:37.440 --> 0:16:40.760 and healthy highly creative people is really similar in respects 0:16:40.760 --> 0:16:45.480 to people with schizophrenia. Specifically when we talk about mental illness, 0:16:45.880 --> 0:16:48.040 and it all has to do with the thalamus, which 0:16:48.080 --> 0:16:49.480 is a part of the brain that acts as the 0:16:49.520 --> 0:16:53.840 relay center, filtering information before it reaches the cortex or 0:16:53.960 --> 0:16:57.080 reasoning and cognition occur. So it turns out that people 0:16:57.080 --> 0:17:01.360 who are highly creative and schizophrenic people have fewer dopamine 0:17:01.360 --> 0:17:04.800 receptors in the thalamus than other people. And this is 0:17:04.840 --> 0:17:08.439 really important because, uh, again, this is sort of telling 0:17:08.520 --> 0:17:11.520 us about how data comes through our brains and how 0:17:11.560 --> 0:17:14.240 it is interpreted. Now, when I talk about highly creative 0:17:14.240 --> 0:17:15.960 people in this day of what we're talking about are 0:17:16.119 --> 0:17:20.199 healthy individuals who have been tested on divergent psychological tests. 0:17:20.840 --> 0:17:23.919 And this is certain kinds of tests that are looking 0:17:23.960 --> 0:17:26.919 at how you solve things. So it would require a 0:17:26.960 --> 0:17:29.560 novel approach, right, and this is how they sort of 0:17:29.600 --> 0:17:32.159 weed out who's highly creative and who's not in this 0:17:32.240 --> 0:17:35.960 particular study. So the idea is that the fewer D 0:17:36.119 --> 0:17:39.840 two receptors in the thalamus probably means a lower degree 0:17:39.920 --> 0:17:43.520 of signal filtering and then a higher flow of information 0:17:43.560 --> 0:17:47.800 from the thalamus. This is why you see this correlation 0:17:48.000 --> 0:17:52.120 between people who are schizophrenic and people who are highly 0:17:52.240 --> 0:17:55.879 creative or highly imaginative, because what you're seeing is again 0:17:56.320 --> 0:18:00.080 a flooding of stimuli to the brain and then this 0:18:00.240 --> 0:18:02.679 idea that you have to sort through it. Right, This 0:18:02.720 --> 0:18:04.280 is similar to what we've talked about in the way 0:18:04.359 --> 0:18:07.280 children perceive the world, the idea that their their brains 0:18:07.280 --> 0:18:10.040 are sponges and it's just stuff just flowing in and 0:18:10.040 --> 0:18:12.000 then they have to make sense of it all. So 0:18:13.680 --> 0:18:16.000 I guess this brings us to the question, then, what's 0:18:16.000 --> 0:18:18.480 going on in the rest of the brains? Right? What 0:18:18.480 --> 0:18:22.680 what do the muggles have going on that that prevents 0:18:22.720 --> 0:18:26.000 them from seeing and creating the magic in the world 0:18:26.040 --> 0:18:28.800 around them or from suffering from severe schizophrenia. Well, I 0:18:28.840 --> 0:18:30.800 mean part of it is that, again, you have so 0:18:30.880 --> 0:18:34.720 much stimulation there and and if you can cherry pick 0:18:35.760 --> 0:18:39.440 from that stimulation, you begin to make bizarre associations because 0:18:39.480 --> 0:18:42.200 you're simply aware of that much stuff in your brain. 0:18:42.760 --> 0:18:44.600 And in fact, it reminds me just you know, a 0:18:44.600 --> 0:18:48.800 little side trip here reminds me of the cognitive psychologists 0:18:48.800 --> 0:18:51.520 Alice and goth Nick when she was talking about infants 0:18:51.600 --> 0:18:57.840 having this lantern awareness versus adults having flashlight awareness, because 0:18:57.880 --> 0:19:02.240 she's saying that infant are far more conscious than adults 0:19:02.280 --> 0:19:04.679 because they're taking in everything and if you look at 0:19:04.680 --> 0:19:07.240 their brains you can see that that, you know, neurotransmitters 0:19:07.280 --> 0:19:11.000 are squirted all over that brain, marinating in it, and 0:19:11.040 --> 0:19:14.040 it allows them to have the neural connections to process 0:19:14.119 --> 0:19:16.639 all of that data. Okay, and so she's made that 0:19:16.720 --> 0:19:19.639 comment before of you know, this is perhaps the reason 0:19:19.680 --> 0:19:23.520 why some creative thinkers um have the breakthroughs that they can, 0:19:23.560 --> 0:19:26.040 because they are sort of holding onto a bit of 0:19:26.080 --> 0:19:29.639 that infant brain in that lantern awareness. Yeah. So, so 0:19:29.760 --> 0:19:35.600 to take us back to our unrealistic caveman examples, you 0:19:35.680 --> 0:19:39.160 have a grown up caveman who has who has completely 0:19:39.200 --> 0:19:42.119 grown up, not creative at all. That he's he's very 0:19:42.160 --> 0:19:45.440 much focused on what's important. Is that a tiger over 0:19:45.480 --> 0:19:48.520 there behind those bushes or is it a gazelle? Am 0:19:48.520 --> 0:19:50.080 I about to be eating? Or am I about to 0:19:50.320 --> 0:19:53.840 score some dinner? Whereas in everything else kind of fades 0:19:53.880 --> 0:19:56.920 into the background, right only focused on what's most important 0:19:56.960 --> 0:19:59.879 to survival at this moment, whereas his friend, who's more 0:20:00.040 --> 0:20:03.280 creatively in Clauden caveman might look over at a tree 0:20:03.320 --> 0:20:06.239 and link himself. I wonder if that tree is a 0:20:06.320 --> 0:20:09.480 woman who was somehow petrified by a god or something, 0:20:09.480 --> 0:20:10.720 because it kind of looks like a woman, and so 0:20:10.760 --> 0:20:14.120 he's staring at this tree, risking consumption by the tiger 0:20:14.240 --> 0:20:16.760 or missing out on a meal, whereas the the hunter 0:20:17.200 --> 0:20:19.920 is focused on what is actually occurring. Hey, you can't 0:20:19.920 --> 0:20:22.359 be uh, you can't be painting little happy trees in 0:20:22.359 --> 0:20:25.600 your mind and that scenario. But but on one level, 0:20:25.640 --> 0:20:27.280 you can sort of say, okay, well, one caveman is 0:20:27.359 --> 0:20:29.840 daydreaming and one is serious about the task at hand. 0:20:30.160 --> 0:20:31.920 But then you can also look at it in terms 0:20:31.920 --> 0:20:36.800 of one has shut off unnecessary stimuli and the other 0:20:36.840 --> 0:20:40.320 one is remaining open to stimuli even if the input 0:20:40.359 --> 0:20:45.240 of said stimuli is not immediately relevant to basic survival. Okay, 0:20:45.280 --> 0:20:50.119 so what you're talking about is a process called latent inhibition. Yeah, 0:20:50.760 --> 0:20:55.040 and uh. University of Tennessee psychology professor Jordan's Peterson says, quote, 0:20:55.040 --> 0:20:58.160 the normal person classifies an object and then forgets about it, 0:20:58.520 --> 0:21:01.360