That thesis is way, too oversimplified and a bit misleading. It could lead you to think the real source of creativity is how much you store, facts or patterns. Put Wikipedia on a computer with a pile of heuristics (eg How to Solve It). Then, it will be more creative than humans in no time. Yet, humans with virtually no knowledge are more creative.
My first study of creativity was Cracking Creativity by Michalko. Skimming its tools, I noticed all of them were about changing how one looks at a problem or connects its pieces. Another work told me geniuses are defined by what they forget or ignore more than what they memorize. The two ideas combined into my working approach.
When I did CompSci research, I would look through the papers for the concepts they reported on. High level ones, core prerequisites, and techniques in how they are combined. From there, I could enumerate variations on each. Then, just keep combining them in straight-forward or random ways. Eventually, something emerges.
Likewise, prior work on creativity and A.I. showed reasoning by analogy was huge in humans. We find patterns in one domain that we generalize to look for patterns in another domain. Then, there’s some process of knowing when to try one or not.
These processes so far are extracting a tiny amount of information, filtering most of it, identifying heuristics in a domain, and heuristics across domains. Also, letting the mind just soak on things to do whatever it does in the middle of the night. These are collectively creativity.
Memorization is a building block of, but different from, creativity. The proof is how we’ve long had memory and reasoning in systems but they sucked at creativity. Recently, systems are extrapolating enough to be more creative but are hallucinating nonsense they definitely didn’t remember. So, they’re orthogonal.
“Creativity comes to those who have internalized the patterns of their art -- they can see the connection or novelty because it's all in their head.”
Edit: I’ll also add that, for planning and creativity, many of us use a deliberate, trial-and-error process that takes time. We don’t just “see” it from something we internalized. We work toward it using the creative process. We usually do see it when it’s finished, though.
My first study of creativity was Cracking Creativity by Michalko. Skimming its tools, I noticed all of them were about changing how one looks at a problem or connects its pieces. Another work told me geniuses are defined by what they forget or ignore more than what they memorize. The two ideas combined into my working approach.
When I did CompSci research, I would look through the papers for the concepts they reported on. High level ones, core prerequisites, and techniques in how they are combined. From there, I could enumerate variations on each. Then, just keep combining them in straight-forward or random ways. Eventually, something emerges.
Likewise, prior work on creativity and A.I. showed reasoning by analogy was huge in humans. We find patterns in one domain that we generalize to look for patterns in another domain. Then, there’s some process of knowing when to try one or not.
These processes so far are extracting a tiny amount of information, filtering most of it, identifying heuristics in a domain, and heuristics across domains. Also, letting the mind just soak on things to do whatever it does in the middle of the night. These are collectively creativity.
Memorization is a building block of, but different from, creativity. The proof is how we’ve long had memory and reasoning in systems but they sucked at creativity. Recently, systems are extrapolating enough to be more creative but are hallucinating nonsense they definitely didn’t remember. So, they’re orthogonal.
“Creativity comes to those who have internalized the patterns of their art -- they can see the connection or novelty because it's all in their head.”
Edit: I’ll also add that, for planning and creativity, many of us use a deliberate, trial-and-error process that takes time. We don’t just “see” it from something we internalized. We work toward it using the creative process. We usually do see it when it’s finished, though.