“Genius is nothing but continued attention.” – Claude Adrien Helvetius
We all know that we should manage our time more efficiently, and most of us are very bad at switching off email and social networking connections to focus on work, but how much impact does constant disruption have on our efficiency? More importantly, what is the longer-term impact of the deluge of data on our brains?
“Brain researchers estimate that your unconscious database outweighs the conscious on an order exceeding ten million to one. This database is the source of your hidden, natural genius. In other words, a part of you is much smarter than you are. The wise people regularly consult that smarter part.” - Michael J. Gelb
“All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.” from Candide by Voltaire
“Cheddar cheese and pickle, the Vincent motorsickle
Slap and tickle
Woody Allen, Dali, Dimitri and Pasquale
balabalabala and Volare
Something nice to study, phoning up a buddy
Being in my nuddy
Saying hokey-dokey, singalonga Smokey
Coming out of chokey
Reasons to be cheerful part 3” – Ian Dury & the Blockheads
“Anyone who has begun to think places some portion of the world in jeopardy.” - John Dewey
You can learn a lot from the game of Jeopardy! as revealed in a recent blog by Jonah Lehrer and the original work by IBM, who have spent years building a “question answering” machine called Watson, in the quest to develop artificial intelligence. While Watson performs impressively, (s)he has some significant failings, and chief among them is that (s)he doesn’t know what (s)he knows in the same way that you and I know what we know. What I mean by that is that humans can be remarkably quick to react to a question, even when they do not have the answer, but only know that they know the answer (ie we recognise that the answer is buried somewhere in our brain, and therefore react to a question, without having the answer immediately to hand). Think of all those times that you stick your hand up to ask a question, without knowing precisely what you want to ask – despite your pre-emption, you still manage to ask something intelligent. Or remember the experience of having something on the ‘tip of your tongue’ – you know that someone’s name beings with K, but you can’t quite remember what the name is!
“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realise how close they were to success when they gave up.” - Thomas Edison
Football fans will enjoy an article by Gregg Fraley, which I saw yesterday after writing on the same theme. He writes about the importance of expecting and accepting failure and of persistence in achieving your innovation goals (remember Nikola Tesla’s description of Thomas Edison). I like the description of experimentation as planned failure and learning, and of thinking beyond getting things perfect every time. Psychologists and others have shown that we learn more from mistakes than from failure – we all know that failure is more likely to change our future behaviour than success!
“None of my inventions came by accident. I see a worthwhile need to be met and I make trial after trial until it comes. What is boils down to is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration.” – Thomas Edison
“If Edison had a needle in a haystack, he would proceed at once with the diligence of the bee to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search. … I was a sorry witness of such doings, knowing that a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety percent of his labor.” – Nikola Tesla
“What a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index into his desires – desires of which he himself is often unconscious. If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinise it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way.” - Bertrand Russell
“To know one thing, you must know the opposite.” – Henry Moore
“The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.” – Niels Bohr
“The real voyage of discovery consists, not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” - Marcel Proust
“Man cannot discover new oceans, unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” – Andre Gide
“Great wits are sure to madness near allied. And thin partitions do their bounds divide.” - John Dryden
My mother often used to tell me that, “genius is close to madness”, and it seems she was right. Recent research has shown many similarities in the workings of the brains of creatives and schizophrenics. This seems to be caused by less filtering of signals in the brain’s central control system and therefore greater connectivity and flow of information across different areas of the brain. Creativity is all about being open to new ideas, not accepting rules and limitations, and being able to see connections which others miss.
