Good thing I'm not nebulously defending creativity, then.

I'm directly replying to the notion that something is derivative if it is "based on something we've experienced or seen." The fact that rote math calculations are generally less original than creative expressions makes my argument stronger, not weaker.

Right, but the general context of the thread is a discussion about how human thought or creative activity more generally contrasts with (current) machine capabilities. That's the sense in which I thought that adding two numbers is the worst example. It's notably the paradigmatic thing that machines are better at than any human