You're right, it's like a creative person calling themselves creative. Or the glaring problem with the everyone is special mentality.

"If you define your personality as creative, it only means you understand what is perceived to be creative by the world at large, so you're really just following a rote creative template. That's the opposite of creativity. Everybody is wrong about everything, just about all the time." - Chuck Klosterman

So, paradoxically, if you are creative according to whatever definition created by society, you are not actually creative? So if you observe your own creativity it is not creativity? That quote is quite silly.

Creativity is the ability to come up with new ideas. A creative person can certainly recognize that they are good at coming up with new ideas.

This also happens with wisdom; I had a teacher who said that the minute someone said he was wise, he stopped being wise. I don't think creativity or wisdom are like amplitudes in quantum mechanics, though; observing character traits does not destroy them. Rather, I think this is a reflection of the lake Wobegon effect: most everyone thinks he is at a higher percentile than he actually is. Most people think they are above average. The really capable people realize this and figure that they have to say they're in the bottom percentiles in order to fill in those gaps. So that's how you get B performers who think they are A performers, C performers who think they are B performers, and A performers who think they are F performers.

I don't try to be modest or arrogant. I prefer to try to be correct. If I'm good at something, I might miss out on opportunities if I think I'm bad at said thing. For example, I might take too much shit at work and not realize I can call the shots because they need me there.

I see no reason why a young man can't be wiser than an old man. Sure, an old man has lived longer, but the young man might have more experience if he's lived better and faced the truth more often. So I think I'm wiser than most people. Reality bears this out: I think there's going to be a housing bust, and then there's housing bust (I thought this was going to happen early 2006). I take Robert Schiller's word for it when he says this is going to be the worst depression since that Great one, and then it happens (early 2007). I could go on, but the point is, would I be better off by saying I'm a fool? I could have made a lot of money off these this crisis if I trusted my gut.

There are also things I know I suck at. I'm terrible at holding my tongue (4 percentile, I'm guessing). I ramble. I'm also really clumsy in a few kinds of social environments, particularly pregames.

If you have nagging doubts about your creativity, ignore them and look at your work. Is it creative? There's really no need to be bashful, at least in private.

If the quote said it works this way for "most" people then maybe there is an argument.

Some of the greatest minds have remarked at how little we know but those same great minds realized that they were great in the context of their time.

That's not how amplitudes in quantum mechanics work, either ;)

I think he's more talking about people who want to wear berets and live in loft apartments