Yep, many discoveries recently seems to come from someone glancing over the category fence and going "hey, that looks similar to xyz".
Re:Creative Genius Driven by Distraction
by kendallpark on Thursday March 05, 2015 @06:02PM
(#9154503)
Yeah. I was sitting in my PHIL 101 class way back in the day and was like, "Wait, this argument doesn't work because it assumes too low a level of computational complexity." Made for a great paper.
I also took some advanced creative writing courses. I was the only science major in my Novella class. So of course I wrote sci-fi. Had the most original story out of the group.
Reminds me of Peter Watts. Educated as a marine biologist, writes hard sci-fi for a living. Seems to have a very cynical world view to boot. The latter could be in part because he is apparently a trouble magnet.
I've always thought that creativity and chaos go hand in hand. At least in my experience. The inability to draw barriers between categories and subjects.
I think the bigger struggle is being able to retain focus on an idea once you've conceived it. You can have all the innovative ideas in the world, doesn't really amount to much if you can't pull it together and ship.