Starter Phrases for Creativity
Fluency List other ways to express the idea... What ideas or words come to mind when... What are new ways to do... Situations in which something might occur... Other uses for an object or invention...Flexibility Describe many possible changes... List different ways to modify... In what ways might...Originality Devise your own way to... Propose a novel approach... List ways to develop...Elaboration Extend upon... Enhance by... Build on...Conceptual and Technological Revolutions
There are two kind s of scientific revolutions, those d riven by new tools and those d riven by new concepts. Thomas K uhn in his famous book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, talked almost exclusively about concepts and hard ly at all about tools. His id ea of a scientific revolution is based on a single example, the revolution in theoretical physics that occurred in the 1920s with the advent of quantum mechanics. This was a prime example of a concept-d riven revolution. K uhn's book...Prescriptivism and Descriptivism
So, you seem to be at an impasse. On the one hand, you have generations of grade school English teachers rightly warning their pupils that people might chuckle at them if they use the word ‘irregardless’. On the other hand, you have the scientific rigor of the modern linguistic community touting descriptivism as the torch-bearer of truth and enlightenment. Are you doomed to choose between a democracy of solecisms and a library of thousand-page tomes of writer’s regulations? Are things r...Adaptive Regression
There are numerous vital experiences that cannot be achieved without adaptive regression: The creation and appreciation of art, music, literature, and food; the ability to sleep; sexual fulfillment; falling in love; and, yes, the ability to free-associate and tolerate psychoanalysis or psychodynamic therapy without getting worse. Perhaps the most important element in adaptive regression is the ability to fantasize, to daydream. The person who has access to his unconscious processes and mines ...Joel Gold on the exercise of fantasy and imagination to unlock knew ideas.
It is Impossible to Keep Up with New Knowledge
No man's model of reality is a purely personal product. While some of his images are based on firsthand observation, an increasing proportion of them today are based on messages beamed to us by the mass media and the people around us. Thus the degree of accuracy in his model to some extent reflects the general level of knowledge in society. And as experience and scientific research pump more refined and accurate knowledge into society, new concepts, new ways of thinking, supersede, contradict...The growth of knowledge is too fast for anyone to keep on top of it, even in specialized fields. Is the solution for everyone to become generalists?
Characteristics of Good Computer RPG Games
RPG players are challenged to build many physical, mental, magical, and alliance- oriented traits and leanings for their characters, and to then build relationships with other characters as well. There is a natural design emphasis on how characters are built, and what building a character then means in the context of that character’s world. RPGs can be heavy on asset creation in art, because multiple character types, features, unique abilities, costuming, settings, props, items, and specia...- Emphasis on character building and character relations
- Asset-intensive
- Developing a character system matrix
- Melding characters with action
- Female gaming audience/emphasis on social interaction
- Story intensive
Examples of How Language Affects Cognition
Most questions of whether and how language shapes thought start with the simple observation that languages differ from one another. And a lot! Let's take a (very) hypothetical example. Suppose you want to say, "Bush read Chomsky's latest book." Let's focus on just the verb, "read." To say this sentence in English, we have to mark the verb for tense; in this case, we have to pronounce it like "red" and not like "reed." In Indonesian you need not (in fact, you can't) alter the verb to mark tens...Examples of how languages differ between cultures in their constructs, how those constructs affect the way the speaker thinks about things, and how teaching a person a new language can alter the way they think.
Babies are Scientists
Babies start out believing that there are profound similarities between their own mind and the minds of others. That belief gives them a jump start in solving the Other Minds problem. But during the first three years they also observe the differences in what people do and say. Those differences stem from the fact that all minds aren't actually entirely alike. Babies and young children watch and listen with careful focused interest as their mother refuses to let them touch the lamp cord or as ...Their drive to play is a drive to explore, they are equipped with the cognitive and physical tools to explore their world and feed their curiosity about it.
Not All Thoughts are Memes
Where do new memes come from? They come about through variation and combination of old ones - either inside one person's mind, or when memes are passed from person to person. So, for example, the poodle story is concocted out of language that people already know and ideas they already have, put together in new ways. They then remember it and pass it on, and variations occur in the process. And the same is true of inventions, songs, works of art, and scientific theories. The human mind is a r...Thoughts we keep to ourselves are not memes, because they are not passed along to others. New memes come ideas that we put together in new ways.
The "poodle story" referred to in this meme is the urban legend of a woman who microwaved her dog to dry it after a bath.