Category: The Arts

Is Creativity more like IQ or Expertise?

by  Alex Tabarrok in

IQ, whatever its flaws, appears to be a general factor, that is, if you do well on one kind of IQ test you will tend to do well on another, quite different, kind of IQ test. IQ also correlates well with many and varied real world outcomes. But what about creativity? Is creativity general like IQ? Or is creativity more like expertise; a person can be an expert in one field, for example, but not in another.

In a short piece in The Creativity Post, cognitive Psychologist Rober Baer argues that creativity is domain-specific:

Efforts to assess creativity have been plagued by supposedly domain-general divergent-thinking tests like the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking, although even Torrance knew they were measuring domain-specific skills. (He create two different versions of the test, one that used verbal tasks and another that used visual tasks. He found that scores on the two tests were unrelated —they had a correlation of just .06—so they could not be measuring a single skill or set of skills. They were—and still are—measuring two entirely different things.) Because these tests have been used in so many psychological studies of creativity, much of what we think we know about creativity may be based on invalid data. These tests have also been widely used in selection for gifted/talented programs — programs that have, in turn, often suffered because by assuming creativity was domain general, these programs often wasted students’ time with supposedly content-free divergent thinking exercises (like brainstorming unusual uses for bricks) that really only develop divergent-thinking skill in limited domains.

The metaphor we use for understanding creativity will impact how we train for creativity:

If one’s goal is to enhance creativity in many domains, then creativity-training exercises need to come from a wide variety of domains—just as we must provide a broad general education if we want students to acquire modest levels of expertise in many areas. But if one’s goal is to increase creativity in just one domain, such as one might want to do in a gifted program focusing on one domain (such as a program in dance, poetry, math, etc)., then it would be appropriate for all of the creativity-training exercises to come from the particular domain of special interest.

Baer’s view is controversial. My inclination is to think that creativity does have a significant general aspect because creativity seems so often to involve combining seemingly disparate ideas. My suspicion is that that there is a neurological basis for this in, to put it crudely, right-brain, left-brain communication channels. The fact that creativity can be stimulated by drugs and travel also suggests to me a general aspect. No one ever says, if you want to master calculus take a “trip” but this does work if you are blocked on some types of creative projects.

Nevertheless, Baer’s view is worth thinking about; he gives more detail to his argument in two academic papers here and here.

My favorite things New Mexico

by  Tyler Cowen in

If I haven’t done one of these in a while, it is because the processes which rule my life keep sending me back to the same states.  Here is a new one, since my last visit predates blogging at MR:

1. Entrepreneur: Jeff Bezos, for $75 a year you can step into a new universe.  This will go down as one of the most significant innovations of our time.  Furthermore, Microsoft was founded in New Mexico and spent its first four years there.

2. Painter: Agnes Martin, Bruce Nauman, Georgia O’Keefe are all strong contenders, though they do not hail from the state but rather moved there to work.

3. Museum: Museum of International Folk Art, Santa Fe.  You can take this place as a stand-in for all the superb New Mexico visual arts of old, such as the santos and retablos.

4. Music: James Tenney, most of all his Postal Pieces.

5. Movie, set in: It is hard to think of anything other than Them!, though I suspect there are better candidates.  Contact is a good movie.

What else?  Cormac McCarthy I have never warmed to, and anyway he moved there later in life.  Don’t they have a bunch of astronauts?  Is there any popular music from this state not including John Denver?  You’ll get a separate report on the food.

The bottom line: It’s a state I’m fond of, and it has contributions in surprising areas.

The very best coverage of the new Charles Murray book

by  Tyler Cowen in

Could it be the lengthy NYT profile of Stevenson and Wolfers?  Other than finding material on economists interesting per se, and knowing them a bit, I found this profile relevant for two reasons.  First, successful economists really can earn a good amount these days, and at relatively young ages.  They could probably earn much more, if that is what they set out to do.  Second, there really is a cognitive elite engaged in assortative mating, and the children of those couples will have a big head start.  Furthermore that cognitive elite is now global (Justin is from Australia).  No, Murray’s econometrics do not demonstrate all of his conclusions, but nonetheless this family is a walking embodiment of The Bell Curve, not to mention the new book.  (I would have preferred a piece which explored this irony with more depth.)  Some of you are negative in the comments on my post, but the facts about the Wolfers/Stevenson family are hardly exceptional, conditional on a few other variables but of course strongly conditional on those variables.  They own a Noguchi table, we own a Noguchi lamp (cheaper than you think, by the way).  They ban sugar, we do not, but there is no junk food, sugary or otherwise, kept around our house.  My professional writing rails against junk food.  I was disappointed that their nanny has only a Master’s degree.  The nanny in our family has a Ph.d and is a well-known economics blogger.; going back in time, the two other nannies were a professional linguist and translator and an engineer (they are sometimes called “the grandparents”).  Get the picture?  The rhetoric in the profile is oddly non-self-conscious, perhaps in a way that makes the couple look less charismatic than they really are, and that too is worth thinking about.  Parts of the profile felt like a bit of a slog to me (despite my interest in the topic), but I suspect not to most NYT readers, and of course we are seeing a highly skilled and experienced journalist at work along with a first-rate team of editors.

Always try to give things the more subtle reading.

Are we stagnating aesthetically?

by  Tyler Cowen in

Some of you have been emailing, asking for my opinion of this recent Kurt Andersen Vanity Fair article.  Here is the summary introductory paragraph:

For most of the last century, America’s cultural landscape—its fashion, art, music, design, entertainment—changed dramatically every 20 years or so. But these days, even as technological and scientific leaps have continued to revolutionize life, popular style has been stuck on repeat, consuming the past instead of creating the new.

There is plenty more at the link.  A serious response would require a book or more, so let me offer a few conclusions, noting that it’s not possible in blog space to defend these judgments at any length.  This is all about aesthetics, and it is distinct from the TGS technology argument, though one might believe that technical breakthroughs are needed to usher in aesthetic innovations, and that slowness in the one area would lead to slowness in the other.  That’s not a claim I’ve ever made, but it’s worth considering even if it can’t be settled very easily.  In any case, here’s my view of the evidence:

1. Movies: The Hollywood product has regressed, though one can cite advances in 3-D and CGI as innovations in the medium if not always the aesthetics.  The foreign product is robust in quality, though European films are not nearly as innovative as during the 1960s and 70s.  Still,  I don’t see a slowdown in global cinema as a whole.

2. TV: We just finished a major upswing in quality for the best shows, though I fear it is over, as no-episode-stands-alone series no longer seem to be supported by the economics.

3. Books/fiction: It’s wrong to call graphic novels “new,” but they have seen lots of innovation.  If we look at writing more broadly, the internet has led to plenty of innovation, including of course blogs.  The traditional novel is doing well in terms of quality even if this is not a high innovation era comparable to say the 1920s (Mann, Kafka, Proust, others).

4. Computer and video games: This major area of innovation is usually completely overlooked by such discussions.

5. Music: Popular music has been in a Retromania sludge since the digital innovations of the early 90s, but classical contemporary music continues to show vitality and it is even establishing some foothold in the concert hall and in nightclubs too.  Jazz has plenty of niche innovation, but it’s not moving forward with new, central ideas which command the attention of the field.

6. Painting and sculpture: Lots of good material, no breakthrough central movements comparable to Pop Art or Abstract Expressionism.  Photography has seen lots of innovation.

7. Your personal stream: This is arguably the biggest innovation in recent times, and it is almost completely overlooked.  It’s about how you use modern information technology to create your own running blend of sources, influences, distractions, and diversions, usually taken from a blend of the genres and fields mentioned above.  It’s really fun and most of us find it extremely compelling.  See chapter three of Create Your Own Economy/The Age of the Infovore.

8. Architecture: Slows down after 2008, but there were numerous innovative blockbuster buildings prior to the crash.

Today the areas of major breakthrough innovation are writing, computer games, television, photography (less restricted to the last decade exclusively) and the personal stream.  Let’s hope TV can keep it up, and architecture counts partially.  For one decade, namely the last decade, that’s quite a bit, though I can see how it might escape the attention of a more traditional survey.  Some other areas, such as the novel, global cinema, and the visual arts are holding their own and producing plenty of small and mid-size innovations.

Although that is a relatively optimistic take on the aesthetics of the last decade, it nonetheless supports the view that aesthetic innovation relies on technological innovation.  Most (not all) of the major areas of progress have relied on digitalization, and indeed that is the one field where the contemporary world has brought a lot of technological progress as well.

Lend out the Pieta to the Louvre?

by  Tyler Cowen in

Asher Meir writes to me:

You wrote once that Italy doesn’t have to sell the Pieta to pay off its debts. But maybe it could create a lot of credibility by putting it in hock. In general, a country could create a lot of credibility by issuing bonds backed by various cultural treasures that they would find it plausibly inconceivable to forgo.

Italy could sell “Pieta bonds”.

Of course it could never work, even though it makes economic sense.  Italy would feel it is being taken advantage of.  Which is precisely the problem behind a lot of other proposed deals too.  Under what conditions could the French government actually keep the Pieta and find the benefits from keeping higher than the benefits from sending back?

The entire “tighter sanctions against the fiscal violators” approach, now on the table, encounters exactly this problem.  It’s already the case that the eurozone is unwilling to pull the plug on Italy.

*Reading my Father*

by  Tyler Cowen in

The author is Alexandra Styron, daughter of William, who is portrayed as manic depressive.  I found this memoir compelling, and it has been making many “best of” lists.  Here is one excerpt:

By all accounts, my sister was a cheerful baby, smart and pretty, with an easy manner.  In short, an ideal firstborn.  Daddy was enthralled.  “Take a lesson from me and don’t get too interested in the child,” Irwin Shaw wrote in a congratulatory letter.  “Since Adam’s first birthday, I’ve barely written a word, as it is much more interesting to watch all the subtle and terrible currents that run through a complex human being than to sit at a typewriter and battle with the comparatively flat and lifeless material of art.  Dole the child out to yourself in small doses, for your career’s sake.”

You can buy it here.

*The Lives of the Novelists*

by  Tyler Cowen in

Here is a mini-review from today’s FT, from their best books of the year discussion:

Lives of the Novelists, by John Sutherland, Profile, RRP£30

The fruit of decades of reading and research, Sutherland’s quirky compendium offers selective mini-biographies of 294 English novelists including Jeffrey Archer but not, oddly, Lewis Carroll or PG Wodehouse. A witty and enjoyably wide-ranging work.

The book has a remarkable density of information, as virtually every sentence tries to teach you something.  I have never read a book quite like it, definitely recommended.

Sentences of art and beauty

by  Tyler Cowen in

Indonesia’s growing wealth has also came into play as its collectors compete for the Balinese work of Mexican artist Miguel Covarrubias.

And the explanation is here:

“Before the Indonesians wanted the art but didn’t have the money to pay for it,” said Martin. “Now they do.”

At Christie’s in May, Covarrubias’ 1932 “Offering of Fruits for the Temple” set an auction record for the artist at $1.02 million, This week Covarrubias work on paper also hit a new high, selling for $290,500 also at Christie’s.

Here is the full report, mostly about the boom in Latin American art.

Mario Vargas Llosa on Liberty

by  Alex Tabarrok in

Mario Vargas Llosa in the WSJ:

There are those who in the name of the free market have supported Latin American dictatorships whose iron hand of repression was said to be necessary to allow business to function, betraying the very principles of human rights that free economies rest upon. Then there are those who have coldly reduced all questions of humanity to a matter of economics and see the market as a panacea. In doing so they ignore the role of ideas and culture, the true foundation of civilization. Without customs and shared beliefs to breathe life into democracy and the market, we are reduced to the Darwinian struggle of atomistic and selfish actors that many on the left rightfully see as inhuman.

What is lost on the collectivists, on the other hand, is the prime importance of individual freedom for societies to flourish and economies to thrive. This is the core insight of true liberalism: All individual freedoms are part of an inseparable whole. Political and economic liberties cannot be bifurcated. Mankind has inherited this wisdom from millennia of experience, and our understanding has been enriched further by the great liberal thinkers, some of my favorites being Isaiah Berlin, Karl Popper, F.A. Hayek and Ludwig von Mises. They have described the path out of darkness and toward a brighter future of freedom and universal appreciation for the values of human dignity….

Many cling to hopes that the economy can be centrally planned. Education, health care, housing, money and banking, crime control, transportation, energy and far more follow the failed command-and-control model that has been repeatedly discredited. Some look to nationalist and statist solutions to trade imbalances and migration problems, instead of toward greater freedom.

…The search for liberty is simply part of the greater search for a world where respect for the rule of law and human rights is universal—a world free of dictators, terrorists, warmongers and fanatics, where men and women of all nationalities, races, traditions and creeds can coexist in the culture of freedom, where borders give way to bridges that people cross to reach their goals limited only by free will and respect for one another’s rights. It is a search to which I’ve dedicated my writing, and so many have taken notice. But is it not a search to which we should all devote our very lives? The answer is clear when we see what is at stake.

I am thrilled that Mario Vargas Llosa, Lech Wałęsa and economist Robert Higgs  will receive the Alexis de Tocqueville Award from the Independent Institute (where I am research director) at our Gala on Nov. 15, these remarks were written for that occasion.

Groucho Marx and T.S.Eliot (really)

by  Tyler Cowen in

Groucho cannot resist the compulsion to remind one of literature’s most famous expatriates of his origins: “Dear Tom…I think I read somewhere that your first name is the same as Tom Gibbons’, a prizefighter who once lived in St Paul.” He is quite open about his ignorance of the very public details of the poet’s life: “My best to you and your lovely wife, whoever she may be.” He pushes Eliot’s origins in his face. In another letter he calls him an “early American, (I don’t mean that you are an old piece of furniture, but you are a fugitive from St Louis)…” In the same letter he relays to Eliot that “the name Tom fits many things. There was once a famous Jewish actor named Thomashevsky. All male cats are named Tom—unless they have been fixed.” He concludes by assuring the famously buttoned-down author that “I would be interested in reading your views on sex, so don’t hesitate. Confide in me.”

Here is much more, hat tip goes to Mike Tamada.

Alebron asks

by  Tyler Cowen in

He is a loyal MR reader:

The combination of powerful smartphones and social internet sites has given rise to an interesting phenomenon at concerts: people spend a massive chunk of the time at concerts documenting their concert-going. Is technology like this making meta-experience more important to people than experience? Is an experience that you can’t document/signal less valuable? Is this a new phenomenon?

Arguably the meta-experience was always more important, we just produce the meta-experience more efficiently these days.  The very best cultural experiences are thus more leveraged in the direction of potent final output, and thus they sell for higher prices.  On top of that is a sector of really cheap stuff, mostly illusory in nature.  Imagine someone who reads ESPN.com every day and fancies himself a follower of the NBA, without hardly seeing a game or spending money on the sport.  There is a polarization of cultural prices and experiences, and hollowing out of the middle.  If your output isn’t spectacular or culturally central, it will be hard to cover your fixed costs and you will have to go niche and super-cheap.

That’s what I think we are seeing.  Overall it is good for consumers, bad for Platonists.