POSTING TYPE: Dialog

Author: Min Ding

---

Seeking Like Minded Colleagues to Form a Discussion Group on Creativity as Logical Outcomes

I am in the process of organizing a discussion group on the theme of Creativity as Logical Outcomes. The central thesis (Creativity as Logical Outcomes) is – creativity (defined as original and useful new things) are outcomes that can be (re)generated using logical procedures. My hope is to get a small group of academics who share this “minority” view to work with each other and advance the research, teaching, and practice of this school of thought.

Below are a few core statements that elaborate on this theme. If you are interested in potentially participating in this discussion group, can you share your reactions to these statements (by replying to minding@psu.edu) ? I will compile these responses as our point of departure. Your replies can be as long or as short as you prefer. Thank you.

• Statement 1. The process of identifying a creative outcome is essentially a search task, equivalent to find valuable treasures in an unexplored space. One can find treasure by walking around randomly or following a well thought out search algorithm. The latter, however, is much more efficient, guarantees much higher payoff in the long term, and can be learned and replicated by any willing explorers.
• Your thoughts:
• Statement 2. Creative outcomes can be reverse engineered using appropriate logical procedures (i.e. replicable), even if a particular creative outcome originally was not identified using a logical procedure.
• Your thoughts:
• Statement 3. New things emerged in the long history of nature (different molecules, proteins, etc.) and human society (different products, business models, art and literature, social structure, etc.) can be reverse engineered using the same set of logics of creativity, which will also lead to future creative outcomes in all domains.
• Your thoughts:
• Statement 4. One of the best (if not the best) approaches to help humans become more creative and generate more and better creative outcomes is to uncover the set of logical search algorithms, teach them well, and use them proficiently in practice.
• Your thoughts:
• Statement 5. General Artificial Intelligence implies creative outcome can and will be (re)generated by a digital system based purely on logics and is programmable. Thus, academic work on logical creativity (as discussed here) will make an indispensable contribution to the development of artificial intelligence, in addition to substantially improving the quality of human creativity.
• Your thoughts:
• Finally, assuming you are interested in participating in this discussion group, are you mostly interested in teaching, and/or research, and/or practice (consulting) components?
• Your thoughts:

The proposed discussion group will start by sharing teaching experience and material, participating in joint research, and sharing experience in practice on this theme. In time, we could organize workshops and formalize this as a special interest group in an appropriate association. This, of course, is a decision to be made by all participants in the future.

Many thanks.

Min Ding | PlanetDing.Org | Author, Logical Creative Thinking Methods

EIC | Customer Needs and Solutions

Bard Professor of Marketing & Affiliate Professor of Info Sciences and Technology | Penn State