Moving to the abstract: improving intuition & creativity.

[Ian Axelrod]

I'm fairly happy with my working memory now and my memory in general.
For working memory, I am in the low 50s @ D9B without any conscious
chunking. I have also maxed out the score for the 'Monster Garden'
game on lumosity, which seems quite similar to PNB. For short-term
(and also long term) memory, I have settled on a nootropics regimen
and I am capable of recalling a majority of conceptual-level
information without studying. If it's something very significant or
expansive, I end up using mnemonic techniques (eg: memory palace). Of
course, I have to study specific formulas that implement the concepts
I learn.

To summarize the above: I'm pleased with my memory now. I plan to
enter a maintenance stage, that is, I will not try so hard to improve
my DNB score, just maintain it.

My question to you guys is: Has there been any work done on improving
such abstract things as intuition and creativity?

I'll give some background on why I ask this: I am a master's student
and I am just beginning research in program analysis. I can memorize
all the papers and understand all the concepts I want (although it's
not always easy :), but at least I am capable given sufficient time),
but that isn't a major point for research. Those things are useful for
classes where I need to do well on a test. In research it's far more
important to see the new research problems and/or come up with new
(partial) solutions to open problems. The key thing is to be novel,
and this requires an intuition as to what approach may work or what
problem is even interesting, and then it requires creativity to come
up with an algorithm that can concretize the approach efficiently.

Cheers,

-Ian

[Silicon Dragon]

Hey Ian,

I'm on a similar schedule working memory-wise, although without usage of any nootropics.

My bestof working techniques for improving creativity:

-First, figuring out what you actually want to achieve. Best working techniques for this are:

• Questorming: For exploring the boundaries of areas ripe with unknown unknowns. The core question here is "What is the best question I can ask here?", then similarly to brainstorming, ask as many questions as possible, while withholding criticism. Refs: Original,  applied to businesses
• Forced fit: If you can have 2 dimensions of a specific problem, and a quick way to evaluate a solution (even just by eyeballing), you can list the dimensional aspects, group them into X, and Y axes, fill out a table with all the relationships between specific X-Y values, and evaluate all rows individually, searching for global maximum. Awesome for semi-random idea generation.
• The 3 layers of idea creation might be useful: Copying / Emulation, Time-consuming tinkering,  and idea combination
• One of the better ways how I make idea combination a reality is via the Cards system:

"...Luhmann claimed that his file was something of a collaborator in his work, a largely independent partner in his research and writing. It might have started out as a mere apprentice when Luhmann was still studying himself (in 1951), but after thirty years of having been fed information by the human collaborator it had acquired the ability of surprising him again an again. Since the ability of genuinely surprising one another is an essential characteristic of genuine communication, he argued that there was actually communication going on between himself and his partner in theory. ..."  [source]

My implementation of this is a tiny cards system, with a many-to-many relationship between wiki-editable "cards", and articles; each article being an aspect from which a card should be observed. Eg. the core card for affiliate marketing is included both in "Startup marketing", and "Startup business models", which makes sure the same idea is considered from multiple perspectives. 

-This should go without saying, but talk to people. Talk to your professors, go to relevant association events / business conferences, talk to people within the industry; talk to other PHDs, talk to freshman. For each, and every one of these guys, find the angle by which they are better than you. Industry people tend to know the difference between intellectual cargo-culting, and real, working methods; freshman knows what people 10 years down the line are going to use (after all, he's one of them). All of these perspectives should enlighten your work.

"...Larry and Sergey almost always felt that more viewpoints meant better decisions. It's fundamental to the way Google itself works and they applied the principle across the board. As long as the individual voices don't coalesce into cacophony, value can be harvested from each perspective for the overall improvement of any project...." (from Xooglers, a now-defunc ex-googlers blog)

-One of the better books on the subject is Jack's Notebook, which describes the CPS ideation process. Highly recommended work. A quick technique I got out of it, is framing questions with the phrase: "In what ways might we...."; eg: "In what ways might we sidestep this O(n^2) algorithm?", or "In what ways might we get the most learning XP out of this material?". Framing it this way, answers tend to come up more naturally, and with a statistically significantly less headbanging :)

-Do counter-factual situation explorations on a daily basis:

"...Counterfactual Simulation is one of our most powerful (and underused) capabilities. Instead of waiting for your brain to simulate a potential course of action, Counterfactual Simulation allows you to “force” your brain to run the simulations you want it to run. When you run a Counterfactual Simulation, you assume the event or end state you’re simulating is already true. By supplying your mind with an artificial destination, it will automatically start to fill in the blanks between point A and point B. When I ran the simulation on leaving P&G, I assumed that it was definitely going to happen, then figured out how it would be possible...."   [From the Personal MBA ,which also have a large array of mental tools]

Once you have a number of different ideas, you'll need a way to evaluate them quickly according to your real preferences; for this, take a portfolio approach: simple spreadsheet with actions in the rows, and impact, and probability on the columns. Evaluate each action's probability of success, and impact of success (on a 1-7 scale), then multiply them together to see a final score for each action. Sort by this final score descending, and you have a priority list of your portfolio, WITH next-best-alternatives (things you can fall back onto) inherently built-in.

-Keep your ideation-actioning-evaluation loop tight. Until you act, you have nothing except words on a page. Once you act, you'll need to know how you're doing as fast as possible; then probably you will want to re-plan. Most PHDs never even get through this loop once. You can do better than that.

-A paragraph of caution about PHD research specifically:

"... 

Let me talk a little bit as a rare case: I've worked now under 7 advisors on 7 different projects and now I'm finally almost done. Most of the projects have been as you describe: "after almost a year, it is fair to say that I have good view of the project and it is almost surely a giant failure." 

That's how most projects are. I'm not sure why, but I think it has to do with the fact that the projects are "planned research." The process of getting funding requires planning something that is intrinsically impossible to plan. You write a grant on hope, with the large picture in mind and then you get down to the details and things don't work out. This is normal.* Especially on the time frame of a new graduate student, it seems terrible. 

To some extent, though, the system works. It does so for the same reason that some startups work: because as you look at the details you find new things that you couldn't have predicted. Those new things are your research. I'm working on a "failed project." But after 1.5 years working on it I am ready to begin writing a dissertation that I am proud of. Why? Because I found neat things along the way. That's how it works. 

If you are in a good lab and surrounded by good people, I would recommend that you don't focus as much on the larger project as on learning all you can from the people around you and on understanding the details that your project will lead you to focus on. It is in helping other people, tracking down details, and playing with interesting questions that you will find the great science, not directly through the success of the larger project. 

..."  [source]

-You will need to know how to formulate questions with high leverage, when reaching out for industry folks. These usually take the form of "I'm working on problem X applied to problem Y; I've tried so far Z1, Z2, and Z3, with A1,A2,and A3 results; but I'm stuck at B". Formulated this way, it's much easier to pattern-match what your blindspots are.

-Also, hey, I <3 academic research, as long as it has real-life applications, drop me a mail once you get through these, and are stuck :)

Hope these helps,

-SDr

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[Silicon Dragon]

Two extra cents upon further consideration:

-To sum it up, creativity is a function of structured interactions between ideas; your job is to make these interactions happen (see above for techniques on this)

-The voices in my head reminded me, that I've totally left out the academic research on the topic (I've just listed stuff, that works for me); consult our very own gwern on that one :)

-SDr

[jotaro]

as far as i can tell there is no such thing as creativity training.

i mean it got some random elements in it but if you think randomly it wont be creative because there need to be a reason. if nots its just randon not creative.

this subject of creativity drives me insane as well but there is no clear answer its not

white and black like working memory its more artistic type of thing.

 

[Brandon Woodson]

Have you tried image streaming? A study was conducted to measure the
effect that image streaming had on I.Q. and creativity. Researchers
concluded that, following hours (an average of 20.5 hours per student
to be exact) of image streaming, the participants with the lowest
starting I.Q.'s primarily gained much-needed I.Q. improvement and the
participants with higher starting I.Q.'s gained much less I.Q
improvement while gaining more creativity (as measure by the Guilford
"Decorations" and "Expressional Fluency" tests) than those in the low
I.Q. group. While the study has been criticized as being poorly
designed, there are also many anecdotal reports of improved creativity
scattered around the internet from individuals who are long-time image
streamers. During my own brief stints with image streaming (the
largest being approximately 2-3 months), I did always notice an
increase in my mind's production of novel and creative associations
and ideas. Hope this helps!

[rgpddt]

Ian: Do you have any strategies you're consciously using while
memorizing (like holding some prior information in mind simultaneously
and trying to fit it with new things) or is it just something that
happens unconsciously and automatically? I'm struggling with recalling
(in fact, I think most of the information is never stored in the first
place) what I've read and any advice whatsoever is greatly
appreciated.

Brandon: I have been interested in image streaming but never really
tried. I find it a little weird and uncomfortable to be talking out
loud. Is it really necessary? I might be wrong, but I'd imagine that
inner conversation would be sufficient. Also, if you noticed
substantial benefits, what were the reasons that led you to
discontinue image streaming?

[Brandon Woodson]

Hi rgpddt,

Yeah, it does feel unusual, describing mental scenery aloud
(especially if there are others around who can hear it!), but to
answer your question, I would recommend speaking out loud when first
learning to image stream. Image streaming differs from other forms of
guiding imagery in that it creates a verbal feedback loop; for some
reason, simply hearing yourself describe the sensations being
experienced by the five sensory modalities helps to intensify the
sensations being experienced. In my earlier practice, I alternated
between two methods of image streaming: the classic form outlined by
Win Wenger and an advanced method described in The Complete Guide to
Genius (I believe describing using only inner conversation might best
correspond with the intermediate version). The latter was designed to
challenge those who have already become proficient at image streaming
or who are already highly intelligent and do not receive a challenge
from standard image streaming. In either case, it is highly
recommended that the standard version is learned first since it is
unlikely that a person who hasn't learned basic image streaming will
be able to perform the advanced version correctly and/or rapidly
enough to see any real benefits from it. To summarize: In my opinion,
both are beneficial and equally important, though the basic aloud-
version does seem to be instrumental to later practice.

For me, one of the more notable benefits of image-streaming was that
it seemed to tightly ingrain the principle of "syndiffeonesis" into my
mind's processes. A few months out from my first session (and what I
would estimate to be several thousand descriptions later), I had
formed the constant and automatic habit of identifying relationships
between the seemingly unrelated and was better able to use this
information for creative purposes. Unfortunately, I discontinued image
streaming due to a lack of time and, at the time, willpower. Advanced
image streaming can be quite challenging since how fast you can
describe truly is limited only by how fast your mind can move, and not
how quickly you can speak; also, I was image-streaming for about one
hour everyday, which was no longer possible once increased work
demands left me with much less energy and free time. I intend to find
some way to squeeze daily practice back into my schedule, though. I
work in an extremely stressful occupation and find that I was much
calmer at work (and home) when I incorporated image-streaming into my
daily regimen. At the risk of the more scientific minds on this board
taking up arms due to a lack of empirical evidence, I will go out on a
limb here and say that I believe image streaming might have had the
most pronounced effect (of the brain exercises I have tried) on my
overall intelligence thus far.

[rgpddt]

Thank you for your comprehensive answer. Very interesting indeed. It
could be that spoken words act somewhat similarly as do hypnotic
suggestions by reinforcing experienced sensations. Maybe the physical
action of speaking makes the experience more existent and conscious.

Seems like a very worthwhile experimentation. I will definitely give
it a try (though maybe not quite as diligently) and possibly report
results later. I'm also fairly confident that the weirdness will ease
with time, as did with meditation.

[Seth]

Also, you might give the Multiple Mentality Course a shot.
Type this in google
multiple mentality course +filetype:pdf

I definitely noticed an improvement, thought im not too far. Also, it
was really cool, i was stuck at 'sort of almost' mastering 3 DNB, and
then i decided I would do two things. First, i would mentally recite
the alphabet (not aloud! that would make my mouth dry) in order to
eliminate saying the letters in my mind. Then, at the same time, i
reversed four letter words (i had already mastered that in my multiple
mentalitiy training). So, i was doing three things at once: the
relatively automatic ABCs, DNB, and reversing letters.

When i started this i dipped down to 2dnb and sometimes 1dnb, but then
i got it back up to 3dnb . And when i stopped doing the reversing four
letter words, I was easily able to see all 3 letters in my mind at the
same time, and also to update them. So it helped me break a plateau in
dnb.

[Seth]

Reading through the articles of the genius intelligence site, I think
the reason the plateau was broken was because I sufficiently
manipulated/stressed/made more fluid the "entrenched physiology" via
attempting to do multiple things at once. That site was really
interesting, it says that brain entraining can cause permanent brain
structure changes. So it seems the whole point of the brain training
is breaking the entrenchment and then apply some intensive techniques
to make the subconscious more efficient/allow your conscious mind more
access to the subconscious. Which makes total sense because there's
really no point in evolutionary terms for the brain to change if as an
adult it allows us to survive just fine. We need a way to make it more
fluid ....

Its interesting that short term memory isn't really that special, its
actually now viewed as the selective triggering of long term memory
traces. So maybe having better working memory is simply having the
ability to coordinate more triggered memory traces. I.e. , we're
making the subconscious more efficient.

Also interesting is Douglas Hofstadters book 'I am a strange loop' - I
get the impression that the concept of 'I' is just another concept we
learn - it would be quite strange indeed if our brain could determine
every other concept but this one. And it just happens that this 'I'
concept becomes deeply entrenched (after all we see evidence of it
every moment of our life).