Bright Lights, Big Ideas
Here’s one way in which all that talk about big-city glamor may be backed up by fact. Statistically, large cities yield a far higher...
Binary Selection and the Tyranny of "Good, Better, Best"
Last time you pulled up to a gas pump, you had to make a choice. That choice consisted of 87% with ethanol, Regular, or Premium. It’s a...
Falling Apples and the Rise of Domain Knowledge
What is the most practical method for generating creativity? Despite our growing understanding of those neural processes, that question...
Analogous Thinking: The Genius of Mix-and-Match
Want to be more creative? One promising path to creativity is what's called analogous thinking. This approach suggests often you can...
Creativity Crunching: How Do We Measure Human Ingenuity?
Scientists trying to get to the core of creativity encounter a very basic problem at the outset. Unlike, say, size, or time, creativity...
Creativity and IQ: What 1500 Kids Can Teach Us
How does your IQ affect your creativity? One might assume that having a super high IQ would garner you more powerful creative flights of...
Consciousness: Signals in the Noise
StartFragment In February’s blog post, "How your Brain is Like an Ant Colony", we discussed how neural networks follow the concept of...
Epiphanies, or, the Bottom-Up Principle
Creativity as a whole is a hard thing to concretely study. However, a slightly easier question than "where does creativity come from?" is...
The Lure of the Irrational: Why Basketball Players and Birds Fall Prey to Superstition
Irrational behavior is commonplace in sports. Michael Jordan wore his "lucky" University of North Carolina practice shorts under his...
Transposons: The Improvisers Inside Your Brain
Even if you from time to time think about your neurons, those little chemical-electrical switches that dictate your mental and physical...
