Related papers: Where do ideas come from?
Opinion polarization is on the rise, causing concerns for the openness of public debates. Additionally, extreme opinions on different topics often show significant correlations. The dynamics leading to these polarized ideological opinions…
This paper proposes a theory of creativity, referred to as honing theory, which posits that creativity fuels the process by which culture evolves through communal exchange amongst minds that are self-organizing, self-maintaining, and…
Immersion in a creative task can be an intimate experience. It can feel like a mystery: intangible, inexplicable, and beyond the reach of science. However, science is making exciting headway into understanding creativity. While the mind of…
Social groups with widely different music tastes, political convictions, and religious beliefs emerge and disappear on scales from extreme subcultures to mainstream mass-cultures. Both the underlying social structure and the formation of…
This chapter synthesizes evidence from cognitive science, evolutionary theory, anthropology, psychological studies, and computational models for a complex systems inspired theory of creativity, and its role in cultural evolution. Creativity…
Dual process models of cognition suggest there are two kinds of thought: rapid, automatic Type 1 processes, and effortful, controlled Type 2 processes. Models of creative thinking also distinguish between two sets of processes: those…
Humans have a powerful and mysterious capacity to reason. Working through a set of mental steps enables us to make inferences we would not be capable of making directly even though we get no additional data from the world. Similarly, when…
Idea generation is the core activity of innovation. Digital data sources, which are sources of innovation, such as patents, publications, social media, websites, etc., are increasingly growing at unprecedented volume. Manual idea generation…
Human creativity originates from brain cortical networks that are specialized in idea generation, processing, and evaluation. The concurrent verbalization of our inner thoughts during the execution of a design task enables the use of…
Human dialogues are scenario-based and appropriate responses generally relate to the latent context knowledge entailed by the specific scenario. To enable responses that are more meaningful and context-specific, we propose to improve…
Generative AI is quickly becoming an integral part of people's everyday workflows. Early evidence has shown that while generative AI can increase individual-level productivity, it does so at the cost of collective diversity, potentially…
Individuals accepting an idea may intentionally or unintentionally impose influences in a certain neighborhood area, making other individuals within the area less likely or even impossible to accept other competing ideas. Depending on…
Mixed-initiative dialogue tasks involve repeated exchanges of information and conversational control. Conversational agents gain control by generating responses that follow particular dialogue intents or strategies, prescribed by a policy…
Creativity relates to the ability to generate novel and effective ideas in the areas of interest. How are such creative ideas generated? One possible mechanism that supports creative ideation and is gaining increased empirical attention is…
Developing a novel research idea is hard. It must be distinct enough from prior work to claim a contribution while also building on it. This requires iteratively reviewing literature and refining an idea based on what a researcher reads;…
According to the honing theory of creativity, the iterative process culminating in a creative work is made possible by the self-organizing nature of a conceptual network, or worldview, and its innate holistic tendency to minimize…
A general theory of innovation and progress in human society is outlined, based on the combat between two opposite forces (conservatism/inertia and speculative herding "bubble" behavior). We contend that human affairs are characterized by…
Professional development is a tool that faculty members use to develop knowledge and skills that help them become better teachers. We investigate what influences affect the ways in which faculty take up ideas from professional development…
Linguistic norms emerge in human communities because people imitate each other. A shared linguistic system provides people with the benefits of shared knowledge and coordinated planning. Once norms are in place, why would they ever change?…
Culture is not just traits but a dynamic system of interdependent beliefs, practices and artefacts embedded in cognitive, social and material structures. Culture evolves as these entities interact, generating path dependence, attractor…