ART/NEURAL NETS Creativity

From: Crosby_M (CrosbyM@po1.cpi.bls.gov)
Date: Thu Mar 06 1997 - 13:54:06 MST


On Tuesday, March 04, 1997 5:23 PM, Robert Schrader wrote, in response
to quibbles with his earlier statement that "Creativity is an
artifact, not a neccesity":
<... an artifact is something that appears from a system, but is not
essential to its functioning.>

and added:
<The whole point of this post was to try and get a grip on the
mechanism of creativity, not to offend artists.>

You were trying to describe human minds via neural net models, which
is a very useful approach. But, that doesn't mean you can assume that
because creativity appears to be an artifact in neural nets that it
might be an artifact in human minds. Human minds are not *merely*
neural nets, even though neural nets may be an appropriate model for
portions of the human mind.

On Thursday, March 06, 1997 4:09 AM, Tony Csoka noted:
<I don't think emotions are an artifact. Rather, I think they are an
evolving aspect of (trans)human intelligence.>

Yes. What I am trying to say is that properties that may have been
artifacts during a system's early evolution may no longer be merely
artifacts and may, in fact, as DoBono noted (in Natasha's original
post), become necessities for the advanced system in its present
environment.

In other words, while there *are* mechanisms to human creativity, and
it is useful to get a grip on them, it is not valid to reduce human
creativity to these mechanisms.

Mark Crosby



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