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Festival of Doubt
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http://festivalofdoubt.uq.edu.au
Date: Monday, 13th May
Time: 12-2pm (bring your lunch!)
Venue: Gp South Bldg (78), Rm 344
Speaker: Alex Pudmenzky
Teleonomic Creativity: An Etiological Analysis
When the human mind searches concept space for solutions to a given
condition we have a choice between conventional and creative
thinking. But what are the probabilities of improving a given
situation using creative thinking compared with conventional
thinking? To answer this question we are extending the meaning of
creativity beyond human creativity. We view creativity as an
optimised search strategy applicable to the larger set of all
teleonomic systems and term this creativity "Teleonomic Creativity".
We argue that an analog process is common to all manifestations of
creativity within teleonomic systems and describe this process and
its cause. In order to demonstrate this process and to make
quantitative comparisons, we utilise the metaphor of an adaptive
fitness landscape and simple statistical techniques. The term fitness
in our case describes the condition of a well-defined property being
suitable for a purpose, rather than an overall evaluation of many
complex interactions measuring reproductive success. We define
creativity as the successful attempt of either individuals or
populations to gain higher fitness via exploration of global fitness
peaks as opposed to the exploitation of a currently occupied local
peak. We then show mathematically how the inclusion of creativity in
a search can dramatically increase the chances of finding appropriate
solutions. We also recognise that creative behaviour is most
successful when the environment is unstable. We note the existence of
a strategic meta-parameter that allows self-adaptation when tuned via
a feedback loop from the environment. We show that creativity can be
understood as a random process with an optimal setting for the
standard deviation that maximises the probability of hitting a target
of higher fitness. We show how Carnap entropy can can be used to
recognise teleonomic creativity. We support our claims with computer
simulations and observe several occurrences of teleonomic creativity
in nature.
Our investigations also enable us to rationalise the processes,
conditions and phenomena surrounding human creativity such as
mistakes, madness, serendipity, humor, analogy making and creativity
promoters and inhibitors. Our findings may also allow us to
incorporate creativity into artificial computer models.
We speculate that creativity is an emerging property of any
teleonomic system and as such ubiquitous in nature.
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marcusg@itee.uq.edu.au http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/~marcusg/
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