Creativity and Cognition Conference. UC Berkeley October 2009

1. Ricardo Sosa John Gero Kyle Jennings
Tec de Monterrey George Mason Univ UC Berkeley
Page 295

2. Ideas are important!
Especially in the current crisis...
creative ideas are
really important!

3. A tough question...
How do new ideas get to be
considered as 'creative'?
(how do people ascribe this value?)

4. Research approach
Explore possibilities with
computer models

5. Computational explorations
 Individualistic
 Interactionist
 Social simulations

6. Computational explorations
Individualistic
Algorithms that human experts
judge as worthy
Interactionist
Person-program interaction

7. Computational explorations
Social simulations
 Systems where worth grows
from interacting generators
and evaluators

8. Cellular automata (CA) models

9. Evaluation criteria of creativity
 Individualistic
 pre-programmed
 Interactionist
 externalised
 Social simulations
 emergent, socially-defined

10. soft modelling
(curious, playful)
hard modelling
(ignore indexicality)

11. ”Creative autonomy”
Ability to change without
resorting to:
 directly parroting others
 purely random drift

12. Multi­agent frameworks
Swarm, NetLogo, RePast, Mason...
 Inadequate model for ideas
 Ideas are dynamic entities
 Ideas are human products but also
produce values

13. Theories of (creative) change
Thomas Kuhn
 Cumulative anomalies of dominant ideas
 Communities ascribe value to new ideas
Joseph Schumpeter
 Stages of high competition followed by
disturbances by entrepreneurs
 Economic upswings based on increased
differentiation and profits

14. Theories of (creative) change
Edgar Morin
 'noosphere': system of ideas
 value of dominant ideas embedded in a social
world
Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi
 domain transmits information, person produces
a variation, field selects some variations

15. Theories of (creative) change
Dean Simonton
 Critical predictor of recognition is total output
Hi = pTi + ui
 Hi : high impact works by person i
 p : average hit rate for that domain
 Ti : total productivity of person i
 ui : random variable with a mean = 0

16. IAS framework
Idea – Agent – Society (IAS)
 Method for empirical experimentation
 Interplay of cognitive, social and symbolic
dimensions where creativity develops

17. IAS framework
Author Level I Level A Level S Focus
Kuhn Exemplar Proponent Community Validity
Schumpeter Innovation Entrepreneur Market Profits
Morin Noosphere Strong spirit Culture Domestication
Csikszentmihalyi Domain Individual Field Cultural evolution
Simonton Logic Genius Zeitgeist Recognition
Level I Level S
Level A

18. IAS framework
Level I Is/Si Level S
(Ii) (Ss)
Ia/Ai Level A Sa/As
(Aa)
Ia Transmission, language, intellectual property
Ai Mutation, displacement, reinterpretation
As Dissent, promotion, acceptance seeking
Sa Norms, recognition, social influence, conformity
Si Selection, 'gatekeeping'
Is Allegiance, dogmas, anomalies

19. IAS framework
Idea – Agent – Society (IAS)
 What is defined algorithmically?
 What is expected to be 'grown'?
 Non-deterministic rules, bootstraping, threshold
modelling...
 Capture non-creative equilibrium trend with
exceptional disruption points

20. IAS framework
Idea – Agent – Society (IAS)
Simulation is not the aim:
- improve our understanding
- assess ideas to test in the lab /field

21. What is creativity?
Where is creativity?
Author How do people and societies
Level I Level A Level S Focus
Kuhn Exemplar Proponent Community Validity
ascribe the creative value?
Schumpeter Innovation Entrepreneur Market Profits
Morin Noosphere Strong spirit Culture Domestication
Csikszentmihalyi Domain Individual Field Cultural evolution
Simonton Logic Genius Zeitgeist Chance
Level I Level S
(Ii) (Ss)
Level A
(Aa)

22. sosa.ricardo@gmail.com

23. Questions
 Claudia Eckert: can you model systems that
distinguish between the idea itself and the way
it is presented?
 Interesting, would be a scenario where I and A are
constant, and S-processes are changed to assess
how the way an idea is presented changes its
impact
 Mary Lou: What are the scales of these
systems?
 Suitable for modelling small groups (as in classroom
studies) and for very large systems of 100ks