July 2024
Update: After hitting Hacker News' front page, apart from the many nice messages (much appreciated), I was surprised to see most of the criticism was:
- people contesting the definition of 'memorization', for which there is apparently a strong negative connotation
- people who either didn't read the article or somehow mistook me as dismissing creativity as being mere memorization (?)
- people suggesting a blog should never be published unless it is a rigorous academic paper
In which case I'm pretty pleased, the strongest valid criticism being the one claiming this post was "semi-obvious". Funnily enough, the cultural pushback to this concept is what makes it semi-interesting to say in the first place.
Shoutout to Michael who linked me this author with similar thoughts: https://nautil.us/how-i-rewired-my-brain-to-become-fluent-in-math-235085/
I'm often made fun of for bringing a "system" into creative outlets.
Things like:
- written-down heuristics on best DJ transitions
- breaking down the humor patterns of comedians and memes
- or a checklist of best practices for competitive video games (e.g. Rocket League, Call of Duty).
But I think this critique misunderstands what creativity truly is:
a flash of inspiration connecting internalized concepts.
The inspirational lightning bolt writers and artists experience can't happen unless they know how to write or draw. A pun can't be created unless the author sees the similarity between one word and another they already know. A DJ can't mashup two songs unless they're familiar with both.
By definition, you can't even be certain of novelty without familiarity of existing works.
Creativity comes to those who have internalized the patterns of their art -- they can see the connection or novelty because it's all in their head.
Therefore autonomy enables creativity, and a system helps achieve autonomy quicker.
It all starts with learning
Some time back I discovered a method for learning anything quickly.
It involved two steps:
- Memorizing the different classifications/patterns in a concept [1]
- Exposing myself to a breadth of cases so I could match the real-world example to one of the previously learned patterns
For many that remember school, this won't sound novel. Yet what's often missed is the application beyond academic subjects:
- sports - learning to recognize weaknesses in a defense
- sales - learning to recognize someone's "conversational type"
- humor - recognizing common opportunities for humor in a situation
Even academically, while older western curriculums seemed to emphasize memorization, new school teaching seems to have shifted towards understanding-based, which is just a memorization aid. [1]
Eastern cultures, on the other hand, have maintained focus on drilling these primitives to unlock autonomy, as shown by popular tutoring services like Kumon -- which involve daily, timed tests to develop speed.
Growing up with Indian parents in California, I was exposed to both. My mom would write daily Kumon sheets out by hand for me to do, and teach me from Indian textbooks from the same grade (which were much more advanced than the US equivalents). The result was me breezing through the US school system without much thought. [2]
The key here is memorization's role in learning. We often tout the difference between memorization and true "understanding", which are indeed distinct. Memorizing the different methods of attacking mathematical integrations is different from being able to use the right one in the moment.
But I maintain that such pattern recognition is just another form of memorization, though often a more subconscious one. This is learned from repeated exposure, and what I'm attempting to do when I try to see a "breadth" of cases after learning the framework and available patterns to use.
What this is really doing under the hood, is creating a heuristic and... wait for it... memorizing it!
Once this heuristic is internalized, it becomes a new primitive and we focus our attention to higher-level problems.
Yet even if knowledge is memorized without understanding (as high schoolers so often do) — this creates an opportunity for understanding to manifest at a later date. I’ll never forget the shock I received when working through a proof in college on electromagnetic waves and suddenly ending up with 3e8 — a value I’d memorized blindly as the speed of light.
But doesn't this make things mechanical instead of creative and intuitive?
But doesn't this stifle creativity? Making things mechanical instead of creative and intuitive?
On the contrary, it enables creativity and intuitiveness by reducing energy needed for the basics, freeing you up to focus on higher-level novelty.
Once a dancer learns the fundamental movements of their specialization, they're able to improvise. So are pianists once they learn scales, and mathematicians (though sadly many of us never experience the joy of mathematical improvisation -- as Paul Lockhart covers in his Mathematician's Lament).
The key is understanding that a system doesn't directly make creativity, it just enables it. Memorization’s role is similar.
Another strategy that works well in both humor and famous EDM drops is "violating the expectation", but you need to know the expectation before you can violate it. Once you learn music theory, you're able to violate it in ways that resonate. Avant-garde art requires knowing what the establishment is to push the boundaries as orthogonally as possible.
One of my best personal examples is learning sales (which eventually be another blog post). As a not-intuitively charismatic guy, I had to learn systems for it. Things like tactical delivery skills:
- pause for 2 seconds before responding
- don't use too many conditionals in a sentence
- start with the answer, then go into detail (McKinsey Pyramid Principle)
As well as what questions to ask (from SPIN selling):
- situation questions
- problem questions
- impact questions
- needs-payoff questions
While at first calls were clunky, once internalized -- creativity abounds. Recognizing when the convo is naturally jumping straight to the "Impact" section of questions means I don't force us back to the "Problem" questions, we just shift forward.
All of a sudden sales calls (and human interactions in general) get fun, life improves.
Ramifications
The obvious thing I've taken from this is my learning system: using the steps above I can learn things quickly to accomplish personal/career goals.
Most recently:
- how to sell
- how to fundraise
- how to be wittier
The less obvious thing is a creativity system.
If creativity is born from autonomy in multiple areas, then one way to become more creative is to become autonomous in many areas!
This can be within a single domain, like music. Deeply studying and learning the patterns of hip-hop and country can lead to the creation of a hit fusion like Lil Nas X's Old Town Road.
But it can also be across domains -- like we see in most startups today. I used to work as a reverse engineer hacking drones at Skysafe, which was a company born of intersecting expertise in information security + radio. Even Dopplio emerged from my understanding of information security exploits, magic tricks, and sales.
As the internet democratizes information and low-hanging fruit is harder to come by, we're seeing that expertise in multiple fields like this is needed to create something novel and valuable (as seen in startups, music).
"Generalists" these days are more like "repeat specialists".
So if you want to be creative, learn lots of things in-depth, and learn how to learn them fast. Embrace systems to achieve this, and use them to free you up from the basics -- so you can focus on the novel.
If you’re interested in more dissections like this you can follow me on Twitter
Footnotes
[1] I made both the "memorization" step and "US schools shifting to understanding-based" footnotes point here b/c they touch on something I call the "web of knowledge". Understanding something deeply means fitting into your model of the world and seeing how it connects to other learned patterns. Besides the connections to other subjects, the biggest value in this is ease of recall from having multiple "entryways" via the connected subjects. This is extremely valuable, and I naturally do this during my memorization step, but functionally is just another way to aid recall imo.
[2] Yet America tends to dominate when it comes to creativity, why?
My theory is that while eastern students start with a much stronger base from this discipline, many never unlock the exponential gains that come from the joy of learning. Part of this is probably due to more stability in the US, with a more developed safety system, stable (although it may not seem like it) political and financial system relatively, with lots of opportunity -- we can focus on higher Maslow's-hierarchy needs like passion and self actualization.
This is partly why I think we're seeing (and will continue to see) Indians and Asians rise in prominence as kids raised with eastern fundamentals but the US love of learning unlock new levels of creativity. And as generational wealth builds, a branch out from the more traditionally "Asian" fields like STEM and into arts and US politics (we're already seeing this, with Vivek, Nikki Haley, etc.)