Creativity by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi

of memory that you need for the kind of things you want to do. And you do those things which are easy and you don’t do those things which are hard, so you get better and better by doing the things you do well, and eventually you become either a great tennis player or a good inventor or whatever, because you tend to do those things which you do well and the more you do, the easier it gets, and the easier it gets, the better you do it, and eventually you become very one-sided but you’re very good at it and you’re lousy at everything else because you don’tdo it well. This is what engineers call positive feedback. So the small differences at the beginning of life become enormous differences by the time you’ve done it for forty, fifty, eighty years as I’ve done it. So anyway, first you have to have the big database.
    Next Rabinow brings up what the person must contribute, which is mainly a question of motivation, or the enjoyment one feels when playing (or working?) with the contents of the domain:
    Then you have to be willing to pull the ideas, because you’re interested. Now, some people could do it, but they don’t bother. They’re interested in doing something else. So if you ask them, they’ll, as a favor to you, say: “Yeah, I can think of something.” But there are people like myself who like to do it. It’s fun to come up with an idea, and if nobody wants it, I don’t give a damn. It’s just fun to come up with something strange and different.
    Finally he focuses on how important it is to reproduce in one’s mind the criteria of judgment that the field uses:
    And then you must have the ability to get rid of the trash which you think of. You cannot think only of good ideas, or write only beautiful music. You must think of a lot of music, a lot of ideas, a lot of poetry, a lot of whatever. And if you’re good, you must be able to throw out the junk immediately without even saying it. In other words, you get many ideas appearing and you discard them because you’re well trained and you say, “that’s junk.” And when you see the good one, you say, “Oops, this sounds interesting. Let me pursue that a little further.” And you start developing it. Now, people don’t like this explanation. They say, “What? You think of junk?” I say, “Yup. You must.” You cannot a priori think only of good ideas. You cannot think only of great symphonies. Some people do it very rapidly. And this is a matter of training. And by the way, if you’re not well trained, but you’ve got ideas, and you don’t know if they’re good or bad, then you send them to the Bureau of Standards, National Institute of Standards, where I work, and we evaluate them. And we throw them out.
    He was asked what constitutes “junk.” Is it something that doesn’t work, or—
    It doesn’t work, or it’s old, or you know that it will not gel. You suddenly realize it’s not good. It’s too complicated. It’s not what mathematicians call “elegant.” You know, it’s not good poetry. And this is a matter of training. If you’re well trained in technology, you see an idea and say, “Oh, God, this is terrible.” First of all, it’s too complicated. Secondly, it’s been tried before. Thirdly, he could have done it in three different easier ways. In other words, you can evaluate the thing. That doesn’t mean that he wasn’t original. But he simply didn’t do enough. If he were well trained, if he had the experience I had, and had good bosses and worked with great people, he could say this is not really a good idea. It’s an idea, but it’s not a good idea. And you have arguments with people. And you say, “Look, this is not a good way. Look at the number of parts you’re gluing together. Look at the amount of energy it’ll take. This is really not good.” And the guy says, “But to me it’s new.” Isay, “Yup. To you it’s new. It may be new to the world. But it’s still not good.”
    To say what is beautiful