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4.4.2 Incubation
Incubation is the process of “putting it on the back burner”—allowing ideas to sim-
mer in a possibly unconscious way, the development of goals, the exploration of
unusual connections, brainstorming, etc. This is often described as an open-ended
process without a clear time line or quantifiable goals, other than “finding something
interesting”. The agent conceptualizes and generates ideas using its knowledge base
and additional outside environmental influences. These concepts and ideas are judged
against the agent's aesthetic sense and very often discarded immediately. While this
step can be performed consciously and intentionally, as in the aforementioned brain-
storming session, it is often described as best happening when the conscious mind is
otherwise engaged (with another task, while exercising, while in the shower or even
while sleeping). It is unclear whether this unconscious aspect is necessary or simply
catalyzing and whether intentionality may be uncoupled from consciousness.
Given an effective organization and acquisition of knowledge, it is not difficult
to argue that computational systems will actually (eventually) enjoy a significant
advantage over human intelligence in this step—speed, lack of bias, nonsusceptibil-
ity to fatigue, distraction, boredom, etc. all favor computational approaches to the
exploration of potentially interesting connections and the generation of ideas and
conceptualizations at scale. Of course, any “intelligent” biases should be formalized
and leveraged by computational systems for obvious reasons; however, determining
whether a bias is useful or potentially detrimental is likely classifiable as a creative
task itself (another meta-level concern?).
4.4.3 Insight
Insight is the step that may be tempting to describe as having nothing explicitly to do
with any action or intention of the agent, as originating from outside. Depending on
a person's bent, this might be called inspiration or revelation or luck or serendipity
or magic or something else. It is often associated with an “Aha!” moment, when
things just fall into place, the answer suddenly becomes clear, etc. This presents
us, apparently, with something of a Gödelian quandary, which may (or may not be)
resolvable in one of several ways.
One possibility is that insight is an agent fabrication that is not really necessary
for creativity; a second possibility is that insight, though a necessary part of the
“algorithm”, does not, in fact, originate outside the agent at all 9 ; a third possibility
is that insight is somehow necessary for human creativity but may not be for a
computational variant, 10 and it is therefore unimportant for the current discussion;
a fourth possibility is that, in fact, insight is necessary for creativity in any medium
9 The agent's belief that it does may be explainable by appeal to the unconscious, insufficient
understanding of neural psychological and cognitive processes, etc.
10
An adaptation of the common airplane versus bird analogy.
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