Big ideas.
Once a week.
Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Why Imposing Restrictions Can Actually Boost Creativity
One study supports imposing artificial restrictions in order to goose creativity.

We all want to be more creative. After all, it’s disruptive technology, the next great book, song, or movie, or the ultimate scientific breakthrough that alters the course of human history. Within creation lies not only fame or fortune, but legacy. You are among the rare few who leave a lasting mark. You’d think an open, rule-free zone would help goose the juices. Experts say in actuality, imposing restrictions is more likely to encourage creativity.
In entrepreneurship, limitations are naturally imposed. For example, it’s your budget, regulations, competitors, and market forces which must be dealt with. In say aircraft design it can be things the laws of aerodynamics, available materials, budget, fuel, and weight. In the arts however, the blank page or canvas can be daunting as such rules don’t often apply. Because of this, many creatives put artificial limitations on themselves.
For example, Miles Davis wrote an entire album, Kind of Blue, without a single chord. Artist Piet Mondrian midwifed Modernism by restricting his paintings to right angles and primary colors. Even Theodore Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, restrained himself to produce his most memorable works. Dr. Geisel’s advice, “If you’re someone who writes or paints, don’t be afraid to try constraints!”
In Ikebana or the art of Japanese flower arrangement, negative space is considered crucial. It’s this aspect that allows for novel shapes and dimensions which might not otherwise ever become realized. As one Japanophile put it, “In formality there is freedom.” The tech world offers examples too. Consider Twitter’s character limit, the spare, sleek look of an iPod, and Google’s homepage.
“Composition No. 2 with Blue and Yellow” by Piet Mondrian (1930). Getty Images.
Recently, two parallel experiments published in the journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts, added credence to this phenomenon. The study was entitled, “The Green Eggs and Ham Hypothesis.” Why was it named so? The book contains just 50 words, which may have played a role it its development and success. Catrinel Haught-Tromp of Rider University’s psychology department led the study. In two experiments, subjects given certain rules for a task were and continued to be more creative, even when the rules were lifted.
To conduct the first leg of the study, Haught-Tromp and colleagues recruited 64 undergraduates. Each was asked to write a series of rhymes, two lines each. They were told the rhymes were for greeting cards. Participants were split into two groups. One was given eight specific nouns. The other was able to use any nouns they wished. Three judges evaluated their work. “Participants generated more creative rhymes when they had to work with the externally imposed constraint of a given noun,” the judges wrote.
In the second experiment, containing 46 college students, participants were made to write rhymes but were asked to create their own rules and constraints. They first group was told to write down the first four nouns that popped into their head and use them to create their rhymes. Prompts were given to help them compose. Researchers noted that prompts that imposed more restrictions tended to amplify creativity, while those which were less restrictive led to less creative rhymes.
Some artists only work with certain mediums or motifs to help boost creativity. Getty Images.
According to Haught-Tromp, those students who slammed up against constraints tended to think more deeply about options. They were also more motivated. Why do constraints tend to make us more creative? According to Haught-Tromp, they help cut down the number of choices to subsets that we find manageable. This allows us to “explore less familiar paths, to diverge in previously unknown directions.”
So how can you use this to conjure your own creative brainstorm at will? No matter the pursuit, change your perspective. Many of us fall into a daily routine. Though comforting, there’s no stimulation or novel thinking involved. Changing things up can give you different experiences.
Get up earlier, take a different bus to work, eat at a different place for lunch. Go to a town or state or country you’ve never been to, or approach someone you never talk to and strike up a conversation. The more novel experiences you have, the more creative you may be when restrictions are thrust upon you.
Next, get out of your comfort zone. Put more restrictions on yourself. If you’re a photographer, try only shooting in black and white or use an SLR camera. Resign yourself to a particular setting or do only portraits. If you’re an artist, consider working only in one medium. How about bringing to life just one motif from a variety of different perspectives, or working with only a basic palate.
If you’re a writer, break down your work into a small cast of characters, work only in third person, or place all your stories within a certain backdrop or historical era. Also, learn how to experiment with different restrictions and see what results you get. Being creative is not only about practicing what you do but how you do it. Constant refinement can surely only garner better results over time.
To learn more about how creativity and limitations are intertwined, click here:
‘Designer baby’ book trilogy explores the moral dilemmas humans may soon create
How would the ability to genetically customize children change society? Sci-fi author Eugene Clark explores the future on our horizon in Volume I of the "Genetic Pressure" series.
- A new sci-fi book series called "Genetic Pressure" explores the scientific and moral implications of a world with a burgeoning designer baby industry.
- It's currently illegal to implant genetically edited human embryos in most nations, but designer babies may someday become widespread.
- While gene-editing technology could help humans eliminate genetic diseases, some in the scientific community fear it may also usher in a new era of eugenics.
Tribalism and discrimination
<p>One question the "Genetic Pressure" series explores: What would tribalism and discrimination look like in a world with designer babies? As designer babies grow up, they could be noticeably different from other people, potentially being smarter, more attractive and healthier. This could breed resentment between the groups—as it does in the series.</p><p>"[Designer babies] slowly find that 'everyone else,' and even their own parents, becomes less and less tolerable," author Eugene Clark told Big Think. "Meanwhile, everyone else slowly feels threatened by the designer babies."</p><p>For example, one character in the series who was born a designer baby faces discrimination and harassment from "normal people"—they call her "soulless" and say she was "made in a factory," a "consumer product." </p><p>Would such divisions emerge in the real world? The answer may depend on who's able to afford designer baby services. If it's only the ultra-wealthy, then it's easy to imagine how being a designer baby could be seen by society as a kind of hyper-privilege, which designer babies would have to reckon with. </p><p>Even if people from all socioeconomic backgrounds can someday afford designer babies, people born designer babies may struggle with tough existential questions: Can they ever take full credit for things they achieve, or were they born with an unfair advantage? To what extent should they spend their lives helping the less fortunate? </p>Sexuality dilemmas
<p>Sexuality presents another set of thorny questions. If a designer baby industry someday allows people to optimize humans for attractiveness, designer babies could grow up to find themselves surrounded by ultra-attractive people. That may not sound like a big problem.</p><p>But consider that, if designer babies someday become the standard way to have children, there'd necessarily be a years-long gap in which only some people are having designer babies. Meanwhile, the rest of society would be having children the old-fashioned way. So, in terms of attractiveness, society could see increasingly apparent disparities in physical appearances between the two groups. "Normal people" could begin to seem increasingly ugly.</p><p>But ultra-attractive people who were born designer babies could face problems, too. One could be the loss of body image. </p><p>When designer babies grow up in the "Genetic Pressure" series, men look like all the other men, and women look like all the other women. This homogeneity of physical appearance occurs because parents of designer babies start following trends, all choosing similar traits for their children: tall, athletic build, olive skin, etc. </p><p>Sure, facial traits remain relatively unique, but everyone's more or less equally attractive. And this causes strange changes to sexual preferences.</p><p>"In a society of sexual equals, they start looking for other differentiators," he said, noting that violet-colored eyes become a rare trait that genetically engineered humans find especially attractive in the series.</p><p>But what about sexual relationships between genetically engineered humans and "normal" people? In the "Genetic Pressure" series, many "normal" people want to have kids with (or at least have sex with) genetically engineered humans. But a minority of engineered humans oppose breeding with "normal" people, and this leads to an ideology that considers engineered humans to be racially supreme. </p>Regulating designer babies
<p>On a policy level, there are many open questions about how governments might legislate a world with designer babies. But it's not totally new territory, considering the West's dark history of eugenics experiments.</p><p>In the 20th century, the U.S. conducted multiple eugenics programs, including immigration restrictions based on genetic inferiority and forced sterilizations. In 1927, for example, the Supreme Court ruled that forcibly sterilizing the mentally handicapped didn't violate the Constitution. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes wrote, "… three generations of imbeciles are enough." </p><p>After the Holocaust, eugenics programs became increasingly taboo and regulated in the U.S. (though some states continued forced sterilizations <a href="https://www.uvm.edu/~lkaelber/eugenics/" target="_blank">into the 1970s</a>). In recent years, some policymakers and scientists have expressed concerns about how gene-editing technologies could reanimate the eugenics nightmares of the 20th century. </p><p>Currently, the U.S. doesn't explicitly ban human germline genetic editing on the federal level, but a combination of laws effectively render it <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jlb/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jlb/lsaa006/5841599#204481018" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">illegal to implant a genetically modified embryo</a>. Part of the reason is that scientists still aren't sure of the unintended consequences of new gene-editing technologies. </p><p>But there are also concerns that these technologies could usher in a new era of eugenics. After all, the function of a designer baby industry, like the one in the "Genetic Pressure" series, wouldn't necessarily be limited to eliminating genetic diseases; it could also work to increase the occurrence of "desirable" traits. </p><p>If the industry did that, it'd effectively signal that the <em>opposites of those traits are undesirable. </em>As the International Bioethics Committee <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jlb/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jlb/lsaa006/5841599#204481018" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">wrote</a>, this would "jeopardize the inherent and therefore equal dignity of all human beings and renew eugenics, disguised as the fulfillment of the wish for a better, improved life."</p><p><em>"Genetic Pressure Volume I: Baby Steps"</em><em> by Eugene Clark is <a href="http://bigth.ink/38VhJn3" target="_blank">available now.</a></em></p>Designer uses AI to bring 54 Roman emperors to life
It's hard to stop looking back and forth between these faces and the busts they came from.
Meet Emperors Augustus, left, and Maximinus Thrax, right
- A quarantine project gone wild produces the possibly realistic faces of ancient Roman rulers.
- A designer worked with a machine learning app to produce the images.
- It's impossible to know if they're accurate, but they sure look plausible.
How the Roman emperors got faced
<a href="https://payload.cargocollective.com/1/6/201108/14127595/2K-ENGLISH-24x36-Educational_v8_WATERMARKED_2000.jpg" ><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDQ2NDk2MS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyOTUzMzIxMX0.OwHMrgKu4pzu0eCsmOUjybdkTcSlJpL_uWDCF2djRfc/img.jpg?width=980" id="775ca" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="436000b6976931b8320313478c624c82" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="lineup of emperor faces" data-width="1440" data-height="963" /></a>Credit: Daniel Voshart
<p>Voshart's imaginings began with an AI/neural-net program called <a href="https://www.artbreeder.com" target="_blank">Artbreeder</a>. The freemium online app intelligently generates new images from existing ones and can combine multiple images into…well, who knows. It's addictive — people have so far used it to generate nearly 72.7 million images, says the site — and it's easy to see how Voshart fell down the rabbit hole.</p><p>The Roman emperor project began with Voshart feeding Artbreeder images of 800 busts. Obviously, not all busts have weathered the centuries equally. Voshart told <a href="https://www.livescience.com/ai-roman-emperor-portraits.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Live Science</a>, "There is a rule of thumb in computer programming called 'garbage in garbage out,' and it applies to Artbreeder. A well-lit, well-sculpted bust with little damage and standard face features is going to be quite easy to get a result." Fortunately, there were multiple busts for some of the emperors, and different angles of busts captured in different photographs.</p><p>For the renderings Artbreeder produced, each face required some 15-16 hours of additional input from Voshart, who was left to deduce/guess such details as hair and skin coloring, though in many cases, an individual's features suggested likely pigmentations. Voshart was also aided by written descriptions of some of the rulers.</p><p>There's no way to know for sure how frequently Voshart's guesses hit their marks. It is obviously the case, though, that his interpretations look incredibly plausible when you compare one of his emperors to the sculpture(s) from which it was derived.</p><p>For an in-depth description of Voshart's process, check out his posts on <a href="https://medium.com/@voshart/photoreal-roman-emperor-project-236be7f06c8f" target="_blank">Medium</a> or on his <a href="https://voshart.com/ROMAN-EMPEROR-PROJECT" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">website</a>.</p><p>It's fascinating to feel like you're face-to-face with these ancient and sometimes notorious figures. Here are two examples, along with some of what we think we know about the men behind the faces.</p>Caligula
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDQ2NDk4Mi9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY3MzQ1NTE5NX0.LiTmhPQlygl9Fa9lxay8PFPCSqShv4ELxbBRFkOW_qM/img.jpg?width=980" id="7bae0" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="ce795c554490fe0a36a8714b86f55b16" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="992" data-height="558" />One of numerous sculptures of Caligula, left
Credit: Rogers Fund, 1914/Wikimedia Commons/Daniel Voshart
<p><span style="background-color: initial;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caligula" target="_blank">Caligula</a></span> was the third Roman Emperor, ruling the city-state from AD 37 to 41. His name was actually Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus — Caligula is a nickname meaning "Little Boot."</p><p>One of the reputed great madmen of history, he was said to have made a horse his consul, had conversations with the moon, and to have ravaged his way through his kingdom, including his three sisters. Caligula is known for extreme cruelty, terrorizing his subjects, and accounts suggest he would deliberately distort his face to surprise and frighten people he wished to intimidate.</p><p>It's <a href="https://www.history.com/news/7-things-you-may-not-know-about-caligula" target="_blank">not totally clear</a> if Caligula was as over-the-top as history paints him, but that hasn't stopped Hollywood from churning out some <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080491/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">howlers</a> in his name.</p><p>A 1928 journal, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4172009" target="_blank">Studies in Philology</a>, noted that contemporary descriptions of Caligula depicted him as having a "head misshapen, eyes and temples sunken," and "eyes staring and with a glare savage enough to torture." In some sculptures not shown above, his head <em>is</em> a bit acorn-shaped. </p>Nero
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDQ2NTAwMC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1NTQ2ODU0NX0.AgYuQZzRQCanqehSI5UeakpxU8fwLagMc_POH7xB3-M/img.jpg?width=980" id="a8825" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="9e0593d79c591c97af4bd70f3423885e" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="992" data-height="558" />One of numerous sculptures of Nero, left
Credit: Bibi_Saint-Pol/Wikimedia Commons/Daniel Voshart
<p>There's a good German word for the face of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nero" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Nero</a>, that guy famous for fiddling as Rome burned. It's "<a href="https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Backpfeifengesicht" target="_blank">backpfeifengesicht</a>." Properly named Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, he was Rome's fifth emperor. He ruled from AD 54 until his suicide in AD 68.</p><p>Another Germanicus-family gem, Nero's said to have murdered his own mother, Agrippa, as well as (maybe) his second wife. As for the fiddling, he <em>was</em> a lover of music and the arts, and there are stories of his charitability. And, oh yeah, he may have set the fire as an excuse to rebuild the city center, making it his own.</p><p>While it may not be the most historically sound means of assessing an historical personage, Voshart's imagining of Nero does suggest an over-indulged, entitled young man. Backpfeifengesicht.</p>Ten “keys to reality” from a Nobel-winning physicist
To understand ourselves and our place in the universe, "we should have humility but also self-respect," Frank Wilczek writes in a new book.
This is your brain on political arguments
Debating is cognitively taxing but also important for the health of a democracy—provided it's face-to-face.
Antifa and counter protestors to a far-right rally argue during the Unite the Right 2 Rally in Washington, DC, on August 12, 2018.
- New research at Yale identifies the brain regions that are affected when you're in disagreeable conversations.
- Talking with someone you agree with harmonizes brain regions and is less energetically taxing.
- The research involves face-to-face dialogues, not conversations on social media.
There are two kinds of identity politics. One is good. The other, very bad. | Jonathan Haidt
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="6f0e52833af5d35adab591bb92d79f8e"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/l-_yIhW9Ias?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span><p>Unsurprisingly, harmonious synchronization of brain states occurred when volunteers agreed, similar to <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322764116_Creativity_and_Flow_in_Surgery_Music_and_Cooking_An_Interview_with_Neuroscientist_Charles_Limb" target="_blank">group flow</a>—the coordination of brain waves that hip-hop and jazz musicians (among others) experience when performing together. Coordination exceeds the social, into the neurological. As the team writes, "talking during agreement was characterized by increased activity in a social and attention network including right supramarginal gyrus, bilateral frontal eye-fields, and left frontopolar regions."</p><p>This contrasts with argumentative behavior, in which "the frontoparietal system including bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, left supramarginal gyrus, angular gyrus, and superior temporal gyrus showed increased activity while talking during disagreement."</p><p>Senior author Joy Hirsch notes that our brain is essentially a social processing network. The evolutionary success of humans is thanks to our ability to coordinate. Dissonance is exhausting. Overall, <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/01/210113090938.htm" target="_blank">she says</a>, "it just takes a lot more brain real estate to disagree than to agree," comparing arguments to a symphony orchestra playing different music. </p><p>As the team notes, language, visual, and social systems are all dynamically intertwined inside of our brain. For most of history, yelling at one another in comment sections was impossible. Arguments had to occur the old-fashioned way: while staring at the source of your discontent. </p>People of the "left-wing" side yell at a Trump supporter during a "Demand Free Speech" rally on Freedom Plaza on July 6, 2019 in Washington, DC.
Credit: Stephanie Keith/Getty Images
<p>Leading us to an interesting question: do the same brain regions fire when you're screaming with your fingers on your Facebook feed? Given the lack of visual feedback from the person on the other side of the argument, likely not—as it is unlikely that many people would argue in the same manner when face-to-face with a person on the other side of a debate. We are generally more civil in real life than on a screen.</p><p>The researchers point out that seeing faces causes complex neurological reactions that must be interpreted in real-time. For example, gazing into someone's eyes requires higher-order processing that must be dealt with during the moment. Your brain coordinates to make sense of the words being spoken <em>and</em> pantomimes being witnessed. This combination of verbal and visual processes are "generally associated with high-level cognitive and linguistic functions."</p><p>While arguing is more exhausting, it also sharpens your senses—when a person is present, at least. Debating is a healthy function of society. Arguments force you to consider other viewpoints and potentially come to different conclusions. As with physical exercise, which makes you stronger even though it's energetically taxing, disagreement propels societies forward.</p>In this study, every participant was forced to <em>listen</em> to the other person. As this research was focused on live interactions, it adds to the literature of cognitive processing during live interactions and offers insights into the cognitive tax of anger. Even anger is a net positive when it forces both sides to think through their thoughts and feelings on a matter. As social animals, we need that tension in our lives in order to grow. Yelling into the void of a comments section? Not so helpful. <p>--</p><p><em>Stay in touch with Derek on <a href="http://www.twitter.com/derekberes" target="_blank">Twitter</a> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/DerekBeresdotcom" target="_blank">Facebook</a>. His most recent book is</em> "<em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08KRVMP2M?pf_rd_r=MDJW43337675SZ0X00FH&pf_rd_p=edaba0ee-c2fe-4124-9f5d-b31d6b1bfbee" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Hero's Dose: The Case For Psychedelics in Ritual and Therapy</a>."</em></p>2020 ties for hottest year on record, says NASA and NOAA
In a joint briefing at the 101st American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting, NASA and NOAA revealed 2020's scorching climate data.
