And I drink and smoke 

Not sure what you mean by normal. If you mean "uncreative" behavior, then I would agree with you. Otherwise, I find it hard to classify anything as normal behavior, from an evolutionary stand point. 

Someone with your level of talent and sophistication sure knows what "normal" isn't. Go with what you know; I bet it that is within itself is worth several "books-worth" of philosophy. 

Zwiffle check this out:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/201003/the-hypothesis

I'm also a fan of the way this article puts one aspect of it:
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/features/view/feature/Smart-People-Do-More-Drugs-Because-of-Evolution-2425 

Commenting on the War on Terror, Kanazawa claimed that "there is one resource that our enemies have in abundance but we don�t: hate. Hatred of enemies has always been a proximate emotional motive for war throughout human evolutionary history." He then offers the following thought experiment: "Imagine that, on September 11, 2001, when the Twin Towers came down, the President of the United States was not George W. Bush, but Ann Coulter. What would have happened then? On September 12, President Coulter would have ordered the US military forces to drop 35 nuclear bombs throughout the Middle East, killing all of our actual and potential enemy combatants, and their wives and children. On September 13, the war would have been over and won, without a single American life lost. Yes, we need a woman in the White House, but not the one who�s running (Hillary Clinton, ed.)".[12]



Ann Coulter as President?????? Crackpot. 

P.Z. Myers, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Minnesota, has called Kanazawa "the great idiot of social science."[20]

I like P.Z. Myers. I think he makes sense. 

that quote is ridiculous, true - out-crazying your enemies is not the freaking solution - but the idea of evolutionary novelty expressed in that article seems to make sense.

I think P Z Myers is alright, though I also think that one of the more useful aspects of the 'New Atheism' is challenging traditional liberal notions that ideals alone will solve problems. 

But ugh, just reading that in isolation it just reeks of crappy science reporting with too many unsupported statements and loose definitions for it to really mean anything.


As to the original question I guess maybe the answer is already in it, simply that acts of creativity doesn't count as normal behaviour :)

I'd say it's about being able to think "outside the box" freeing yourself from established thought frameworks and wider than usual associativity. Mania and drug abuse really isn't needed but it might help some people break out of their squareness. 

Should Zwiffle's statement be true, should be shot. So you kill say 50 Million people in retalliation to loosing 5000. Well I say that kill 1 crazy genocidal bitch in order to save 50 million.

Genocide, Nuclear Weapons = NOT OK!!!! 

I'd say it's about being able to think "outside the box" freeing yourself from established thought frameworks

Established thought frameworks = communal norms? ie If you grew up in a Jewish community and became an atheist then that would be unnormal and lead to creativity? I'm not sure what you mean, bear. 

No, but maybe it would be an act of creativity to think outside the Jewish beliefs and traditions.

Just that way too often one set of ideas as soon they've become established, made into textbooks and into the heads of too many people they become dominant and that's when you need acts of creativity/drugs/mania to allow yourself to think about it differently. 

anyone seen that TED talk about synesthesia where the guy (forget his name) proposes that creativity is largely about different senses overlapping in the brain? He had stats showing that creative people have much more synesthesia than the population at large, so it's at least related.

I don't think that creativity is necessarily related to critical thinking. You can have a powerful imagination and believe in conspiracy theories and new agey stuff, in fact a right brain approach seems to be necessary for that. 

I don't remember that talk. 

http://www.asylum.co.uk/2011/01/12/streaker-fail-video-perspex-tennis-court/?icid=main|uk|dl3|link2|http://www.asylum.co.uk/2011/01/12/streaker-fail-video-perspex-tennis-court/ 

Commenting on the War on Terror, Kanazawa claimed that "there is one resource that our enemies have in abundance but we don�t: hate. Hatred of enemies has always been a proximate emotional motive for war throughout human evolutionary history."

I think the time and effort in Afghanistan is a near complete waste and am semi-skeptical of current scale of what is going on in Iraq.

With that out of the way, I wonder what the dark and dirty secrets are among the heads of state of various nation as to what the goals and methods are.

One does wonder, at times, if the goal isn't to bureaucracy the "enemy" --- the enemy being "hate" --- into submission.

Not a clear cut definitive submission, but a gradual one that numbs the senses and is boring to talk about. Done with a politically correct veneer to keep it impersonal.

From personal experience, the most violent people have the least ability to conform and maintain self-control and conduct themselves with discipline ... so even things like TSA patdowns in the USA which on the surface do not appear to target "hate" are in fact doing so with the distraction of appearing to do the opposite.

I guess I'm saying that although I don't really approve of some of the things that USA does but to some extent Europe and other civilized nations are in part involved in the game plan and whatever that game plan is must have a sales pitch (and it would not be the one you hear on the news). 

Beautiful people are more intelligent

http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/2011/01/16/2011-01-16_beautiful_men_women_have_high_iqs_too_study.html#ixzz1BJtTT1Pl 

Using bubblegum-pop teeny-bopper 12yo slang is annoying. Lulz xoxo.

But hitting typos and minor spelling mistakes, and not putting the odd apostrophe (what a cool word apostrpohy is, lulz) and Um-Lout (uhm-lout? Oomlautzez?) for example - well, who cares! Im a mapper, not an English teacher!

The Website is called func_ MSGBoard, right? Well that's not how you spell Messageboard! 

That's, what... 

i vote most misleading thread title ever 

Seems pretty clear to me.

Weird that the scat porn links and BEES discussion have been omitted though. 

This thread deserves its own icon. Something like a distinguished top hat. 

Agree on the hat icon. Or maybe a smoking jacket. 

 

MY FRIEND
sorry for letting you down before, I totally forgot about this - and me coming across this link was due to searching for it for another purpose - but here's what I was talking about, the TED talk by V S Ramachandra.

http://www.ted.com/talks/vilayanur_ramachandran_on_your_mind.html

Interesting stuff I think, and quite highbrow too to fit this thread. 

That's really interesting. I used to think it was nonsensical to "taste a color" or something similar, but I guess that talk proves me wrong.

Although I consider myself a creative person, I also consider myself scientific. Dunno how they're related, but it always seemed to me that scientific people, at least successful ones, were pretty creative.

The only time I've had a sensory cross over was when I tried some horse radish sauce, and it tasted how paint smells. I did not like how it tasted. =/