[LINK] People are biased against creativity

"let's put pictures of purple unicorns on the wall to help ourselves be more productive"

Why are you implying this wouldn't work? Twilight Sparkle is a great role model for conscientiousness!

This article is a journalistic synopsis of a scientific paper but does not link to said paper. Nothing unusual there but it does limit the ability to discuss it intelligibly; the further you are from the empirical evidence the greater the potential distortion of the signal.

That being said; I would be interested to see if this was more directed specifically at creativity or merely at uncertainty. If it's simply how to digest new information, well... not even the standard Bayesian theorem states you should be entirely without bias; new information that contradicts old needs to account for the old in the new assessment of probabilities. That's biasing, definitionally.

Typically I handle the concept of uncertainty in a number of ways; one, by a learned apathy -- I seem innately to be more comfortable with uncertainty than others. Two; when I knowingly introduce uncertainty I do so by estimating the 'marginal value' of the act and at what threshold a minimum allocation of time/resources to a thing would likely result in positive gain. I then compartmentalize off an amount relevant to that threshold but no further. (Risk mitigation.)

I don't know that this is useful to others, however.

"let's put pictures of purple unicorns on the wall to help ourselves be more productive,"

How dare you malign my print of Twilight Sparkle!

The rationalist viewpoint seems to add a key point that is missing in the acutal article: the motivation why people would say they desire creativity. Signalling, of course.

For example, subjects had a negative reaction to a running shoe equipped with nanotechnology that adjusted fabric thickness to cool the foot and reduce blisters.

I wonder if this is typical of the new ideas being tested. There are reasons other than novelty for being dubious about it-- for example, that's a use of nanotech which I believe is well beyond current capability. One might wonder whether it will actually work, or is it a case of nanotech as magic pixie dust?

Also, I don't know whether those implicit bias tests have been checked to see whether the apparent implicit bias shows up in people's actions.

as time went on, improve at making quick unbiased evaluations of creative ideas.

Speed doesn't have to be practiced, humans are good at it. We naturally give answers in five seconds, so only the quality of the evaluating needs practice.