The Importance of Being Wrong

"Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes.  Art is knowing which ones to keep."

- Douglas Adams

There's a lot of truth to what Douglas Adams says.  When it comes to creativity, being "wrong" is not only allowed, it's a requirement.

Over the years computer and software engineers have chased the holy grail of artificial intelligence, The Turing Test.  Named after it's designer mathematician Alan Turing, the test was designed to determine if a computer system could be called "intelligent." 

Without getting too far into details, the essence of the test involved a three way chat between a human tester, another human, and a computer.  Like a three way chat on Facebook.  If the tester was not able to determine who was the computer and who was the human, the computer system could be deemed intelligent in the same way that a human was.

A critical point here is that the tester was not trying to determine which was the computer, that's easy.  All the computer had to do is perform some mathematical feat beyond human capability, and the test is over.  The crucial point is that the computer had to be able to fool the human tester into thinking it was a human.

It had to lie, and do so convincingly.

Perhaps one of the most difficult things about human intelligence for a computer to mimic, or learn, is our innate ability to be creative.  Many different computer systems have been developed over the years that can "create," but I wouldn't call their product art.  The computers are following very clever directions, mathematical tricks, by the human designers in order to rearrange words/colors/images in novel ways.

That's not creativity on the part of the computer, since the computer is merely following rules about manipulating numbers in specific ways.  The computer makes no real choices, any creativity is in the design of the software.

One attempt at creating artificial intelligence involves stuffing a computer with as many pieces of data, or random facts, as possible.  The computer then spends sleepless nights comparing dictionary definitions, and from time to time produces a gem of wisdom such as "a father is to a household as an emperor is to an empire."

Interesting analogy, although wrong.  But in a way not quite wrong enough.

Compare that with the mind of a five year old child trying to grasp the subtleties of a knock-knock joke.  Their mind stumbles along from fact to conjecture, lurching to and fro, as likely to spout something "wrong" as something "correct."  And yet, the convoluted picture they eventually develop may not be true or accurate, but it has an aesthetic structure to it.  There is an internal framework within the child's mind that both correct and incorrect constructs are laid upon, building up a holistic and pleasing overall structure.

This is the essence of creativity that elevates it to art.  It's not about connecting fact A to fact B to fact C.  It is about connecting fact T to fact F to fact 6 with a structure that isn't created using logic, but using imagination.  It's about seeing connections that aren't obvious, and effectively communicating that vision to others.

Psychologist and philosopher Erich Fromm wrote, "Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties."  One could take the position that creativity and art are about presenting new connections that will one day become certainties.

The world we live in, our perceptions and preconceptions, are all islands of our senses floating on the sea of mind.  Art is about exploring the depths of the ocean, and finding the undersea mountain ranges that connect those concepts, and bringing new peaks into the sunlight.

Joseph Chilton Pearce wrote, "To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong."  Maybe the key to great art is to be spectacularly wrong in just the right way.

Like a five year old.