A Leap of Creativity: From Systems that Generalize to Systems that Filter

In his work “Mere Generation: Essential Barometer or Dated Concept?”, Ventura (Ventura 2016) categorizes creative processes along a spectrum of increasing creativity. While the spectrum provides insight into the dimensions through which creativity can be augmented, it does not of itself provide insights into how to advance a system through these dimensions. In this paper, we present some theoretical and practical insights on advancing along one commonly problematic rung of this ladder, namely from a system that exhibits generalization (i.e., the ability to generalize beyond an inspiring set) to a system that exhibits filtration (i.e., the ability to self-evaluate and filter results). One potential challenge in this transition is that filtration requires having a sufficiently large number of solutions to filter from the generalizing model. We propose that one solution to this problem is achieved not through increasing the size of the inspiring set (an obvious solution that brings additional problems), but rather through amplifying the generalization of the system to produce a greater set of novel artefacts to filter. We compare a new version of a system, NhMMonic, for generating creative mnemonic devices with a new conceptualization model that allows greater generalization. We demonstrate how filtration, which was not possible in the early version of NhMMonic, only becomes feasible with the more generalizable model.