[ale] [WAY OT]Reverse Engineering MS Visual Basic Applications

[ChangingLINKS.com]

On Thursday 02 October 2003 03:46, Irv wrote:
> On Thursday 02 October 2003 12:44 am, matty91 at bellsouth.net wrote:
> > On Wed, 1 Oct 2003, Geoffrey wrote:
> > > ChangingLINKS.com wrote:
> > >
> > > I nominate this for the greatest troll ever posted.  So what is it that
> > > Bill Gates wrote that was so creative?
> >
> > He supposedly has a pretty cool mansion ;) Lights and music selected by
> > mood. ummmmmmm ...... moood.
>
> Those are the standard requirements for the lair of every evil genius.
> Haven't you ever seen a movie?
> Irv

Ah, alas I am seeing more and more support for Jason Day's opinion that 
programmers a 'very creative' (and why the majority of the programmers on 
this list would say that Bill Gates was not creative).
//currently working on an 'evil genious' degree   moowhahahaha . . .

Creativity Linked To Mental Illness
from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/10/031001061055.htm

Psychologists from the University of Toronto and Harvard University have 
identified one of the biological bases of creativity.

The study in the September issue of the Journal of Personality and Social 
Psychology says the brains of creative people appear to be more open to 
incoming stimuli from the surrounding environment. Other people's brains 
might shut out this same information through a process called "latent 
inhibition" - defined as an animal's unconscious capacity to ignore stimuli 
that experience has shown are irrelevant to its needs. Through psychological 
testing, the researchers showed that creative individuals are much more 
likely to have low levels of latent inhibition.

"This means that creative individuals remain in contact with the extra 
information constantly streaming in from the environment," says co-author and 
U of T psychology professor Jordan Peterson. "The normal person classifies an 
object, and then forgets about it, even though that object is much more 
complex and interesting than he or she thinks. The creative person, by 
contrast, is always open to new possibilities."

Previously, scientists have associated failure to screen out stimuli with 
psychosis. However, Peterson and his co-researchers - lead author and 
psychology lecturer Shelley Carson of Harvard University's Faculty of Arts 
and Sciences and Harvard PhD candidate Daniel Higgins - hypothesized that it 
might also contribute to original thinking, especially when combined with 
high IQ. They administered tests of latent inhibition to Harvard 
undergraduates. Those classified as eminent creative achievers - participants 
under age 21 who reported unusually high scores in a single area of creative 
achievement - were seven times more likely to have low latent inhibition 
scores.

The authors hypothesize that latent inhibition may be positive when combined 
with high intelligence and good working memory - the capacity to think about 
many things at once - but negative otherwise. Peterson states: "If you are 
open to new information, new ideas, you better be able to intelligently and 
carefully edit and choose. If you have 50 ideas, only two or three are likely 
to be good. You have to be able to discriminate or you'll get swamped."

"Scientists have wondered for a long time why madness and creativity seem 
linked," says Carson. "It appears likely that low levels of latent inhibition 
and exceptional flexibility in thought might predispose to mental illness 
under some conditions and to creative accomplishment under others."

For example, during the early stages of diseases such as schizophrenia, which 
are often accompanied by feelings of deep insight, mystical knowledge and 
religious experience, chemical changes take place in which latent inhibition 
disappears.

"We are very excited by the results of these studies," says Peterson. "It 
appears that we have not only identified one of the biological bases of 
creativity but have moved towards cracking an age-old mystery: the 
relationship between genius, madness and the doors of perception."

This research was funded by the Stimson Fund and the Clark Fund at Harvard 
University and by the Connaught Fund at U of T.

-- 
Wishing you Happiness, Joy and Laughter,
Drew Brown
http://www.ChangingLINKS.com