The One Neurodivergent Trait of Highly Creative People

In this post I explore:

• The psychological formula for creativity 

• Being uncreative is a skill issue, not a congenital curse

• The link between madness and genius

This was my first acrylic painting. I made it when I was 16.

I remember finishing it and thinking: What makes this art? What the heck is art? 

Thus my haughty teenaged self came up with the definition: Art is organised chaos. I thought it made sense. You create art by structuring disordered elements into one ordered cohesive unity, making the whole greater than the sum of its parts.

Creativity is the successful synthesis of incongruent things.

I thought I was original. Ironically, a quick google search shows that this idea of art as organised chaos is pretty ubiquitous and not at all creative. 

But now, a decade and change later, I realise art isn’t merely just organised chaos; my previous definition was undercooked. Many things organise chaos but aren't considered art. For example, no one in their right mind thinks organising data in spreadsheets is art (I knew one guy who did, and he was not in his right mind.)

There seems to be a higher-level telos behind art - a purpose that transcends mere instrumentality.

Art really is the meaningful synthesis of chaos. 

Now think about it. There are two elements to this idea... or more accurately, two trainable skills to become more creative. The first skill is the ability to meaningfully synthesise chaos to create meaningful art. And the second skill, that most people overlook, is the ability to perceive chaos in the first place. 

Thus the psychological formula for creativity is this:

Low Latent Inhibition + High Intelligence = True Creativity

(Chaos exposure) + (Meaningful Synthesis) = Originality

I’ll explain what both of these mean, and how you can increase both to your advantage as an artist. 

CHAOS EXPOSURE

LOW LATENT INHIBITION

I came across this idea in my early 20s... and I literally never hear anyone talk about it, ever. It’s most likely because it has an unsexy, unmemorable name. I’m talking about Low Latent Inhibition (LLI).

Like many neurodivergent traits, Low Latent Inhibition can be a gift and a curse. In fact, I would argue that LLI is necessary for true creativity. 

In this post I’ll explain what the heck it is, and how can use it to your advantage as an artist. 

Let’s begin!

Your brain has one job when faced with reality: ignore the unimportant bits. Every second the world throws a ridiculous amount of stimuli at you. Imagine walking into a florist and all your senses light up. The fragrance of garden roses. The lush greenery and vibrant petals. The bass and drums of background music. The footsteps approaching you. The velvety feel of a hyacinth. Your own heartbeat. 

There’s no way you can be aware of everything at once - you’d drown in qualia soup. So your brain evolved a way to filter out the unimportant bits, and focus on the important ones. 

That filter is Latent inhibition. 

Latent = hidden, unconscious

Inhibition = filter/block

So High Latent Inhibition is the unconscious ability to filter irrelevant stimuli easily. We learn when stimuli are unimportant when we repeatedly encounter it in non-meaningful ways. If everyday I open a door using the doorknob, my brain will downplay all the sensory perception of me using that doorknob. I am not conscious of it anymore. It becomes unconscious reflexivity. 

Latent inhibition is extremely important in adaptive learning. It is what helps us process the world in an efficient way.

Now, what about the opposite - LOW Latent Inhibition?

What if you suck at filtering reality? What if you’re flooded with a constant stream of raw stimuli that you can’t ignore?  Then you might have Low Latent Inhibition (LLI). (Latent inhibition occurs on a continuum btw, you can be better or worse at filtering in degrees.)

An LLI individual tends to notice new details that most people ignore. They might notice that their interlocutor has new shoes on. They might notice that they changed their perfume that day. And in noticing this, this might spur on secondary lines of questioning: Why did they wear new perfume? Did they run out? Do they usually wear perfume? Is it a seasonal scent? Why is it a seasonal scent? Why the citrus fragrance? And so on. 

This “why? why? why?” questioning spiral is a classic trait of the LLI individual. The spiral seems to occur because these individuals answer their own questions, which spurs even more questions, ad infinitum. LLI not only fails to filter external sensory data, but internal conceptual data too. 

As you can see by now, having a lower latent inhibition when processing reality completely colours how you see the world. The world is sensorily richer and more vivid. But it can also be overstimulating. 

So how does LLI make someone more creative? How does it help an artist create truly original pieces of art?

LLI simply allows the artist to see more, and thus be inspired more. That’s it. That’s the superpower. A wider breadth of perception gifts the artist the raw data to create on the edges of conceptual reality. (Of course, that alone is not enough to make a great artist - she needs to be able to metabolise what she sees into a coherent unity. Which we will talk about in the MEANINGFUL SYNTHESIS section.)

WAYS TO LOWER LATENT INHIBITION

I’ve dreamt up a few ways you can experiment with ways to sense this richer version of reality. But like I said before, neurodivergent traits like this can either be a gift or a curse. It is a gift depending on how intelligently you use it. Using it in the wrong way can lead to disorganisation, overstimulation, distraction etc. But more on that later. 

Here are the main ways I think you can train yourself to sense more reality data:

1. Exteroceptive Meditation.

Exteroceptive meditation is attention turned outward. It is the act of sitting down and focusing on your external environment - what you see, hear, and feel around you. Exteroceptive meditation trains you to experience chaos exposure without drowning in it. The best part of this meditation is that you can do this anywhere. Do it on the train ride home - gaze out the window and watch the birds and trees. Listen to the distant chatter of schoolkids. You don’t have to interpret or analyse anything. Just let yourself notice what your brain normally phases out.

2. Read.

Just read as much as you can. Fiction. Non-fiction. The back of cereal boxes. If you don’t like reading, watch videos. Dive down deep rabbit holes about UFO sightings, how ant colonies work, or the history of cheese. Anything that tickles your fancy. The more you know about the world, the more you can play with. 

3. Novelty Exposure.

Venture outside your bubble. If you just experience the same things every day, you train your brain to fire the same neurological wires. You train your brain to become rigid and calcified in routine. Try a new restaurant instead of visiting your old haunt. Pick up pickleball (just kidding, don’t do that.) Meet new people (if you hate people, you just haven’t met the right ones; there are billions of people in the world and there are bound to be some you mesh with). 

4. Hallucinogenics. 

I don’t recommend this one blindly but it deserves an honourable mention.  Hallucinogenics like LSD and mushrooms literally operate by loosening your perceptual filters. I know people who take hallucinogenics as a means to open a temporary window to reprogram their mind. But like I said I don’t recommend it because not everyone has a positive experience with it. DYOR.

Okay, kari, you say. I’ve already meditated by watching a cheese video at a new restaurant whilst tripping on acid. Now what?

MEANINGFUL SYNTHESIS

Ok, so now you’ve trained your brain to absorb more unusual inputs of the world. Maybe you’re now drowning in the fruits of your curiosity. So the second half of the equation is to organise and synthesise these inputs in an intelligent way -  like a painter arranging paints on a canvas to reveal an artwork. 

Studies show that LLI individuals with a high IQ score higher in tests of creativity. A high IQ allows for the intelligence, working memory, and discipline to structure the constant stream of input to produce. However, LLI individuals with low IQ struggle to structure this stream, leading to disorganisation and vulnerablility to mental illness.  

And so now we see why Madness and Genius is so often clumped together - both have the underlying thread of LLI. Both the madman and the genius see more, but the latter knows what to do with it. 

WAYS TO INCREASE “INTELLIGENCE”

Yes, intelligence is partly fixed. But really you operate on a range of intelligence, and the range can be quite wide I find. You can train yourself to improve on several different aspects of intelligence, such as working memory, concept synthesis, prediction ability, pattern recognition, and more. 

Here are the best ways I can think of:

1. Interoceptive Meditation.

Interoceptive meditation is attention turned inward. It is focusing on some internal state, usually the breath or stream of consciousness. This type of meditation gifts us a heightened awareness of bodily sensations and mental chatter. And the more lucid we are, the more we can control and sort out what comes to us. 

2. Thinkitation. 

I’ve heard this practice from Tom Bilyeu before. I think it’s useful. Thinkitation is where you actively sit down and think about things. You can think about problems to solve. You can think about ideas to generate. The point is to actively sort through and organise your mental contents. 

3. Ignore noise. 

Become really good at determining signal vs. noise. When you need to process a hoard of data, it is important that you can quickly tag what’s important and unimportant. This requires you to have a strong internal value system of what is “right” and “wrong”, which is a whole journey in itself. But I highly recommend you take some time to figure out yourself so you can live authentically. 

4. Don’t believe everything you think. 

Your brain isn’t a truth machine. It’s a prediction machine. It’s a generative machine. And most importantly, it’s a machine prone to errors. When random thoughts arise in your consciousness, don’t be afraid to sit back and actively question what’s true. “Why am I feeling this way?” “Why did I think this?” “What does this mean?” By inserting a truth buffer between you and your thoughts, you’re more likely to extract meaningful data from it. 

That’s all I wanted to say. 

Creativity is just the ability to meaningfully organise chaos. And this post is an attempt for me to meaningfully organise the thoughts swirling around in my head. :)