Imagine you found out that ideas invented by a computer were rated higher by independent experts than ideas created by a group of humans asked to perform the same task. Would you praise the designer of the “creative computer” for a great achievement or would you question why human talent —usually so potent in coping with complex cognitive challenges ——created such poor ideas or maybe you would question your view of the notion of creativity. In fact, such a scenario was played out when we used a simple computerized routine to generate ideas and compared them with ideas invented by human subjects. Why did human judge perceive the computer’s outcomes as superior to human ideas when they performed the same task?
Creativity is considered the ultimate human activity, a highly complex process, difficult to formalize and to control. Although there is a general agreement regarding the distinctive nature of the creative product （idea, painting, poem, and so on）, there is a controversy over the nature of the creative process. Some researchers hold that the creative thinking process is qualitatively different from “ordinary” day-to-day thinking and involves a leap that cannot be formulated, analyzed, or reconstructed ——the creative spark. Others adopt a reductionist view that creative products are the outcome of ordinary thinking, only quantitatively different from everyday thinking.
Because creative ideas are different from those that normally arise, people often believe that such ideas require conditions dramatically different from the usual. The notion goes that, in order to overcome mental barriers and reach creative ideas, total freedom is necessary —no directional guidance, constraints, criticism from an infinite space during the creativity process. This view prompted the emergence of various idea-generating methods: brainstorming, synectics （共同研究法），lateral thinking （水平思考，横向思维），random stimulation, and so on, all of which consist of withholding judgment and relying on analogies from other numbers in the group of on randomly selected analogies. This family of methods relies on the assumption that enhancing randomness, breaking rules and paradigms, and generating anarchy of thought increase the probability of creative idea emergence.
Do these methods work? A number of researchers indicate that they do not. Ideas suggested by individuals working alone are superior to ideas suggested in brainstorming sessions and the performance of problem solvers instructed to ''break the rules, get out of the square, and change paradigms” was not better than that of individuals who were not given any instructions at all.
The failure of these methods to improve creative outcomes has been explained by the unstructured nature of the task. Reitman observed that many problems that lack a structuring framework are ill-defined in that the representation of one or more of the basic components ——the initial state, the operators and constraints and the goal-are seriously incomplete，and the search space is exceedingly large. Indeed, many ill—defined problems seem difficult，not because we are swamped by the enormous number of alternative possibilities, but because we have trouble thinking even of one idea worth pursuing.
1. Ideas invented by a computer are（ ）.
2. The author thinks that creative thinking is（ ）.
3. According to this passage,（ ）the probability of creative ideas emergence.
4. It is believed that（ ）tends to improve creative outcomes.
