Can Evolutionary Processes Take Credit for Human Creativity?
On today’s episode, guest host Pat Flynn welcomes Dr. Eric Holloway and Professor Robert J. Marks to the podcast to discuss the information cost of creativity. Today’s conversation is based on a chapter in the book Minding the Brain authored by Dr. Holloway and Marks. Essentially, they are addressing the following question: Can the marvels of human creativity, like novels, speeches, and ideas, really be explained by random processes and brain chemistry alone? As Holloway and Marks explain, even allowing for the computational capacity of the entire universe (and a hypothetical multiverse!), the probability of randomly generating a short, meaningful phrase is astronomically low. This suggests that human creativity cannot be fully explained by natural, random processes, and may require a non-material or external source of information and guidance. Join Flynn and his guests as they climb the metaphorical mountain of information to address the origins of human creativity.