Rational Creatives 🎨♟️ #002
left brain vs right brain, the case for embracing both rationality and creativity, a fascinating documentary about Richard Feynman, and more...
Hey guys 👋
Hope y’all had a fantastic week. For me it was a little atypical. The Hurricane Laura hit the city I live in (Bossier City) on Thursday and I ended up leaving town and going to Dallas before it arrived. Fortunately, it didn’t cause much damage here. Also, it was nice to visit Dallas again and eat Venezuelan food (I’m from Venezuela), which I hadn’t done in a while. Very grateful for that.
Anyway, in this second edit of Rational Creatives I’m gonna cover:
The myth of the left-brained and right-brained people
A short essay I wrote this week
The documentary I recommended to Jamie
A new resource I found last night
A quote to remind you how lucky you’re to be alive
Ready? Let’s dive right into it 🤿
Left brain vs Right brain 🧠
You’ve probably heard the left brain vs right brain story. According to this notion, people’s personality, thinking style and way of doing things tend to be determined by their dominant brain side. Right-brained people are more creative and intuitive thinkers who are prone to focus on qualitative stuff. On the other hand, left-brained people are more logical and analytical, and,- you guessed it - tend to focus more on the quantitative side of things.
The first time I heard about this was a long time ago. And I had never questioned this assumption until recently.
After I decided I would start exploring the intersection between rationality and creativity, I began to pay more attention and trying to better understand the popular narratives surrounding this two ways of thinking. Turns out there a lot of misconceptions.
I found that even though certain parts of the brain seem to be responsible for very specific functions like movement, eyesight and language control, there is very little evidence supporting the notion that each type of thinking resides in one side of the brain. No matter if you’re trying to complete a more logical or a more creative task, in both cases the two sides of your brain are working together and at the same time.
Lesson learned: be extremely skeptical of conventional wisdom.
The Dichotomy ⚖️
This week I wrote a short essay called The Dichotomy. On this piece, I explore the popular narrative that the “right vs left brain” notion created in Western culture and make the case for a different, more holistic and more balanced narrative:
In pop culture, rationality and creativity appear as two parallel and opposite schools of thought. They’re like two political parties, each one on an extreme of the spectrum. You have left-brained people, and right-brained people.
On the left side, you have engineers, investors and scientists – they’re analytical, logical, rational. On the other right side, you have designers, painters and musicians – they’re creative, intuitive and emotional. It’s weird to find someone successful in the middle. And I used to think this was okay, that it was normal, you know? But I have become increasingly skeptical of this assumption.
You can read the whole essay here.
The fantastic Mr. Feynman 🔬
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.
A couple of days ago my friend Jamie tweeted:
I replied “I'm probably biased because I saw an awesome documentary a few days ago, but I'd say Richard Feynman. (And) I'd ask him: How can I make sure I'm not fooling myself?’”
Some context: Feynman was a brilliant physicist, a curious polymath and one of the most lucid thinkers of the twentieth century. He helped develop thefirst atomic bomb, won a Nobel Prize for his contributions to the emerging field ofquantum electrodynamicsand, last but not least, was anexcellent teacher and communicator.
The documentary is a one-hour masterpiece made by the BBC in 2013. They feature interviews of Feynman’s family members, close friends, and of Feynman himself.
Watching it helped me gain a deeper understanding of his fascinating mind and personality. I learned why he disregarded authority, why he didn’t care about prizes and honors, and why a life devoted to following your curiosity is a life worth living.
I am probably going to write a blog post about it soon, but I encourage you to watch the documentary yourself. It’s the best one-hour investment I’ve made in a long time.
Resource of the week 📚
Last night I was reading the essay Curators Are The New Creators (highly recommended) by Gabriela Goldberg and found a very cool resource she cites as an example called Channels Stack.
Channels Stack is a website that curates hundreds of educational YT channels in a wide range of topics, from Design and Photography to Entrepreneurship, Coding and Meditation.
I browsed it for a little bit before going to bed and ended up finding a lot of interesting, high-quality channels I had never heard about.
This is an awesome resource for learning new skills for free and also a great example of the potential of the curation business model.
Quote of the week 🔖
This week I finally finished reading The Biggest Bluff by Maria Konnikova. It took me a while, not because it was bad or I didn’t enjoy it, but because I had been busier than usual. It was my first time reading something written by her and I wasn’t disappointed. I’m not sure if I’m going to write a review of it, though I’m probably going to publish all my notes and highlights. But I you feel like giving it a try, you can check out this review written by David Epstein, author of Range.
Anyhow, I wanted to share with y’all this beautiful excerpt from the book that reminded me how lucky we are just for being alive:
“Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born,” Richard Dawkins writes, inUnweaving the Rainbow. “The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton.” It’s mind-boggling to even consider. “In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.”
We have won the impossible, improbable lottery of birth. And we don’t know what will happen. We never can. There’s no skill in birth and death. At the beginning and at the end, luck reigns unchallenged.Here’s the truth: most of the world is noise, and we spend most of our lives trying to make sense of it. We are, in the end, nothing more than interpreters of static. We can never see beyond the present moment. We don’t know what the next card will be — and we don’t even know when we see it if it’s good or bad.
In 1979, Carl Sagan wrote about the awe of the universe in his notebooks, as a counterpoint to the irrationality of superstition and false belief. “We live in a universe where atoms are made in the stars; where life is sparked by sunlight and lightning in the airs and waters of youthful planets; where the raw material for biological evolution is sometimes made by the explosion of a star halfway across the Galaxy,” Sagan reflects. “How pallid by comparison are the pretensions of superstition and pseudoscience…”
That’s all for today, rational creatives. I hope you found something interesting or valuable in this issue and I look forward to hearing from you - whether it is for sharing some feedback or just saying hi!
Until next time,
Your friend Daniel 🎨♟️