The October 20, 2010, seminar was led by Edmond J. Safra Lab Fellow Seana Moran. Seana's research is concerned with the nebulous line between creativity and corruption, and the question of whether foresight is possible in determining whether a new idea is creative or corrupt. Notions of perspective, motivation, and dependency permeated the discussion as participants considered specific examples and attempted to discern when, how, and if intervention would be possible, as well as the methods that would be necessary for determining the point at which an idea moves from being creative to being corrupt.
Several participants pointed out that creativity often begins as an act of destruction, and that in those initial phases, it may be particularly difficult to discern the creative or corrupt nature of the idea. Perspective is therefore an important consideration, given that something that appears quite disordered at one point may, in time, be considered a valuable innovation. However, other participants pointed out that the more difficult observation may be when something that was taken for creativity turns out to be corruption. In such a situation, is it only possible to recognize the corruption in hindsight? Or are there tools that could be developed to provide insight and foresight?
Either way, there were concerns among the group that such evaluations could themselves take the form of corruption. Participants discussed Wikipedia as a possible example of this. In particular, they discussed the ways in which rules are developed to govern contributions to the site, but in a way that could be interpreted as favoring a particular view of what kind of contributions are acceptable. The creation of the rule is a creative act, but depending on how that rule is framed, it carries with it the possibility of corruption.
The discussion then turned to more specific ideas about how one could structure an open environment where it would be possible to discriminate between contributions stemming from dependencies on internal motivations (truth-seeking), and external motivations (getting paid to present a biased view). This might provide a way to distinguish between innovation and corruption. Even then, participants pointed out that there isn't necessarily a consensus on what our proper dependencies should be--though it was suggested that perhaps a good starting place would be to eliminate "hired guns" from the equation.
In summary, participants discussed the possible ways of distinguishing between creativity and corruption, as well as the difficulty of creating rules to evaluate those differences without the rules themselves becoming becoming vehicles of corruption. They considered specific examples, including Wikipedia, and discussed possible ways of distinguishing between contributions motivated by proper or improper dependencies.