Blog Post #10

In chapter nine, I learned about belief perseverance. It is clinging to one's initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited. The book gave an example with two people who had opposing views about capital punishment. Each person studied the opposite side's views but clung to their own views. I can relate to this. In College English we are writing a persuasive paper. One of the examples we looked at was about capital punishment. The paper listed the pros and cons of it, and I clung to my initial belief and my mind didn't change. The more we come to appreciate why our beliefs might be true, the more tightly we cling to them. Once beliefs form and get justified, it takes more compelling evidence to change them than it did to create them. People commonly form these beliefs in politics.

The book defines creativity as the ability to produce novel and valuable ideas. The dictionary says that creativity is the ability to transcend traditional ideas and create meaningful new ideas. The first thing I think of when I think creativity is art and music. Artists and musicians are very creative. They come up with ideas that will touch and entertain many people. I don't know if I would consider myself creative. Sometimes I come up with very creative ideas and other times I cannot think of anything. I really think my creativity depends on my mood and the environmental factors around me. If I am under stress, I have a hard time coming up with ideas. This leads me to get frustrated, which makes coming up with ideas and being creative even harder. When I am creative, it usually has to do with school projects. Sometimes I come up with creative ideas to display something on a poster. I also come up with unique ideas for art projects. Once I get my ideas and creativity started, it is easy to come up with more. The hard part is thinking of an initial idea. Creativity applies to my life mainly in projects and arranging things. I can't think of anything else that I have already used a lot of creativity to come up with. I'm sure in the future, I will use creativity in college and my future career. It is a very great asset to have creative intelligence. You have to come up with ideas or a plan for almost everything you do. You have to use ideas for everyday tasks at home and greater tasks at work. You need creativity to come up with ideas, especially valuable ideas that will work. Creativity is a characteristic that is appreciated by employers. Being creative will also help you to get a job. You can do or say something in an interview or resume that will get you noticed and make an employer want you for a job.

The thing I found most interesting in chapter 10 was savant syndrome. It is a condition in which a person otherwise limited in mental ability has an exceptional specific skill, such as computation or drawing. Brain damage may destroy one ability but leave others intact. The book talks about how some people with savant syndrome may have almost no language ability but can compute numbers in their heads as fast and accurately as a calculator. One person the book mentions is Kim Peek. He is a savant who has a great memory. He can read a page in 8 to 10 seconds and remember everything on it. He has memorized the Bible and 9,000 other books. That is amazing! I don't think I have even read 9,000 books, and that's how many he has memorized. It would be kind of cool to have a memory like him. You would ace every test and be able to refer to anything you have read perfectly, in order to prove your point. In some ways I don't think I would want to be able to remember all of that stuff though. He might get confused sometimes just because he has so much in his head.