Comments on: Why being sleepy and drunk are great for creativity

Why being sleepy and drunk are great for creativity

latkes — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 21:04:17 -0800

Why being sleepy and drunk are great for creativity.

By: empath

empath — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 21:10:57 -0800

I hate when they tell you the answer to things right after they ask the question :(

By: Earthtopus

Earthtopus — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 21:16:35 -0800

It's somehow worse than just ruining the question right from the start. You have just enough time to get all LEMME THINK ABOUT THIS I GOT THIS ONE FOR SURE and then accidentally read on.

By: liamcampbell

liamcampbell — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 21:17:23 -0800

I physically covered the rest of the article with my hand while I figured out the puzzles. Relevant: I am a little buzzed.

By: Ad hominem

Ad hominem — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 21:25:42 -0800

I know I do my best work after a shot of Jameson with a crushed Valium in it. What were we talking about again?

By: Greg_Ace

Greg_Ace — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 21:28:23 -0800

There's at least one additional answer to each of the first two questions which is just as correct as the ones given. Just sayin'.

By: Greg_Ace

Greg_Ace — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 21:30:46 -0800

In fact, the two answers given could, at least in concept, be "swapped".

By: cjorgensen

cjorgensen — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 21:32:50 -0800

Warning: Link Goes to full Frontal Cortex!

By: The Whelk

The Whelk — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 21:43:51 -0800

Being. sleepy and drunk is all I've ever been since like ...1997 so I hope that's super cool for making things and being great, yeah and things,

By: benito.strauss

benito.strauss — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 21:44:17 -0800

I don't trust Jonah Lehrer to get science right.

By: Greg_Ace

Greg_Ace — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 21:46:10 -0800

Coming up with either the given or the alternative answers doesn't rely on what the article claims it does. I'm neither drunk nor sleepy, nor brain damaged, despite what some people may be eager to claim about me; nor, despite what I may be eager to claim about myself, am I especially bright. I just chose not to assume that there was only one possible answer. In other words, I've merely developed a mental habit of considering the potential for more than one answer to a question...all it takes is a little focused (a-haha) practice. Oh, and - the third and fourth questions? Cliché old "brain teasers". They were old when *I* was a boy. Feh. The real answer: the article is silly, and I'm off to bed with a large tumbler of scotch now.

By: headnsouth

headnsouth — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 21:46:38 -0800

I learned early on that being hung over is great for job interviews. Being tired and ambivalent about being there means you don't care enough to be anxious about it, and you consequently interview well.

By: lumensimus

lumensimus — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 21:52:25 -0800

The first one has a much easier answer than that. Just make IV = III + III into V ≠ III + III

By: Ivan Fyodorovich

Ivan Fyodorovich — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 22:13:36 -0800

When I first started taking opiates, the story about Coleridge's famous poem became much more believable to me. And I have unusually creative dreams, anyway. I'm a lot more funny when I'm very sleepy. Not that I think I'm more funny, I genuinely am. My sense of humor is mainly absurdist, so the way that sideways thinking is greatly enhanced by being tired and sleepy and also slightly hypomanic really makes that humor much more possible for me.

By: en forme de poire

en forme de poire — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 22:22:48 -0800

lumensimus, or tilt the first I:

III = III + III \|| = III + III

(i.e.)

VI = III + III

This is admittedly kinda chimpy, but so is the real solution, so.

By: insectosaurus

insectosaurus — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 22:59:15 -0800

I'm sleepy and tipsy and I still couldn't solve the III + III = III one. the best I did was III + III + III which is not an equation, but also not an incorrect equation

By: iotic

iotic — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 23:04:49 -0800

The III + III = III one is pretty lame. Changing only one of the lines of the + leaves it annoyingly high on the page. ≠ FTW

By: RobotVoodooPower

RobotVoodooPower — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 23:45:04 -0800

Your creative word problems. They are cute. Tomorrow, come in hungover and help me write software. I will make you cry.

By: lipsum

lipsum — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 00:09:49 -0800

Previously.

By: JohnnyGunn

JohnnyGunn — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 00:27:57 -0800

I am a little concerned in that I got them all correct. It is only 3:28 am here on a Friday evening Saturday morning. I can't be tired or drunk yet. I just started drinking 6 hours ago.

By: This_Will_Be_Good

This_Will_Be_Good — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 01:20:31 -0800

Do you how many tires it took me to drunkenly log into 1password to log in to tell you how aweesome I solved that puzzle with the roman numerals? Also, I tried to drunkenly solve that one tith the word associations FOR SCEINCE. And. I was all, WAIT, the answers are on the puzzle. So, I put my arm up over them, but when I took my arm away, I was all, wait what was I doing? So, then, I realized I may have had more rye whiskey than was statistically significant. EXCEPT, one of the questions was all "PARTY LINE." And then I was like, NOBODY these days would EVER say "party line". And at that moment, I knew I was sober enough to realize that the quiz was dated. And like that, I was sober. So, I had another beer.

By: 7segment

7segment — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 01:26:52 -0800

A brand-new study by scientists at the University of Illinois at Chicago compared performance on insight puzzles between sober and drunk students. (They were aiming for real intoxication, giving students enough booze to achieve a blood alcohol level of 0.075.) What is that aphorism about it being better to aim too high and miss? You call that "real intoxication"? I was drunker than that when I got a 5 on the AP Physics exam at 14 yea.... You know what? Fuck it. This would be the dial-in-iest article I've ever seen out of Wired if it weren't at the same time the stupidest. Thankfully it was posted on a Friday evening so everyone here has a great opportunity to talk about how drunk they are instead of the vanishing merits of the link.

By: A Thousand Baited Hooks

A Thousand Baited Hooks — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 01:51:22 -0800

V ≠ III + III Also useful: ± IV = III ± II III = III ± II Victory!

By: escabeche

escabeche — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 05:13:00 -0800

I solved it: just take the horizontal bar of the plus and turn it vertically, to make III = IIIIIIII What, you weren't working mod 5? I was. My kids woke me up really early today.

By: Yowser

Yowser — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 05:28:41 -0800

I got the inequality answer too. The inequality itself is "true." Let's not try to define true though, as it might be turtles all the way done. Perhaps the true is the good, and good is god, solving any messiness. As for the rest of the article, well I'm sure it's cracking good. Maybe I'll read it.

By: Yowser

Yowser — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 05:31:32 -0800

Oh, and as someone else mentioned, there's nothing better for me for interviewing than being completely sleep deprived ( as in, one or two hours sleep). It seems to turn off the anxiety circuit in my brain.

By: escabeche

escabeche — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 05:42:19 -0800

Also: surely "creativity" and "insight" are bad names for whatever is measured by ability to solve puzzles of this kind.

By: ymgve

ymgve — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 05:55:14 -0800

Marsha and Marjorie are dogs. They are part of the same litter.

By: tumid dahlia

tumid dahlia — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 06:05:35 -0800

Hahaha, yeah! I tot-*head thunks on table*

By: Skeptic

Skeptic — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 07:11:31 -0800

Not so good for road safety, though.

By: The Whelk

The Whelk — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 07:20:34 -0800

Then I am the world creative person in history

By: flug

flug — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 07:49:35 -0800

Marsha and Marjorie are dogs. They are part of the same litter. I thought maybe they were fruit flies or ants or something along those lines that could easily reproduce multiple times in one day, without necessarily being twins or quadruplets or anything of that sort. Instead of "priest," I thought maybe Solomon (hey, Jerusalem is a small town, right?).

By: univac

univac — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 10:28:39 -0800

Alternate: Afghani man and two of Octomom's kids.

By: hattifattener

hattifattener — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 11:08:35 -0800

Your creative word problems. They are cute. Tomorrow, come in hungover and help me write software. I once came home blotto and had to fix a problem with mail, and in my drunken state, somehow sendmail.cf all made sense, for the first time ever. My changes still worked the next morning, too! Moving to Postfix was a good thing for my liver.

By: Obscure Reference

Obscure Reference — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 11:42:04 -0800

I can tell he was neither sleepy nor drunk when he wrote the article. The lack of creativity gives it away, unless he was one or both of the above and a non-sleepy sober editor intervened.

By: veryape

veryape — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 11:43:33 -0800

Tlddr (too lethargic and drunk didn't read).

By: bad grammar

bad grammar — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 11:53:04 -0800

Yeah, if you're a sleepy, drunken writer, you'd better be awake and sober the next day to revise what you've written, or your editor will hate you. It should not be the job of editors to clean up after writers like mothers picking up their children's toys. --angry editor revising drunken writer

By: Decani

Decani — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 15:28:15 -0800

Being sleepy and drunk is just great, period. Who cares about that creativity shit?