I do disagree about rationality not being useful to for “positive things” (such as creativity). I think I have become more intellectually generative as I’ve gained rationality skill. A lot of this does have to do with avoiding mistakes in the creative/generative process, but
a) that seems close enough to “just getting better at generation” that I’m not sure it makes much sense to refer to it as “just fixing mistakes”,
b) I also think rationality involves reinforcing the skills about what to do right.
I also think using rationality to clarify your goals, and to figure out which subgoals are most relevant to them, is once of the most important skills. That’s not (quite) being creative/generative, but seems related.
I do disagree about rationality not being useful to for “positive things” (such as creativity). I think I have become more intellectually generative as I’ve gained rationality skill. A lot of this does have to do with avoiding mistakes in the creative/generative process, but
a) that seems close enough to “just getting better at generation” that I’m not sure it makes much sense to refer to it as “just fixing mistakes”,
b) I also think rationality involves reinforcing the skills about what to do right.
See Tuning Your Cognitive Strategies for what I think of as the most distilled essence of that skill.
I also think using rationality to clarify your goals, and to figure out which subgoals are most relevant to them, is once of the most important skills. That’s not (quite) being creative/generative, but seems related.