The creativity dial

Two answers to the same question, and one of them was arrived at by loosening a number.

We could say that the predictable answer, the one that is always the same, is pretty much the opposite of creativity. It is the answer that is expected, and it is the one that is always right there, waiting to be picked. But by this logic could we say that the other answer, the one that is different, is creativity?

Plenty of people talk as though it is. The setting gets called the creativity dial, and turning it up does produce livelier writing, odder metaphors, sentences you would not have predicted. Something happens when you move it, and the word people reach for is creativity.

What can be said with confidence is narrower than that. Turning the dial gives the machine no opinion about which word would be better. It does not prefer the surprising phrase to the safe one, because it is not weighing them against each other at all. A number moved and the draw came out differently.

Whether that rules out creativity depends on something nobody has settled, which is whether creativity requires a judgment of that kind. If it does, this is not it. If what matters is the result rather than how it was arrived at, the answer is less clear than it looks.