>And ridiculous creativity isn't helpful either, what's needed in life is good ideas.
I think the point is to separate creativity and intelligence as two orthogonal concepts. A creative person will filter out fewer thoughts, an intelligent person will make better decisions from their thoughts. It's possible to have both, and I think those are the most successful people.
When I think of the combination of creative and intelligent I think of Bobby Fischer. Back when I used to play tournament chess I went through every game from his book "60 Memorable Games", and I was amazed at how creative he was: he would often pick game-winning moves that I would never consider. This is part of what made him the greatest chess player of his time.
But the OP's complaint that there is no objective way to count 'ways to use a brick' still stands. IMO, it also may be the reason for the negative correlation with IQ. When thinking of this challenge, I soon started to abstract away solutions (throw, hit, shield, sink, etc). That, for instance, gives one 'kill an animal' way to use a brick, with subordinations 'in defense', 'for food', etc. If you don't spend time abstracting this, you can rattle of 'kill a mouse, kill a cat, kill a dog, kill a rat, kill a raccoon, kill an elephant, etc.) for an insane amount of 'different' uses. I would rate that lower than the single 'kill a plant' category that I thought of (as in 'use brick as a nutcracker' or 'use brick to mill flour')
If you can't be as good as Bobby Fischer, try to spend your issue with people have different skills to you. The best academic collaborations I know of all contain a "generator" and a "filter" of ideas.
I think the point is to separate creativity and intelligence as two orthogonal concepts. A creative person will filter out fewer thoughts, an intelligent person will make better decisions from their thoughts. It's possible to have both, and I think those are the most successful people.
When I think of the combination of creative and intelligent I think of Bobby Fischer. Back when I used to play tournament chess I went through every game from his book "60 Memorable Games", and I was amazed at how creative he was: he would often pick game-winning moves that I would never consider. This is part of what made him the greatest chess player of his time.