[rm999]

>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.

[Someone]

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')

[CJefferson]

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.