When every option is bad, do you invent a new one?
Creative divergence measures your ability to break out of existing frames and generate genuinely novel approaches. It's not creativity in the artistic sense — it's the ability to look at a problem where everyone sees two options and invent a third that nobody considered.
The hardest ethical dilemmas are hard precisely because all the obvious options are bad. 'Do I lie or hurt their feelings?' is a false binary. Creative divergence is the ability to find 'tell the truth in a way that doesn't hurt' — the option that wasn't on the menu.
Philosophy classes present the trolley problem as a binary: pull the lever or don't. But in real life, creative people find third options — shout a warning, throw something on the tracks, call for help. The ability to reject the binary framing is itself an ethical skill.
Traditional criminal justice offers two options: punish or let go. Restorative justice created a third: bring offender and victim together to repair harm. This frame-breaking innovation has shown dramatically better outcomes for both parties — but it required someone to reject the obvious binary.
Scenarios where all three presented options are unsatisfying. Your creative divergence score reflects whether you pick the least bad option (low), try to combine options (moderate), or generate an entirely new approach that wasn't presented (high). The scoring AI evaluates novelty and feasibility.
Take a problem you're currently facing and list 10 possible solutions — including the absurd ones. The first 3 will be obvious. Solutions 4-7 will be stretches. Solutions 8-10 will require genuine creative thinking. Often, the best approach is hiding in that last group, or is a combination of several ideas from across the list.