There’s a selection mechanism in which lots of random brain activity every once in a while generates things that are selected for future use. Much like natural selection.
New conceptions, emotions, and active tendencies which evolve are originally produced in the shape of random images, fancies, accidental outbirths of spontaneous variation in the functional activity of the excessively unstable human brain, which the outer environment simply confirms or refutes, adopts or rejects, preserves or destroys–selects, in short, just as it selects morphological and social variations due to molecular accidents of an analogous sort. - William James
Brian Eno introduces randomness in his music by using cards with random prompts, to not get stuck in a certain way of thinking.
You can do this yourself by browsing random Wikipedia entries (or random note in Obsidian!)
References
- Link to website, bibtex from Zotero or note with book/blog/etc summary