[Creativity - yebbut stitching material together in new and unexpected ways is what creativity is. The amount of creativity in different people's dreams may vary, but from what I can tell it easily matches and frequently exceeds the degree of creativity the same person can achieve when awake. Although I will concede a Captain Scarlet level of plot holes, for sure.]

The idea that creativity is a matter of becoming unshackled, freed from restraint, when we would all be massively creative if only we could let go, is bollocks. Discuss.

No art without craft, but try saying that in an art college these days.

I never said dreaming was unshackled creativity. It has at least one inescapable limit - the highly-connected blob of meat in charge of the whole mess.

Or in the words of Humph, "The teams can say any word they want, limited only by their own imaginations.
... It's stiff, that rule."

Isn't "meatbrain", as implied by your metaphor, something of an oxymoron?

Brains can be made out of meat! [Archive link to www.terrybisson.com]

Agreed that dreams are mostly mashups of one's past life (at least mine are, and it can be confusing to be in 3 countries at once). "An infinite capacity for taking pains" is a lousy definition of genius - that's just control freakery. Much better is "the ability to make connections where none were seen before". Whether those connections are made awake, asleep, or somewhere between really doesn't matter. That begets creativity.