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My observations about a different kind of noise ... There are people who have focused, surgical thinking. They solve a hard problem by trying to follow a chain
by udev 12y ago
My observations about a different kind of noise ...
There are people who have focused, surgical thinking. They solve a hard problem by trying to follow a chain of logic arguments, and give up after a few tries. When they don't fail, they find the solution quickly.
There are also people with "noisier" thinking, who can stray from the chain of logic arguments, or even get lost. These people throw everything and the kitchen sink at the problem, can think of almost unlimited ways of attacking a hard problem, and often discover unexpected properties.
The "noisy thinkers" take a longer path to arrive at the solution, but they often manage to go around barriers in a way that is impossible for the former group.
- unabridged 12y ago>The "noisy thinkers" take a longer path to arrive at the solution, but they often manage to go around barriers in a way that is impossible for the former group. creative annealing
- rndn 12y agoAnd people in the opposite regime basically suffer from a strong Einstellung. They can recall more easily, but that also means that they are strongly primed on things they've learned, it's perhaps similar to overfitting. I'd wager there is a golden mean.
- darkmighty 12y agoYea I find anecdotal support for your claim, which indicates that indicates both ways of thinking can lead to creativity. Look at John Von Neumann's wikipedia page: "At Princeton he received complaints for regularly playing extremely loud German march music on his gramophone, which distracted those in neighbouring offices, including Albert Einstein, from their work." So those two geniuses were opposite in this way, and I would describe their thinking verbatim as you claim! That is, in this case, von Neumann being a "surgical thinker", he might have needed external noise sources to achieve breakthroughs ...
- digi_owl 12y agoReminds me of a test i heard about regarding creativity, and found that kids were way more creative before being run through the education system. This because they would go outside assumed limitations (changing the size and and material when asked about how many ways they could use a paperclip).
- vonmoltke 12y agoI think my stubborn and and somewhat anti-authoritarian streak helped me avoid most of this damage. I was the kid who always questioned the arbitrary restrictions placed on problems, the ones designed to drive you down a certain subset of paths. I still have trouble with trying to "conform" or find "the right way" to do something, though.
- ThrustVectoring 12y agoThere's a mixed approach that I've heard described. Assume the solution to the problem is simple enough that it can be found in five minutes. Then spend five minutes trying to find the solution. If you found the solution, congratulate yourself. If you didn't find the solution, do the above procedure for fifteen minutes instead of five. This approach gives direct, "surgical" solutions for simple problems, and leads you to more creative solutions to more complicated problems.
- wwweston 12y agohttp://everything2.com/title/Matchstick+pattern+analogy+to+thought http://everything2.com/title/Matchstick+pattern+analogy+to+t...