> On 15 Jun 2014, at 12:17 pm, Russell Standish <li...@hpcoders.com.au> wrote: > > On Sun, Jun 15, 2014 at 11:29:04AM +1000, Kim Jones wrote: > > .... >> >> Real thinking involves all four wheels of the car on the ground. An argument >> style of thinking only has three wheels on the ground. The missing fourth >> wheel is generic, possibility-based thinking that turns away from agreement >> and disagreement. The idea should be the need to explore the terrain of >> ideas rather than to seek the chink or the flaw in each other's armour. >> Exploring a terrain of ideas such as we do here routinely is best done when >> we neither agree nor disagree with each other but turn and face in the same >> direction and simply report to each other on what we "see just up ahead." >> This way we advance as a group and do not dissolve into sectarian, tribal "I >> am right, you are wrong" adversarial squabbles. In the rare moments where >> humans do this, we are truly persons; possibly the self-referentially >> correct Löbian entities of comp. >> >> Sorry - this post was too long. > > :) > > The real trick is to strike a balance between criticism, that prevents > unproductive and obviously _wrong_ ideas from consuming time and > energy, and free-wheeling speculation that leads to creative ideas. > > The question is - where do you think the balance is in this forum? I > can see arguments for both ends of the spectrum. > Yes, of course. This is why thinking - real productive thinking and not freewheeling point to point conversation - is best carried out under the aegis of an artificially designed framework, like de Bono's Six Thinking Hats. The trouble is, until you see the output of a Hats session, one tends to think that this is just a way to shackle thinking when in fact the reverse is the case. De Bono held to the firm assertion that thinking is best done in a formal way and in terms of a set of rules which he generally tricked up as a kind of a game. For this reason you can teach the Hats to 4 year olds in kindergarten and you can teach it to Nobel Laureates with equally amazing results. The idea is to defeat the naturally negative adversarial hyper-critical default frame of human thinking and make it impossible for people to just sit around and criticise each other and get nowhere at all. Thinking is done for a reason, not for entertainment. Unfortunately, it may just be that posting to lists like this one may be its own reward which is what goes on with most social media. De Bono said that social media just makes people lazy and stupid in their thinking and the older I get the more I see what he means.
Having said that, and to address your question more directly, de Bono thinkers allow that in science there is a big role given to the Black Hat, which is where you are allowed to demonstrate in logical terms why an idea is flawed, may not work, has serious drawbacks etc. because this is indeed the basis of the scientific method and Popperism etc. It may just be though that the use of the Yellow Hat and Green Hats is somewhat underplayed. With the Yellow Hat on (everyone wears the same-coloured metaphorical Hat at the same time) you MUST seek the benefits of an idea, even if your Red Hat gut feeling wants to intervene and say what a bunch of crap, which is the old-fashioned argument style where people interrupt each other and smack one another down the moment they have a chance to. You cannot say "I am the resident Black Hat thinker around here, I only do the Black Hat" because if you do, you will instantly be seen to be very deficient at Yellow Hat and Green Hat thinking which will get you laughed out of the room. This is where the balance in the positive and the negative is seriously and productively achieved. One of the rules of the gsme is to always wear the Yellow Hat before the Black Hat since absolutely everyone is an expert at Black Hat thinking whereas Yellow Hat thinking needs to be inculcated. My invoice for this consultancy session will arrive in the post soon. Kim -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
