Creativity, idlis and nuclear power In my lateral thinking sessions I like to entertain and educate trainees with this small exercise: “Write down the rule that generates the series of numbers 2, 4, 6…”
I would then ask each trainees to tell me another three number series based on the rule he had identified. I would merely nod ‘yes’ or ‘no’ depending on whether the new series was consistent or not with the rule. I found myself answering ‘yes’ almost all the time. What I observed was that once trainees were confident with their answers they would formulate the rule. I would surprise them finally by telling them that the rule I had in mind was ‘numbers in an ascending order!’ Rarely did any trainee discover my rule. Why? Because in order to discover my rule one of them had to offer a series in descending order that I would say ‘no’ to. What comes out of this exercise is this—trainees had a rule in mind and gave me examples to confirm it. They almost never supplied a series that was inconsistent with their hypothesis. They tended to confirm the rules they had made up. This is widely noticed in our daily lives—this tendency to seek confirmatory evidence and overlook disconfirming evidence. Continue<http://tickledbylife.com/index.php/creativity-idlis-and-nuclear-power/> http://tickledbylife.com/index.php/creativity-idlis-and-nuclear-power/ best regards *[email protected]***
