Seeing the Flow of Ideas

Seeing the Flow of Ideas is the fourth element of effective thinking and the fourth chapter in “The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking,”   The subtitle is “Look Back, Look Forward.”  As was mentioned in an earlier post, this is something that is fairly easy to do with respect to technology in this age of technology.  Centuries before developments were occurring at a snail’s paste and this task was much more difficult.  I attended some very interesting lectures on the development of pre-human species, which was an extremely long process.  This is painstaking research, limited by the scant available evidence, and it needs to be carefully place together.

Looking back and looking forward fits nicely into the concept of memory as a device for time travel.  Perhaps the primary purpose of memory is to look back in terms of personal and collective knowledge (transactive memory), for the purposes of looking forward or trying to predict the future.  Drs. Burger and Starboard chose this to be one of the elements of effective thinking.

All too often people conceive of an idea springing forth from the  mind of a genius.  Actually, it is a matter of an individual building upon previous ideas and producing the future.  It is not surprising that the authors, being mathematicians, chose calculus as one of their examples.  In the popular mind, the calculus was developed independently during the same period by Newton and Leibniz.  As the authors note, Newton and Leibniz each built upon the work of previous mathematicians.  Newton himself noted that if he had seen further than others, it is because he stood on the shoulders of giants.  The authors noted that Leibniz’s initial essay on calculus was just six pages.  They noted that today’s introductory calculus textbook is over 1,300 pages.  And that is just for introductory calculus.  Calculus itself has advanced far beyond that to say nothing of the multitude of applications of calculus in science and engineering.  Moreover, many other areas of mathematics have been developed and refined.  Understanding the  past development of mathematics facilitates not only its understanding, but also provides insights into future developments and applications of mathematics.

One individual who did the most by seeing the flow of ideas was Thomas Edison.  He was extremely successful at inventing product after product, exploiting the maxim that every new idea has utility beyond its original intent.  Edison wrote, “I start where the last man left off.”  He also noted that many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to successes when they gave up.”

One of the exercises to provoke effective thinking is to ask “What Were Thy Thinking.”
In an earlier post I asked the hypothetical question as to what the colonizing powers have done given the morality of today.   So the early colonies in America killed many of the native populations and made their property their own.  They also used slavery.  What were they thinking?  How did they justify what today would be regarded as crimes against humanity?  And consider today, how might some version of colonialism succeeded without stealing and killing native americans, and without slaves.  This should be an interesting, and, I hope, an enlightening exercise.

The authors asked the question, which is an especially relevant question for educators, why are there grades of “F,”  After all, the second element of effective thinking is fail to succeed.  So why are Fs derogatory? What is of interest is what the individual did to correct or remove the F.  It appears that the formal grading procedure is based on a faulty premise.

Of course, there is much more to this chapter, and I urge the reader to read the original chapter itself.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2015. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Fail to Succeed: Igniting Insights Through Mistakes

Fail to Succeed is the second element of “The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking” by Drs. Burger and Starbird.  Here are some noteworthy comments about the benefits of failing from some highly eminent people.

Winston Churchill
“Success is the ability to go from one failure to another without loss of enthusiasm.”

Michael Jordan
“I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career.  I’ve lost almost 300 games.  26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed..  I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life.  And that is why I succeed.”

James Joyce
“A man’s errors are his portal of discovery.”

Linus Pauling
“The way to get good ideas is to get lots of ideas and throw the bad ones away.”

Samuel Beckett
“Ever tried.  Ever failed.  No matter. Try again.  Fail again, fail better.”

So failure, or rather the ability to capitalize upon failure ,is what these outstanding individuals in different pursuits have in common.

When you see or make a mistake, you have at least two actions to take:
let the mistake lead you to a better attempt, and/or
ask whether the mistake is an answer to a different question.

As was mentioned in the first post on this book, always do something, even when you know it is wrong.  Then you have something to improve upon.  The book suggests thinking to yourself, “in order for me to resolve this issue, I will have to fail nine times, but on the tenth attempt I will be successful.”

Actually, the number of times is irrelevant.  The objective is to improve upon each attempt until we eventually reach our objective.  Thomas Edison had at least an order of magnitude of mistakes beyond ten when inventing the light bulb.  He succeeded, because he did not regard these attempts at failures.  Each one provided information that led to his ultimate success.

There is more in this chapter that I cannot pass on without copying the chapter.  So I again I urge you to read the book yourself.

Are We Becoming More Intelligent?

The Flynn Effect¹ refers to the substantial and long-sustained increase in intelligence test scores that has occurred over the last one hundred years in the industrialized countries. The average score for an IQ test is 100. Periodically these tests are redone and renormed (that is the average is recomputed with a standard deviation of 15). When the scores of people taking the new test are compared against the scores of the same people taking the previous test, the scores are typically higher. One estimates is that an IQ of 80 today would equate to an IQ of 100 in 1932. How can this be? Are we becoming more intelligent? If we are becoming more intelligent this increase is occurring much more quickly than could be explained by genetic evolution.

According to Flynn, statistical estimates are that genes account for 36 percent of the IQ variance and that environmental and experiential factors account for the remaining 64 percent. The problem is that it is impossible to conduct a study where genetic and environmental factors are independently controlled. The reality is that there is an interaction between these two factors, and it is this interaction that explains the Flynn effect.

Flynn uses an analogy with basketball to make his point. Suppose a pair of identical twins genetically endowed to play basketball are separated at birth. Regardless of the different environments under which they are raised, they are both likely to play basketball and to practice assiduously. Consequently they will excel at basketball and eventually attract the attention of coaches who will further foster their talents and abilities. A similar interaction between genetic inheritance and environmental factors can be found with identical twins with high IQs who are raised in different environments. Regardless of their respective environments they are more likely to be drawn to learning and will perform better in school. They are more likely to be admitted to competitive universities where their IQs will be increased even more.

Flynn says, “There is a strong tendency for genetic advantage or disadvantage to get more and more matched to a corresponding environment.” Accordingly, the environment will always be the determining factor of whether or not a genetic predisposition gets expressed. This applies to all our cognitive powers, not just IQ. So we can increase our own cognitive powers by our own deliberate efforts. This calls to mind what Thomas Edison said about genius, that it was one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.

So the answer to the question, “Are We Becoming More Intelligent?”, the question to the answer is “What is Intelligence?” But we do have the ability to increase our cognitive powers throughout our lifetimes through our own deliberate efforts.

1Flynn, J.R. (2007). What Is Intelligence? Cambridge University Press.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.