Chapter 5 - Thinking Outside Experience
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If you would like a PDF of all chapters in one document you can find it here!
The First Book: Range by David Epstein
David Epstein examined the world’s most successful athletes, artists, musicians, inventors, forecasters, and scientists. He discovered that in most fields—especially those that are complex and unpredictable—generalists, not specialists, are primed to excel. Generalists often find their path late, and they juggle many interests rather than focusing on one. They’re also more creative, more agile, and able to make connections their more specialized peers can’t see.
Who should read this?
All books have a thesis they attempt to answer, and Range's subtitle gives away the thesis right on the cover!
Why generalists succeed in a specialized world?
If the quote," jack of all trades, master of none." resonates with you, this book will fascinate you. Or if you are a curious person might berate themselves having too many interests. The book is about being broadly curious to solve problems more effectively.
If you missed the previous chapters you can find them here:
Chapter 1 - The Cult of the Headstart
Chapter 2 - How the Wicked World Was Made
Chapter 3 - When Less of the Same Is More
Chapter 4 - Learning, Fast and Slow
Chapter 5 - Thinking Outside Experience
Keplerian Thinking
Johannes Kepler was a German astronomer, mathematician, and astrologer. He is a key figure in the 17th-century scientific revolution, best known for his planetary motion laws. Kepler embraced the power of analogies to guide inquiry. Whenever he was at a dead-end, he would try to formulate analogies to short through until he was back on track. Through this method, he was able to invent astrophysics and usher in the Scientific Revolution.
Enter Dedre Genter is a psychologist from Northwestern University and an expert on analogical thinking. Her theory is structure-mapping theory.
"Analogical thinking takes the new and makes it familiar, or takes the familiar and puts it in a new light, and allows humans to reason through problems they have never seen in unfamiliar contexts. It also allows us to understand that which we cannot see at all. "
Duncker’s Radiation Problem
Example "Duncker's radiation problem":
Suppose you are a doctor faced with a patient who has a malignant tumor in his stomach. It is impossible to operate on the patient, but the patient will die unless the tumor is destroyed. There is a kind of ray that can be used to destroy the tumor. If the rays reach the tumor all at once at a sufficiently high intensity, the tumor will be destroyed. Unfortunately, at this intensity, the healthy tissue that the rays pass through on the way to the tumor will also be destroyed. At lower intensities, the rays are harmless to healthy tissue, but they will not affect the tumor, either. What type of procedure might be used to destroy the tumor with the rays and at the same time avoid destroying the healthy tissue?
Here's some help:
A small country was ruled from a strong fortress by a dictator. The fortress was situated in the middle of the country, surrounded by farms and villages. Many roads led to the fortress through the countryside. A rebel general vowed to capture the fortress. The general knew that an attack by his entire army would capture the fortress. He gathered his army at the head of one of the roads, ready to launch a full-scale direct attack. However, the general then learned that the dictator had planted mines on each of the roads. The mines were set so that small bodies of men could pass over them safely since the dictator needed to move his troops and workers to and from the fortress. However, any large force would detonate the mines. It, therefore, seemed impossible to capture the fortress. However, the general devised a simple plan. He divided his armies into small groups and dispatched each group to the head of a different road. When all was ready, he gave the signal, and each group marched down the other road. Each group continued down its road so that the entire army arrived together at the fortress at the same time. In this way, the general captured the fortress and overthrew the dictator.
Any luck on finding a solution?
The answer is eloquent once you take the story into the context of the tumor problem. Divide and conquer! Using the military strategy, you can apply this lesson to the tumor problem. Firing low intensity focused on the tumor allows you to destroy the tumor but leave the surrounding tissue unharmed.
Inside and Outside View
Inside view: We take the inside view when we make judgments based on the details of a particular project that is right in front of us.
Outside view: We look for deep structural similarities to the current problem in different ones.
Taking the outside view is counter because we have to choose to ignore our learned expertise in a given topic. In many cases, we are switching our thinking from narrow to broad.
For more on this check out this blog from Farnam Street: The Inside View and Making Better Decisions.
The issue lies in a leap into decisions based on pattern recognition. Even though we can lean on experience, it's better to evaluate an array of options before letting your intuition take over to execute on opportunities before you. The takeaway seems to jump the gun too early to solve a novel problem.
So far, we've only explored analogical thinking at an individual level. Kepler himself is most definitely an outlier. In the modern working world, we are all part of a team to some degree. Even if you work mostly solo, you still have someone you trust and bounce ideas off of.
Mix of Strategies
Enter Kevin Dunbar, Professor of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology at the University of Maryland College Park. Kevin's research centers around how groups of people solve problems. In the book, Kevin watched how labs work and precisely what took place in the entire group meetings.
"When all the members of the laboratory have the same knowledge at their disposal, then when a problem arises, a group of similar minded individuals will not provide more information to make analogies than a single individual. You need a mixture of strategies."
There is a trade-off for learning across disciplines. It costs a head start in major or career. This is a tough trade-off for many, but if you can think in longer time frames, it should be a significant gain. This is analogous to stock markets. It's not about playing short-term but rather setting up for a future in which the growth outweighs the initial investment. Head starts look good on paper, but it can be a dead-end in the long term when taken from the long view.
