Lateral vs Longitudinal Thinking

Beyond the cliches

About a decade and a half ago, I was introduced to the idea of "Lateral Thinking", with its most famous puzzle that goes as follows :

Many years ago in a small Indian village, a farmer had the misfortune of owing a large sum of money to a village moneylender. The moneylender, who was old and ugly, fancied the farmer’s beautiful daughter. So he proposed a bargain.

He said he would forgo the farmer’s debt if he could marry his daughter. Both the farmer and his daughter were horrified by the proposal. So the cunning money-lender suggested that they let providence decide the matter. He told them that he would put a black pebble and a white pebble into an empty money bag. Then the girl would have to pick one pebble from the bag.

1. If she picked the black pebble, she would become his wife and her father’s debt would be forgiven.
2. If she picked the white pebble she need not marry him and her father’s debt would still be forgiven.
3. If she refused to pick a pebble, her father would be thrown into jail.

They were standing on a pebble strewn path in the farmer’s field. As they talked, the moneylender bent over to pick up two pebbles. As he picked them up, the sharp-eyed girl noticed that he had picked up two black pebbles and put them into the bag. He then asked the girl to pick a pebble from the bag.

Now, imagine that you were standing in the field. What would you have done if you were the girl? If you had to advise her, what would you have told her?

In the first reading, I had no clue what would I have told the girl if I were to advise her. More so, I would have had no clear what would I do if I were the girl. Being in the situation is enough to stent thinking on the feet impossible anyways.

In the book, the puzzle was followed immediately by the solution, and as I read through the solution, I knew I couldn't have got the solution on my own unless I probably racked my brain through it for quite some time.

The Pitfall of Lateral Thinking

Ironically, this puzzle is an introduction to Lateral Thinking. The key aspect of Lateral Thinking is to "free up your imagination", "offering ingenious solutions".

This puzzle is one of those problems that you can either solve or cannot solve. No amount of freeing your imagination or think wild or trying to offer an ingenious solution can lead one to a solution, if he is not already capable of finding that solution. More so, if you are in a state of crisis.

Most Lateral Thinking anecdotes are presented as "puzzles", and if you have seen through those puzzles, their story-telling articulation creates an intrigue that one wants to know the solution for that. When you hear / read up the solution, you go - "wow, what a creative solution". However, for most of the case - you can either solve it or cannot. The chance of someone being actually able to solve a Lateral Thinking puzzle is very slim.

Lateral Thinking puzzles are more about smart intriguing solutions that feel good when you know the solution.

Deep Thinking - Deconstruction

Thinking through tough situations is not always the most entertaining thing to do. Deep Thinking, while might sound very unglamorous is what could help one to build one's ability to generate creative sparks.

Let us try to Deconstruct the above solution. It is clear that the girl cannot refuse to pick a pebble, and it is futile to try to expose the conniving merchant. She HAS to pick a pebble.

What would an ideal representation of the situation look like ?

The girl has to pick up one of the two pebbles. She picks up a pebble and the other is left in the bag.

The ideal situation for the girl would be that she picks the White pebble, leaving behind the Black pebble in the bag.

However, in this case, she is doomed with a bag with 2 black pebbles. This is what is in store for her :

Clearly, all she can pick is a Black pebble and she doesn't want the focus to be on what she picks. In order to find a way ahead, she needs to turn the focus to what is left behind.

So, the whole problem boils down to :

How can she ensure that the focus of everyone moves to the black pebble that would be left behind in the bag.

So, now the problem boils down to this :

How can the girl move everyone's focus AWAY from what she picks TO what is left in the bag ?

Steps to Creativity

An idea can be called creative only if it solves the problem at hand. Getting an outrageously innovative idea in the middle of a crisis that doesn't resolve the crisis is of no use.

Creativity is often confused with wild imagination. While creativity does involve the imagination to run wild, just getting the imagination to run wild doesn't always lead to creativity. Mozart was creative and stunned the world with his wild imagination, but it wasn't the effect of banging on the piano and strings mindlessly.

Of course, stimulating one's mind in various ways could be an important step to break through one's set patterns and gives a person access to a new quality of thoughts that one may be accustomed to, but it need not enable one to converge to the solution of the problem at hand. Once one's regular mold of thoughts is broken, it is only half the job done. It does empower you to be able to think of new ideas, but those new ideas need not necessarily solve the problem at hand.

Creativity is far better achieved when we let the Thinking Mechanism organize itself around the given "dots" of a problem. A creative idea is useful only when it meets certain objectives and satisfies certain parameters dictated by the environment. When we get skilled in the experience of allowing our minds to organize itself around the dots, we get more and more skilled in generating creative thoughts at will. We realize that the process of effective Deconstruction would create finer and finer "Dots" till the mind is able to connect them with a creative spark.

Lateral Thinking - a Noble Aspiration

When we learn to Deconstruct, we practice arriving at insightful solutions through a sequence of steps.

With sufficient practice, Deconstruction becomes our Thinking Mechanim's second nature. With an increased proficiency in Deconstruction and the resulting self-image thereof, we would be soon able to come up with solutions like these :

With the right fundamentals in place, one could even try coming up with creative solutions with some parameters changed - e.g. what happens when the drawing of the pebble happens inside a house, where there are no pebbles to lose the first pebble into ?

As long as the girl is focused on her objective of "turning the focus AWAY from the first pebble, TO the second pebble that is left in a bag", a large number of possible solutions could be created.

Lateral Thinking is great as an aspiration. It requires us to take massive leaps of creativity across cliffs. We would surely love to take those leaps of creativity. It would be highly aspirational for everyone to look at a problem, trigger his brain and offer an immensely creative solution that satisfies all the parameters of the problem.

However, it is not something that everyone is capable of achieving from the word "go". This capability cannot just come by taking wild leaps of imagination. It has to be a process where we do venture out of our constant mould of thinking, but the movement has to be in a definite direction. As we learn to balance our way through those chasms, we gain more skill and confidence and our Thinking Mechanism gradually provides us the ability to take those wild, giant leaps of creativity.

Everyone would want to conjure up smart, wild, creative ideas that seem to just drop out of thin air. Unfortunately, the mind cannot conjure rabbits out of hats. Personally, I have not experienced of even a single incident where somebody "solved" a tough Lateral Thinking puzzle. Most of us would have had to "hear out" or "read up" the solutions of Lateral Thinking puzzles. They do sound fun when we get to know the solution, and it does create an aspiration to be able to find out such solutions oneself. But it's rarest of the rare that one would be able to find the solution of a Lateral Thinking puzzle all by himself.

To that extent, Lateral Thinking or other similar thinking paradigms do not really help us in enhancing our thinking skills.

A strong, powerful horse is useful for us only when its wildness can be channelled into the direction and towards the destination we want. An untamed, wild Thinking Mechanism could go all over the places other than the destination we would want it to go.

Making Deep Thinking Mainstream

Thinking styles and paradigms like Lateral Thinking become instantly mainstream, because they sound fun, intriguing. As discussed in The Science of Deep Thinking, Deep Thinking could become mainstream only if it becomes fun, intriguing as well as spontaneous and effortless.

We all have an incredibly phenomenal Thinking Mechanism. What the Thinking Mechanism needs is not a new "thinking style", but an awareness of how it operates and align our thinking steps towards that. We need to learn to set the ignition of the Thinking Mechanism ON and then steer it to the destination we intend to.

When Deep Thinking gives us an experience of a "flow" and "being in the zone", that would become our natural and spontaneous response to any occasion that requires thinking.

How can we make Deep Thinking natural, spontaneous, effortless ?

How can Deep Thinking give us an experience of "flow" and "being in the zone" ?

As discussed in earlier articles, the mind loves to "express" and has a strong resistance to "imbibe". That's the reason any style that involves "throwing out of ideas" have a wider appeal than those requiring us to painstakingly break down the components of a problem.

Deep Thinking can become mainstream only when it becomes a process of "expression".

The Professional Thinker

The Science of Deep Thinking

Taking Problems Head-On

Diving Into Deep Thinking

The 12-Weight-Puzzle-Part 5

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