Science Forums 2

[CraigD]

LB, I think You should rewrite your story to correct an inaccuracy: no European country has left-hand traffic. As a rule, only the UK, Japan and countries that were once colonies or strongly tied to these countries, have left-hand traffic.

A better example, I think, would be screw thread handedness. I’ve actually had friends and coworkers trick me by replacing various machine screw studs and bolds with left-land threaded ones.

This aside, I don’t think such examples illustrate what’s usually meant by “thinking outside the box”. Thinking outside the box usually means setting aside ones usually assumptions and techniques when faces with a problem. This is very roughly analogous to thinking inductively, rather than deductively.

Drive on the/turn to tighten right/left decisions are very deductive. If one drives on the wrong side of the road, one soon notices ones error by all the other cars driving on the correct side (hopefully before having a head-on collision), and corrects. If a bolt won’t loosen when turned left, most people will try turning it the other way (hopefully before stripping its threads). If, as in the example’s

Originally Posted by Little Bang

As your driving along I ask,” Why are you driving on the wrong side of the road? “ You respond, “ I don’t understand, I’m driving on the right side of the road. “ I reply, “ Your on the right side of the road but your supposed to be driving on the left.“

one is instructed by a another to do something that contradicts ones expectation of the correct action, unless one is blindly obedient (ie: prone to automaton conformity, one of Fromm’s three main dysfunctional psychological escape mechanisms), one won’t do it until some external, objective data (eg: nearly hitting another car, a clean bolt refusing to turn) corroborates the instruction.

Originally Posted by Little Bang

Thinking outside our box requires that we be willing to evaluate the string of memories ( for possible errors ) used to arrive at a conclusion.

I believe this described mental technique is actually an example of unusually careful thinking inside the box. When thinking outside the box, a good technique is to forget past experience and discard the assumptions by which one can judge a particularly remembered action/decision correct or erroneous.

The classic example of “thinking outside the box”, and the generally acknowledged source of the expression, is the “nine dots puzzle”: Give 3 evenly spaced rows of 3 dots (

), draw 4 strait lines without lifting the pencil that pass through all 9 dots.