The Box

[Little Bang]

I’m going to tell an elaborate fictional story to explain why few people can ( THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX).

You and I are very good friends and you are one of my employees. I own hundreds of corporations. You work with me in the main office of my vast empire. Every work day I come by your house ( located somewhere in the US ) out in the country and you drive me to the office. Almost every Sunday afternoon we have a get together with friends at your house and play poker. I spend the night in your guest room on Sunday nights because it is usually late when we break up the game.

The next morning we get dressed, have breakfast then go out to your car and head to work. 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. “

At this point everything in your brain tells you that I’ve lost my mind. You can’t envision any scenario that would allow you to be wrong and me to be right. Unbeknownst to you six months earlier I hired a company to buy a piece of land in Europe and reproduce everything about you home and the landscape around it. The night of the poker game I slipped you a mickey just before you went to bed, loaded you on a jet and flew you to the duplicate home in Europe.

Thinking outside our box requires that we be willing to evaluate the string of memories ( for possible errors ) used to arrive at a conclusion. That being said then why isn’t it possibly that some of our scientific conclusions may be in error. An example might be the plethora of short lived subatomic particles found over the past forty years is astounding. Why isn’t there a possibility that all those particles may be repeatable waveforms ( repeatable in a certain percentage of collisions and energies ) that appear to have charge and mass? No one knows what an electromagnetic wave looks like so how do we know for certain that there are no short lived waveforms that exhibit charge and mass?

[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.

[Erasmus00]

Originally Posted by Little Bang

That being said then why isn’t it possibly that some of our scientific conclusions may be in error.

Of course they could, but you need a reasonable demonstration that something is in error. Any theory you throw out needs to be more predictive (or at least AS predictive) as the theory you want to replace.

An example might be the plethora of short lived subatomic particles found over the past forty years is astounding. Why isn’t there a possibility that all those particles may be repeatable waveforms ( repeatable in a certain percentage of collisions and energies ) that appear to have charge and mass? No one knows what an electromagnetic wave looks like so how do we know for certain that there are no short lived waveforms that exhibit charge and mass?

First, particles ARE waveforms in quantum mechanics! Second, what do you mean no one knows what an electromagnetic wave looks like? You can create and observe them in wires and very accurately measure whatever you want. You can directly plot them with things like oscilloscopes.

Next, This conjecture doesn't seem to be fleshed out. We know that we can measure and observe other properties of particles (spin, for instance). Further, it can be shown on general principles (relativity+quantum mechanics) that spin 1/2 fields cannot be constructed out of integer spins. This means most of the known particles cannot be electromagnetic waveforms, since they are spin 1/2 particles. Unless we are willing to throw out either special relativity or quantum mechanics....

[Little Bang]

Will, I know what a water wave looks but I don't know what an EM wave looks like.

[Erasmus00]

Originally Posted by Little Bang

Will, I know what a water wave looks but I don't know what an EM wave looks like.

To see an EM wave, you can simply take a piece of coax and connect a voltage source to an oscilloscope. For something more abstract, you can plot Lienard-Wiechert potentials (see the wiki article) in Mathematica.

[lemit]

Originally Posted by Little Bang

I’m going to tell an elaborate fictional story to explain why few people can ( THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX).

You and I are very good friends and you are one of my employees. I own hundreds of corporations. You work with me in the main office of my vast empire. Every work day I come by your house ( located somewhere in the US ) out in the country and you drive me to the office. Almost every Sunday afternoon we have a get together with friends at your house and play poker. I spend the night in your guest room on Sunday nights because it is usually late when we break up the game.

The next morning we get dressed, have breakfast then go out to your car and head to work. 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. “

At this point everything in your brain tells you that I’ve lost my mind. You can’t envision any scenario that would allow you to be wrong and me to be right. Unbeknownst to you six months earlier I hired a company to buy a piece of land in Europe and reproduce everything about you home and the landscape around it. The night of the poker game I slipped you a mickey just before you went to bed, loaded you on a jet and flew you to the duplicate home in Europe.

I just found this while I was looking for something else. This is not an example of inability to think outside the box. The subject is still inside the box, the manufactured lndscape--the innards of the box. I think most people would say that "thinking outside the box" means being prepared for situations that challenge preconcieved notions. The situation presented here does not challenge those notions. It is only the Evil Genius of the story who challenges the notion that it is safe to drive down the same road in the same way one always has. (Although I have to admit that I might be tempted to drive on the other side once in a while out of boredom, and have done so on rural roads.)

The box is still firmly intact for the subject. Absent traffic (which would be unlikely in this artificial landscape) there is no reason to change behavior. Thinking outside this particular box would need to begin once the subject really is outside the box and encounters obstacles--such as oncoming traffic. That is when the need for such thinking begins, when there are obstacles.

--lemit