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Lateral Thought

6 replies [Last post]
Thu, 2005-06-09 02:58
Darrell ODea
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Can anybody out there define "Lateral Thought or Thinking" clearly?

Regards,
Darrell
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Replies

Sat, 2005-10-15 07:06
#1
Oscar Wilde
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I think this is similar to critical thought

Any thoughts at all on this Charlie

Oscar
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Thu, 2005-06-09 07:38
#2
Chris Oggham
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Darrell,

If you want to know more about lateral thinking, what it is and how it works, there are a couple of websites that might interest you.

http://www.debonoonline.com/Lateral_Thinking.asp

and

http://www.edwdebono.com/debono/lateral.htm

Chris Oggham


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Thu, 2005-06-09 03:47
#3
Darrell ODea
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J.
Could this be put down to conditioning or pre-programming?
In that a lot of our "thought processes" are build into out sub-conscious. Any it is not always, immediately obvious where our solution(s) for problems come from. But that we are "sub-consciously" going through a step-by-step process, albeit some can reach soultions a lot faster than others??

Or is this confusing??

Darrell

Lateral thought is about thinking that is not immediately obvious and about ideas that may not be obtainable by using only traditional step-by-step logic.

J. Daniel
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Thu, 2005-06-09 03:39
#4
Jihad Daniel
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Lateral thought is about thinking that is not immediately obvious and about ideas that may not be obtainable by using only traditional step-by-step logic.

J. Daniel
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Thu, 2005-06-09 03:33
#5
Darrell ODea
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So J,

How could you some up a definition for "Lateral Thought"?

Regards,
Darrell
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Thu, 2005-06-09 03:29
#6
Jihad Daniel
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Lateral thinking or thought: example:

It took two hours for two men to dig a hole five feet deep. How deep would it have been if ten men had dug the hole for two hours?

Simplistically, the answer appears to be 25 feet deep. This is based on a few incorrect assumptions :
•Holes usually need to be deep as possible, rather than long or wide, as with a ditch.
•Ten men have just as much room to move around and shovel in (without getting in the way of other men) as two men do.
•Each of the ten men will work just as hard as the two men will—generally, the more people you have working on a project, the more each person will assume he can slack off and there’s more people to talk to.

The correct answer—whatever it is—goes against standard mathematical training. This does not make it incorrect; standard mathematical training doesn’t always teach how to apply math to the real world very well. Lateral thinking gets answers that are correct (or closer to the truth) because it takes into account more factors and the meanings of the words.

Example problems
1-How long would it take to dig half a hole?
oYou can’t dig half a hole.
2-If one egg takes three minutes to boil, how long do two eggs cook?
oAbout three minutes (the energy needed to get the eggs to boil is small in comparison to the energy needed to get the surrounding water to boil)
3-If a knot in a 5-foot rope takes five minutes to undo, how long would a knot in a 10-foot rope take to undo?
oAlso five minutes (the length of rope usually has nothing to do with the complexity of the knot).

These examples can answer to your interesting thread.

Regards,
J. Daniel
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