Your brain knows more than you think. Your gut won't give you a good answer about a complex situation you're completely ignorant of, but it may give you an excellent result if you've been exposed to a lot of facts that you haven't yet had a chance to sort through rationally and systematically. Experimenters found that subjects could make very good seat-of-the-pants guesses about complex systems like the stock market, sports tournaments, and weather, after they'd had a mass of uncoordinated data shoved at them on each subject. This result is consistent with something I was reading recently about successful techniques for "cramming" for quiz shows, and with my own experience in picking crossword solutions out of what sometimes seems like thin air. I suppose it's also related to what allows great athletes to do the impossible, or even what makes typing or playing the piano possible without tripping over one's own feet like the proverbial self-conscious centipede.
I wonder if people would do better or worse at this trick after the electro-treatment I mentioned in my last post?
Your "Not Exactly Rocket Science" link has some interesting stuff behind it... including answers to questions I never thought to ask.
ReplyDeleteI vote for worse. The electro-treatment is supposed to improve focus, and I gather that means focus on the selected details. But that's not how I do jigsaw puzzles, and when I've had one of the "aha" moments it has generally felt like the finale of a multi-threaded study where a lot of the work was done in the background.
ReplyDeleteI side with James. There is a running analogy in historical research about moles vs. sappers. Moles dig very deeply into one topic (i.e. straight down), while sappers take in a broad sweep of ideas (digging a trench).
ReplyDeleteI'm a mole: too much focus locks me into one path, but it is often only after "grazing" over a lot of semi-related things that the "got it!" moment happens. Something I've heard or read bubbles up and answers the question or suggests a route of research that provides what I needed. I'm constantly told to step back from what I'm doing and look at the bigger picture, so the last thing I need is more encouragement to be a mole.
LittleRed1
And yet the experience reported by high-performing musicians and athletes of all kinds is that they go off-track when there's too much consciously perceived chatter in the head. All that valuable, wide-spectrum, flexible underground "gut" thinking seems to be experienced as rather serene and quiet.
ReplyDeleteThere may be more than one kind of focus.
Back in the day I read a book called "Powers of Mind". I have not tracked down the research results, but one claim in the book was that studies of brain waves of Zen meditators showed alpha waves, with spikes at sudden noises. Ordinary non meditators showed spikes too, but they diminished with repetition. I don't remember what their result was with Hindu meditators precisely, but I vaguely recall that they didn't respond to the sudden noises much.
ReplyDeleteIf my vague recollection is correct, then there do seem to be different kinds of meditation and probably different kinds of concentration.