what do they mean by Literal Thinking and Lateral thinking?:
Lateral thinking, is the ability to think creatively, or “outside the box” as it is sometimes referred to in business, to use your inspiration and imagination to solve problems by looking at them from unexpected perspectives. Lateral thinking involves discarding the obvious, leaving behind traditional modes of thought, and throwing away preconceptions.
I would imagine that literal thinking is more focussed on the obvious.
As Heels say, Literal thinking is more about following a narrower thought band rather than looking at the bigger picture.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateral_thinking
Lateral thinking and problem solving
Edward de Bono points out that the term problem solving implies that there is a problem to respond to and that it can be resolved. That eliminates situations where there is no problem or a problem exists that cannot be resolved. It is logical to think about making a good situation, that has no problems, into a better situation. Sometimes a problem cannot be solved by removing its cause.
We may need to solve some problems not by removing the cause but by designing the way forward even if the cause remains in place. – (Edward de Bono)
Lateral thinking can be used to help in solving problems but can also be used for much more.
When tackling puzzles that require lateral thinking, it is important to challenge your assumptions. You need to be open-minded, flexible and creative in your questioning. Be able to put many of different clues and pieces of information together. The goal is to reach a viable solution, but even then, the solution can be further questioned and refined to reach the most sensible and most viable solution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_thinking
Systems Thinking is any process of estimating or inferring how local policies, actions, or changes influences the state of the neighboring universe. It is an approach to problem solving that views “problems” as parts of an overall system, rather than reacting to present outcomes or events and potentially contributing to further development of the undesired issue or problem. [1] Systems thinking is a framework that is based on the belief that the component parts of a system can best be understood in the context of relationships with each other and with other systems, rather than in isolation. The only way to fully understand why a problem or element occurs and persists is to understand the part in relation to the whole.[2] Standing in contrast to Descartes’s scientific reductionism and philosophical analysis, it proposes to view systems in a holistic manner. Consistent with systems philosophy, systems thinking concerns an understanding of a system by examining the linkages and interactions between the elements that compose the entirety of the system.
Both systems thinkers and futurists consider that:
* a “system” is a dynamic and complex whole, interacting as a structured functional unit;
* energy, material and information flow among the different elements that compose the system;
* a system is a community situated within an environment;
* energy, material and information flow from and to the surrounding environment via semi-permeable membranes or boundaries
* systems are often composed of entities seeking equilibrium but can exhibit oscillating, chaotic, or exponential behavior.
We haven’t had any problem since. But I admire his creativity. This is just one example of many where I needed to intercept and figure out how a literal mind is hearing and translating “typical” expectations and directions. Being Matthew’s mom has helped me to understand how frustrated people would get with me at times. They must have felt I was being difficult on purpose, thinking “how could someone not ‘get’ something so obvious”, when I sincerely didn’t understand their meaning. I am sure they thought “Surely she isn’t really that dense. She did go to graduate school.” I am not sure why Matthew’s ability to be so vastly creative and yet, at times, so brutally literal reside so nicely together. It appears inconsistent, yet underneath, somewhere, there is perhaps an explanation.
It seems to me that everyone has a “blind spot” in learning and understanding things. Many people don’t “get” algebra or chemistry. How many people just laugh off the fact they can’t program their VCR? These are deficiencies you can usually work your life around or completely avoid. In autistic conditions, the “blind spot” happens to be reading social cues…something you can’t get around with other people. It is right there in your face, every day. But sometimes everyone has this problem with fundamental communication.
Moving Beyond the Boundaries of a Literal Meaning
It’s the literal truth, we say, as if that “literal” conveyed an extra measure of authority.
Actually, literal meanings are frequently wrong, and often confusing.
A recent example is the “naked wife” virus that spread rapidly through cyberspace a few months ago. The Department of Energy found it couldn’t send out a warning about the virus because its prudish computer software interpreted “naked wife” literally–and censored the warning.
Anthropologist Vincent Crapanzano concludes in his book, “Serving the Word: Literalism in America From the Pulpit to the Bench,” that literalism is “a widespread characteristic of American thought,” and a dangerous one at that. Literal thinking often leads to intolerance because it insists that that only one meaning can be right–leaving no room for interpretation, ambivalence or ambiguity.
Perhaps surprisingly, literal thinking has caused almost as many problems in science as it has in other realms of life. Consider, for example, the trouble physicists had trying to determine the nature of light when they were stuck with literal interpretations of the terms “wave” and “particle.” Light has obvious wave-like properties, and also obvious particle-like properties; but it is clearly literally neither.
In the end, physicists simply had to face the fact that light–like so many other physical phenomena–could not be strictly interpreted as either wave or particle. It required several interpretations, each dependent on context.
In the end, Einstein was able to revolutionize physics precisely because he freed words that other people interpreted literally from their narrow definitions–in particular, space, time and speed.
While the details were wrong, a central part of the theory was right. But literal thinking caused the baby to be thrown out with the bathwater.
Just because a theory turns out to be only partly true doesn’t make it worthless. Paul Dirac did not discover “holes in nothing,” as he thought. But he did discover what turned out to be antimatter. Genes do not determine behavior. But they certainly play a role.
Part of the power of science comes from the fact that new ideas are always built on the foundation of old ones. If experiments suggest a theory is wrong, scientists can either throw the theory out, or patch it up. Remarkably often, patching up works quite well–for example, putting in a different context, or setting new kinds of limits.
It is people, not nature, who insist on absolutes.
But at the same time I can pick something apart and analyze it. I guess that’s why everyone comes to me with advice– I’ll pick apart the situation piece by piece without pulling any emotion into it and give my honest opinion and analysis of what’s going on.
And I understand computers more than people because I don’t understand others’ emotions and points of view. Well I understand others’ points of view if they sit and explain until I understand, but I don’t readily understand like most people seem to. But I get computers, they just make sense. So everyone does confuse that for logical. Plus I’ve always prided myself on my logic– till lately I’ve found that I’m only internally consistent and objective, not necessarily ‘logical’.
In fact, if I had to sum Asperger’s up, I would describe it as a very strong ability to cognitize and intellectuallize concepts, with a decreased ability to relate to things and people emotionally. Understanding this about myself has helped me see that I have my own strengths and weaknesses just like any NT does. It also helps explain why Aspies may have social problems–if the frontal lobe of their brain (which is responsible for logic) is very dominant, then the other parts of the brain (which is responsible for rapport, etc.) may be less functional. For example, I was once having a discussion with a friend and we realized I had disfunctional “mirror neurons,” which are responsible for feeling empathy.
And if you look at all the possible Aspies throughout history (Einstein, Newton, Jefferson, etc.), they all showed the same tendencies with logic.
If you define logic in the very pure, academic terms that Amy does, than the point is well taken. The idea that as aspies “we are not openly looking at all the facts from all standpoints and carefully and with no bias coming to an honest conclusion” – is true enough, but really, who does that? It seems obvious to me that we aspies rely on a more logical, less emotional mode of thought in our dealings with the world. For myself, this reliance on logic started at around age 10 as a defense against emotions I couldn’t cope with, a natural outgrowth of hyper-literal language skills and an aptitude for memorizing facts. Since discovering AS a year ago I’ve become more aware of how insular and narrow my point of view actually is, so again, I basically agree with Amy’s point. We can be proud of our reliance on logic, while realizing that aspie insularity can, ironically, sometimes be an obstacle to logic.
Using logic in the academic sense really needs to be taught, and sometimes is in the form of critical thinking. But even if you are very practiced in it, you end up very limited to what you say, and can really only make confident statements about subjects that you have put a lot of research into in the past. Some very academic environments require it socially, but even there the subject matter gets very limited. I think it is more of a discipline and a practice that one can move towards doing, but it’s not really attainable in everyday thinking.
I feel that everyone has their own internal version of what is logical, its a personal logic that guides us. As aspies we tend to rely on our personal logic a lot more than NTs do. This is probably because NTs frequently talk about their feelings to others, seek advice, discuss their plans, and get feedback. We find this harder to do, probably partly because our plans will be more unusual, its difficult to ask someone in a queue at the supermarker whether they feel sunspots are a reliable source for indicating temperature variables during the vernal equinox. Whereas an NT could easily say ‘do you think its gonna rain later?’
When debating or arguing we will often prefer to rely on our logic and expect others to do the same, rather than make emotional statements like ‘You are wrong because I dont like you’. However I feel strongly that in reality we are not using any recognised form of logic at all, we are not openly looking at all the facts from all standpoints and carefully and with no bias coming to an honest conclusion. Each of us comes from the standpoint of our own personal logic (which may seem totally illogical to other people).
We were thinking that the CC acts as a sort of gateway, with logic slipping through relatively easily, but emotions for some reason filtered more, so that they arrive behind. Speaking personally, I often don’t know how I feel about something until I’ve thought it all through first, and I can take up to an hour or two to get it all sorted out. Then of course, if there is too much going on at once, our CC gets overloaded and we have a meltdown and need space and some quiet time.
Which probably why a lot of Aspies don’t get a long. It’s like a room of diffrent breeds of dogs. They are all dogs fundmentally but because each is unique they have diffrent POVs on simular topic.
On the other hand, it has been established that I can handle very tedious data cleaning. We bought a Census database of contiguous county data and I got a list of errata off the Census Web site. We got free maps (and then we got proprietary high res maps when I was really stuck) and I fixed the database table we got off the database.
It was necessary to know which U.S. counties were contiguous for a government project.
When the data job would have NTs running, call me.
Very few people can discuss any topic rationally for an extended period without turning the matter into a competition, it’s the agressive part of our brains at work. However, the topics that have been adopted by the aspies often turn more on logic than, say, hollywood stars.
