How we invent the new - connecting the dots

Two articles I read in quick succession today allowed me to see a pattern in how we humans create knowledge.

The first article was on research done by Ashton Anderson at Microsoft Research in New York City, Jon Kleinberg at Cornell University in Ithaca, and Sendhil Mullainathan at Harvard University in Cambridge that studied patterns from 200 million chess games played online between amateurs and another database of around one million games played between grand masters. This "after the fact" research gave them a wealth of data without the data providers possibly having any way of influencing the results with preconceived notions.

What they found was that the most important determinant in whether a problem would be successfully solved wasn't the skill of the decision-maker or the amount of time to make the decision (beyond the 10 second mark anyway). In fact, more skilled decision-makers (higher ranked players) would often make more mistakes than less skilled ones under the dominant condition for success. And that dominant condition?

Quite simply, the complexity of the situation. Humans simply seem to tap out at a certain volume of factors needing to be considered. No matter how smart you are or how much time you have, our minds just can't quite get there. I'm going farther with my analysis of their research than they did, but that's how I interpret the reason they found situational complexity to be the primary determinant for the probability of success in making any decision.

The next article I read was about inventions that could have happened hundreds or even thousands of years before they did, but for some reason just didn't. We had all the parts, all the factors that needed to be put together to create say indoor plumbing or hot air balloons. In fact, some of the knowledge was even applied, such as indoor plumbing in Crete, but then when that civilization was destroyed fell off the world map for millennia longer.

Why don't we figure it out as soon as we could figure it out? We have all the parts, the need is there, but no one thinks of it for hundreds or thousands of years.

Complexity.

Not to pat myself on the back, but honestly I am someone who was classified as a genus when I was a kid. Yet I know I struggled with some subjects. Some I even gave up on after taking a course on them for the third time and still having no idea what was going on. And I've had friends who really are geniuses. And they always say that I'm one too, but I know I'm not.

What I am is someone who connects the dots. I can deal with complexity.

That's it. No special gifts. No advanced decision-making skill. No super processor up their in the old noggin'. Simply the ability to hold a tremendous number of moving parts in my head at once and see the pattern between them.

So yes, I have often beaten a superior player in a game of strategy. I know they are smarter than me in general and definitely more skilled in the game. But I'll win. After reading the articles I shared, it now appears the reason I probably win in those situations is that the game has simply reached a level of complexity where skill level becomes less important.

And guess what the really cool think about this is?

The ability to handle complexity can be learned. It comes with simply practicing holding lots of different ideas at once and trying to see how they might overlap, just like I did with the different ideas in these two articles.

Well, offered for your enrichment. If you want to be able to solve more problems and invent more cool things yourself, practice looking for overlaps and influences between seemingly unrelated ideas.

(Photo source: Pixabay)

Some other posts of mine you might enjoy:

• Curious Contradictions Contest Winners
• Learning to Receive - Basic Income sources - Can you let it in?
• What if nothing has gone wrong?

Resteems always appreciated!