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Those Eureka Moments
Phoe6 writes "If you're one of those insufferable people who can finish the Saturday New York Times crossword puzzle, you probably have a gift for insight. The puzzles always have an underlying hint to solving them, but on Saturdays that clue is insanely obtuse. If you had all day, you could try a zillion different combinations and eventually figure it out. But with insight, you'd experience the usual clueless confusion, until--voilà--the fog clears and you get the clue, which suddenly seems obvious. The sudden flash of insight that precedes such "Aha!" moments is characteristic of many types of cognitive processes besides problem-solving, including memory retrieval, language comprehension, and various forms of creativity. Although different problem-solving strategies share many common attributes, insight-derived solutions appear to be unique in several ways. PLoS Biology explains the Neural Basis of Solving Problems with Insight.
The Complete Research Article is here."
"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I've found it!), but 'That's funny...'"
-Isaac Asimov.
I find the best thing to do is walk away from the problem for a while - could be for a cup of coffee or you could sleep on it etc. Either you look at the problem again and you just see the answer, or you are brushing your teeth and you suddenly have the answer in your head! Don't ask me why.. IANABS (I Am Not A Brain Scientist!!)
When coding and gaming frenzy kicks in, we all know that personal hygeine suffers. The "You Reek!" moments happen at times like these.
Illustrating the strong emotional response elicited by such a sudden insight, Archimedes is said to have run home from the baths in euphoric glee--without his clothes.
But really, haven't we all done this at one time or another?
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
The puzzles always have an underlying hint to solving them, but on Saturdays that clue is insanely obtuse.
Saturday NYT puzzles frequently don't have themes.. That usually makes them harder.
And all our brains are wired in exactly the same pattern of neurons so we all experience thinking in exactly the same way. We are Borg, you will be assimilated.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Sorry for the Amazon link, but it was easy to find there. Strangely, going through this book, especially if you don't resort to the hintws and answers in the back, helps develop just the sort of insight mentioned.
As always, your mileage may vary.
This is an interesting idea, and I'd been keen to believe it. But there are some severe methodological issues, first that subjects are pressing a button to indicate that they've solved the problem based on their phenomological experience. As far as I can tell from reading this bit, they could be picking up any of a variety of mental processes that have nothing to do with the insight experience. Most obviously, it could merely be the intent to push the button.
Hopefully the real experiment is more bulletproof than this fluff piece suggests.
I disagree. Look at how some people find picking up new languages (I'm not talking computer languages, although the same principles probably apply) really easy, and other people of similar apparent intelligence seem to have a complete inability do this.
It must be down to differences in thinking. During my bike ride across France, I found that after only a couple of days of "immersion", I was thinking and dreaming in French, despite having a relatively limited knowledge of the language. I'm not claiming to be elitist (should that be 31337157 round these parts?), but I'm sure that some people clearly have a particular gifting for languages.
Ydco co
So 'saterdays' are tough? I can't imagine why you'd have a problem with crossword puzzles. :-D
Why stick up for big business?
I found cryptic crosswords (a corollary to the NYT Saturday Xword) an excellent life lesson. Until I started doing them, I had always found that working away at a problem would eventually lead to a solution, Eureka moment or not. However with cryptics, particularly as I was learning them (or a new compiler) I found that some clues just I could not grok and learning to give up was a wonderful lesson.
I firmly believe that insight is one of the more wonderful gifts that one can have and something that makes human beings extremely powerful. for example apocryphal or not, the falling apple that lead to gravity or the tram travelling away from the clock on the station building for time dilation are two examples of moments that depend on extraordinary insight.
I think that insight represents our ability to see abstract patterns in things and recognise those patterns in many forms. One of my favourite examples is the proof that a complex number (rcis[theta])^n can be expressed as r^ncisn[theta] in cis notation the proof is complex and nasty but just the simple insight that it can be expressed as (re^i[theta])^n makes the proof trivial. Recognise the pattern and proceed with the discovery.
"The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging."
Actually, thought processes are quite different among people. Growing up in different cultures, and speaking different languages can bring about very distinct ways of thinking about things. Even among similar people, family environments shape the way we process information. Even within one family, if one child is raised on puzzles and interactive games with strategies, s/he will most likely grow up with a vastly different thought proces than one brought up on television. There's still so much about the brain we don't understand, it's impossible to say we all think alike.
I would say that the potential for insight is the same in all humans but the ability we have for insight depends on how much we practice using it. It's like a muscle -- use it and it builds; stop using it and it deteriorates.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
Subjects pressed a button to indicate whether they had solved the problem using insight, which they had been told leads to an Aha! experience characterized by suddenness and obviousness.
So really, how would one solve a word problem without insight? Did any of the participants solve it by writing a dictionary searching algorithm into their PDA? Did they open a dictionary and start checking answers systematically? ("Bart, Cart, Dart, Eart... Nope, can't see any problem with that!")
In my own experience it just seems like it's the obscurity of the answer that makes it seem insightful or not. If I had read the three words and instantly known the answer I don't think I would have felt the Aha! moment that I felt after staring at it for a minute. So am I less insightful if I solve it faster?
pineapple, crabapple applesauce
I often have Akerue! moments.
Those are when you knew something, but suddenly, it's gone, and you can't for the life of you remember. I hate those.
Accountability on the heads of the powerful.
Power in the hands of the accountable.
Eureka moments require a few different things to happen in order to bring them about. First, it requires an attempt to solve the puzzle in linear fashion, setting up the problem in mind and at least someplace to start in approaching it.
Next, an incubation period, where you go and do something else, or stare into space and 'woolgather,' that fuzzy day-dream-like state in which you actually start organising thoughts, although it may not feel like it. The three Bs come into play here- bed, bath, and bus- the three likeliest placest to have a eureka moment, because those are incubatory periods, in which your brain starts approaching the puzzle from different angles.
There are other good places- i find washing dishes helps, it's an activity that lets my mind wander and it's always been a quiet spot in the day after dinner. I know someone who goes for long walks.
Sleeping on a problem really does help, partly because the brain trains during sleep, and you'll wake up better at the problem-solving activities because your brain has run through them in sleep. It may not solve abstract problems, but it at least helps with concrete skills, so who's to say it doesn't help with abstract thinking abilities as well?
Beyond that, all i can think is... what kind of eureka moment results in... an article about eureka moments??
"I'd say 'Have a good time,' but arson is still illegal.
In the shower, on the toilet, walking up the stairs, driving to work, almost anyplace but at my keyboard.
This is where I solve the really tough problems.
The simple stuff is what I do every day. The tougher problems like the large scale designs and unique solutions for unique problems rarely get solved while I am at work.
I think about the big problems for hours or days and the solution finally comes to me.
The only downside of solving problems in the shower, is that I am doing it on my time and the boss doesn't pay me for that.
That is why I NEVER feel guilty about slahdotting at work.
I live the greatest adventure anyone could wish for. -Tosk the Hunted
- I live the greatest adventure anyone could possibly desire. - Tosk the Hunted
I know I'm just echoing the AC, but I'm going to bull through anyway :) I have a math degree, and I had a lot of eureka classes. You were taking the wrong ones. In fact, it seems to me you would have to go out of your way to take math classes that were grind instead of eureka.
Differentiation (basic calculus) is a grind. You learn a few simple rules and apply them. Integration, beyond the most basic, is all eureka. You learn a few rules, but they all require insight into how to rearrange the thing you're integrating so it fits a pattern.
My favorite classes were about proofs. A proof is all eureka. A proof is a series of simple, basic steps that takes you from the given to the thing you're trying to prove. However, finding which basic steps go together to get what you want is all eureka. Many times in graduate level math courses I would work on a problem until midnight, go to sleep, wake up at 3am with the solution to the problem, write it down, & finish the problem in the morning. The interesting thing to me about proofs is that virtually always the way to prove the answer you want is to prove something much, much more powerful, of which the answer you want is a minor subset. It's as if your engineering teacher tells you to design a power source that can provide 1.5 volts for a day, and the easiest way you can find to do it is to build a Mr. Fusion. For example, to prove that all groups with 113 members are really the same group with different names for the elements, the easiest way is to prove that all groups with a prime number of elements hold that quality.
"If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack, he would proceed at once
with the diligence of the bee to examine straw after straw until he found
the object of his search.
I was a sorry witness of such doings, knowing that a little theory
and calculation would have saved him ninety per cent of his labour. "
(Nikola Tesla, New York Times, October 19, 1931)
epiphany
n. pl. epiphanies
A comprehension or perception of reality by means of a sudden intuitive realization: "I experienced an epiphany, a spiritual flash that would change the way I viewed myself" (Frank Maier).
Just another day in Paradise
One thing this article doesn't mention is that it turns out that your aptitude for "insight" is directly correlated with your ability on pereception-related problems.
:)
For example, people who do well on Where's Waldo-type problems will tend to do well on seemingly unrelated insight problems (like NYTimes crossword puzzles
This is also true for people who are really good at flipping the Necker cube.
If anyone is interested, this is from two studies done by Schooler in the 1990's. The article here actually references those two:
Schooler JW, Melcher J (1997) The ineffability of insight. In: Smith SM, Ward TB, Finke RA, editors. The creative cognition approach. Cambridge (Mass.): MIT Press. 97-133.
Schooler JW, Ohlsson S, Brooks K (1993) Thoughts beyond words: When language overshadows insight. J Exp Psychol Gen 122: 166-183. Find this article online