Creativity, idlis and nuclear power

In my lateral thinking sessions I like to entertain and educate trainees with this small exercise: “Write down the rule that generates the series of numbers 2, 4, 6…”

 I would then ask each trainees to tell me another three number series based on the rule he had identified. I would merely nod ‘yes’ or ‘no’ depending on whether the new series was consistent or not with the rule.

I found myself answering ‘yes’ almost all the time.

What I observed was that once trainees were confident with their answers they would formulate the rule.

I would surprise them finally by telling them that the rule I had in mind was ‘numbers in an ascending order!’

Rarely did any trainee discover my rule. Why? Because in order to discover my rule one of them had to offer a series in descending order that I would say ‘no’ to.

What comes out of this exercise is this—trainees had a rule in mind and gave me examples to confirm it. They almost never supplied a series that was inconsistent with their hypothesis. They tended to confirm the rules they had made up.

This is widely noticed in our daily lives—this tendency to seek confirmatory evidence and overlook disconfirming evidence.

Thus my friend Ashok asked me if I believed in astrology. I replied in the negative. He cited his experience two years go when his astrologer had predicted that he would be promoted in his company. It turned out that Ashok did in fact get an out of turn promotion.
“How can you explain this prediction when I was not even eligible for a promotion since I had not completed the required service in my current position?” he asked.
 
I told him to recall the other predictions that his astrologer had made at that time. He remained silent but his wife blurted out the truth—he had made seven other predictions none of which had come true.             

Ashok remembered the one prediction that had come true – by sheer chance – and forgotten or conveniently overlooked the many that did not come out true.

Our prejudices  against members of a particular community are almost always based on this tendency to seek confirmatory evidence. Our prejudiced mind tells us that people of that community behave or even dress in a particular way. When we meet someone from that community we unconsciously seek evidence that confirms our prejudiced thinking. Is it any wonder that we will end up noticing only that kind of behaviour?

I recall my experience at Newark Airport   when I first  landed in the U.S. I was received by a friend, a Tamilian. As we were waiting for some clearances we saw a man, his wife and a small child, with a lot of luggage. I noticed that the luggage included a wet grinder – the sort very popular in south Indian homes, to make idlis, dosas. etc.

Seeing the rather unpretentious clothes worn by the threesome we guessed that the man was running an Udidi hotel somewhere in the U.S. My friend decided to find out the truth. He casually walked up to the man, made polite conversation and at one  stage delicately asked “Are you running a hotel?”

“No, I am a post-doctoral researcher in nuclear physics,” he said.
 
We retreated to our base no doubt looking foolish. Little did we notice that the man was carrying under his arm the book ‘Proceedings of the International Conference on New Nuclear Physics with  Advanced Techniques.’

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K.R. Ravi is South Asia’s first Dr.Edward De Bono certified public trainer in lateral thinking, and a pioneer in spreading lateral thinking in the Indian corporate sector. For more details, visit http://www.krravi.com or contact him at createravi@hotmail.com.