Out of the Box

Premise

Thinking out-of-the-box is hard. Questioning paradigms is not generally a part of our formal education. Indeed, in many cases, the whole enterprise is designed to innoculate us into very specific paradigms. Paradigms have their purposes, but they readily become thought traps, and steal the joy of discovery.

As a culture we believe, intellectually, that thinking out-of-the-box is valuable, but for most of us it is not yet automatic, not yet a habit. Our evolutionary algorithms prefer rapid judgements, past patterns, stereotypes and mental shortcuts. Our nature fights lateral thinking, yet behind it lies insight, brilliance, impact, and the simple joy of understanding.

Promise

In my experience, as an educator, breaking out of old habits of thought can be taught. Whether you call it out-of-the-box thinking, paradigm busting, or lateral thinking, it is a skill which can be developed.

Where should one go to find such an education? Simple, seek out impossible problems. Well, maybe toy problems, to cut our teeth on. The important critieria is to find ones which appear intractable, ones which might even have been proven impossible. You cannot have an impossibility proof without a very strong model and a strong model is a defacto paradigm. If you are going to go ahead and do the impossible anyway (you stubborn human, you), it will require breaking through a paradigm. That is the learning opportunity, the chance to challenge yourself, to solve the pernicious thing in spite of its difficulty - damn the torpedoes.

No one said it better than Pat Hein… “Problems worthy of attack, prove their worth by hitting back.”

Peril

For more than a hundred years a few brave people have tackled the challenge of playing chess in three dimensions. Some of the rules proposed are truly clever, interesting in their own right, and some even have followings. But dismayingly, none really feel like chess - a strategic game to be sure, one that uses chess pieces yes, but also one that does not quite rise to the challenge - not quite chess in three dimensions. Is the problem impossible, intractible, or just leering at us from around the paradigm corner?

That’s the impossiblity proof.

Potential

So, if you want an excercise in thinking out-of-the-box, if you want practice in lateral thinking, if I have convinced you that breaking through paradigms is a valuable enterprise, then we have a candidate challenge. How do you invent, nay discover, rules that make play in three dimensions truly feel like chess? What paradigm(s) stand in our way?

Challenge accepted.