Board index › General Discussion › General Autism Discussion

Problem statements

Page 1 of 1 [ 9 posts ] 

Previous topic | Next topic

Gammeldans
Deinonychus
Deinonychus

Joined: 13 Dec 2018
Gender: Male
Posts: 300

18 Sep 2022, 11:36 am

Can forumlating a problem statement make you less creative when coming up with solutions?
Is it bad to think about problems when dealing with things like art, be it music or theater or something similar?
Isn't it actually good to be very concrete?
People have told me that they disslike problem statements but I think that they actually are helpful as they focus on the concrete reality that we must deal with.
How can problem statements help and not help?

In this case a problem statement can be very short, even three sentences.
A problem statement could be: we want to play But Beautiful in the style of Bring Crosby but we don't have a guitar comping. We have a pianist instead. What should the pianist play in order to get the foxtrot fealing?

The things is: I thought people with ASD would want me to be this concrete but both people with ASD and NT seem to disslike when I make problem statements like this one.



timf
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 25 Oct 2013
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,132

19 Sep 2022, 7:30 am

The creative process can be quite variable. Some start with a structure and add layers to it. Others throw pieces together to see what fits. They key would be to find what works for you.



Dear_one
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 2 Feb 2008
Age: 76
Gender: Male
Posts: 5,721
Location: Where the Great Plains meet the Northern Pines

19 Sep 2022, 12:08 pm

People might like it better if you just asked how to re-arrange the music to replace a guitar with a piano. Formal scientific language can leave some people stunned by the culture shift. As for the effect on creativity, formulating the question can be a big help or a disaster. Don't ask how to improve your current hardware; ask how to do its job better. Sometimes the formal method sounds really stupid, which throws people off, but it does probe the foundations of the problem for new approaches.



Gammeldans
Deinonychus
Deinonychus

Joined: 13 Dec 2018
Gender: Male
Posts: 300

20 Sep 2022, 2:02 am

Dear_one wrote:
People might like it better if you just asked how to re-arrange the music to replace a guitar with a piano. Formal scientific language can leave some people stunned by the culture shift. As for the effect on creativity, formulating the question can be a big help or a disaster. Don't ask how to improve your current hardware; ask how to do its job better. Sometimes the formal method sounds really stupid, which throws people off, but it does probe the foundations of the problem for new approaches.

So the problem is not the concrete language but how I talk about it?

The thing is: the generalisations are that people with ASD need or want more concrete information whereas people with NT doesn't need or want it.
It is a very broad generalisation but I have seen it in real life. But the strange thing is that many people with ASD seem to dislike when I make things very concrete.
It's like NTs can deal with it much better than ASDs.
What do you say? So many people with ASD don't actually want concrete information?
timf wrote:
The creative process can be quite variable. Some start with a structure and add layers to it. Others throw pieces together to see what fits. They key would be to find what works for you.

No structure?



Dear_one
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 2 Feb 2008
Age: 76
Gender: Male
Posts: 5,721
Location: Where the Great Plains meet the Northern Pines

20 Sep 2022, 7:11 am

ASD makes us prone to science, but it is by no means compelling. Everyone has to use a simplified model of what the world is like just to have room to think, and the Scientific Method is dangerous to parts of the model. It also breaks the flow of analog thinking. When Robert Persig was trying to understand his musical friends, they responded "Hey, man, if you gotta keep asking these ten-dollar questions all the time, you'll never have time to know." Mostly, they just wanted to keep grooving and focussing on their simple truth.

The sages tell us that duality is an illusion, and while we can seldom achieve their level of vision, it is pleasant to focus and feel sure of something without having it skilfully questioned. Even most scientists resist change. They identify with one version of reality, instead of treating each plateau as a stepping stone to something even better. When I didn't go to school, there were still tenured professors teaching about land bridges instead of continental drift.



Gammeldans
Deinonychus
Deinonychus

Joined: 13 Dec 2018
Gender: Male
Posts: 300

20 Sep 2022, 10:55 am

Dear_one wrote:
ASD makes us prone to science, but it is by no means compelling. Everyone has to use a simplified model of what the world is like just to have room to think, and the Scientific Method is dangerous to parts of the model. It also breaks the flow of analog thinking. When Robert Persig was trying to understand his musical friends, they responded "Hey, man, if you gotta keep asking these ten-dollar questions all the time, you'll never have time to know." Mostly, they just wanted to keep grooving and focussing on their simple truth.

The sages tell us that duality is an illusion, and while we can seldom achieve their level of vision, it is pleasant to focus and feel sure of something without having it skilfully questioned. Even most scientists resist change. They identify with one version of reality, instead of treating each plateau as a stepping stone to something even better. When I didn't go to school, there were still tenured professors teaching about land bridges instead of continental drift.

"Scientific thinking is a type of knowledge seeking involving intentional information seeking, including asking questions, testing hypotheses, making observations, recognizing patterns, and making inferences" (Kuhn, 2002; Morris et al., 2012



I actually like that kind of thinking mentioned in the quote. For me it is mostly a non-academic thing. It is more on a personal level. I am not an academic.



Dear_one
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 2 Feb 2008
Age: 76
Gender: Male
Posts: 5,721
Location: Where the Great Plains meet the Northern Pines

20 Sep 2022, 1:18 pm

Gammeldans wrote:
I actually like that kind of thinking mentioned in the quote. For me it is mostly a non-academic thing. It is more on a personal level. I am not an academic.


So do I, but following the logic has cost me most of my friends, and that possibility is enough to scare others off.



Gammeldans
Deinonychus
Deinonychus

Joined: 13 Dec 2018
Gender: Male
Posts: 300

20 Sep 2022, 2:19 pm

Dear_one wrote:
Gammeldans wrote:
I actually like that kind of thinking mentioned in the quote. For me it is mostly a non-academic thing. It is more on a personal level. I am not an academic.


So do I, but following the logic has cost me most of my friends, and that possibility is enough to scare others off.

That sounds pretty bad.



Dear_one
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 2 Feb 2008
Age: 76
Gender: Male
Posts: 5,721
Location: Where the Great Plains meet the Northern Pines

20 Sep 2022, 2:38 pm

"Many people, especially ignorant people, want to punish you for speaking the truth, for being correct, for being you. Never apologize for being correct, or for being years ahead of your time. If you're right and you know it, speak your mind. Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is still the truth."
- M. K. Gandhi
The tricky bit comes in the "knowing you are right." If it comes from feelings and has not been corroborated by experiment at key points, you may be suffering from Dunning-Kruger syndrome. If you lack the skills to master your field, you also lack the skills to judge your own performance. On another forum, we discuss aerodynamics, and the most prolific poster just keeps applying one simple rule to every situation, oblivious to all the exceptions everyone else recognizes. He is just noise, but is sure he's a kingpin.