Two of my favorite intellectual pursuits are quantum physics and the human mind's perception--read misperception--of statistical information. Both of these fields have one common factor (at least to me) and that is their counterintuitive view of the world. Looking differently at the world has become more important as my consulting career evolves--why?
1. Background. Schrodinger's Cat refers to the fascinating world of quantum mechanics, where the world works in ways which strain our concept of reality as it is usually described in classical physics. To summarize Dr. Schrodinger's experiment, how we look at something determines what actually happens to the event (please forgive the glib response, my physicist friends!) While the reasons for this are not fully explained by modern physics, we do know that this answer strains our mental frame of the world. Nassim Taleb's books (The Black Swan being the most recent) describe the mind's misuse of statistics, which I have looked at in earlier posts.
2. Mental ruts. As a consultant, looking at problems in a different light is frequently the reason for my existence. What took me a while to learn is how to look at problems from a unique point of view. When younger I would struggle with finding a new view of the problem which usually led to pointless navel gazing. What I learned through time and experience is this. The first step to seeing something differently is to spot the mental grooves, or ruts, driving the problem. What preconceived notions led to the situation? All of us, to save time and mental energy, have mental patterns that usually serve us well but sometimes get us into trouble. Spot these trends and you will find yourself thinking like Schrodinger and Taleb and provide the different answer.
