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New Thinking
The basic software of human thinking is backward looking. We analyse the situation and seek to identify standard elements. Such elements arise from our previous experience. Then we provide the standard answer to the standard element.
A child with a rash is brought into the surgery. The doctor has to make a diagnosis. From the signs, symptoms, history and tests, the doctor judges the condition to be measles. Once this standard illness is diagnosed then the probable cause of the illness is known, the possible complications are known and the standard treatment can be given. That is the basis for one hundred per cent of our education and ninety per cent of our thinking behaviour.
The software of human thinking is based on information, analysis and judgement. This is excellent just as the front left wheel of a motorcar is excellent – but it is not enough.
“New Thinking” includes the thinking that concerns the future.
New thinking includes:
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Constructive thinking
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Creative thinking
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Design thinking
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Perceptual thinking
You can seek the truth about the past but you cannot have truth about the future. At best you can have “possible value”. For the future, analysis is not enough – there is a need for design.
Yet our whole culture of thinking is about analysis, truth, logic and argument. These are all about the past. New thinking is about the future.
The quality of our future will depend directly on the quality of our thinking.
In conflicts we seek to judge the way forward: the good guys and the bad guys; injustices; fairness; breaching principles etc. There is a need to design the way forward taking into account the fears and needs of all parties.
Information comes in over time. Yet we have to make the best use of the information that we have. In such a system there is a mathematical need for creativity. There is a need to go back and put things together differently. This is not a matter of choice. Otherwise we get trapped in concepts and perceptions that are inadequate.
Research at Harvard shows that something like ninety per cent of the errors of thinking are errors of perception. Errors of logic are rare. If perception is limited or inadequate the outcome will be rubbish no matter how excellent the logic.
Goedel’s theorem points out that from within a system it is impossible to logically justify the starting points. Such starting points are arbitrary perceptions and assumed values. There is a need to be able to change perceptions.
The behaviour of self-organising information systems like the human brain demands new ideas and new possibilities. Otherwise we are locked into old patterns. We are also locked into selective perception which forces us to see things only through the old patterns.
Two thousand years ago China was far ahead of the rest of the world in science and technology. This rapid progress came to an end when scholars started to believe that you could move from “certainty” to “certainty”. As a result they never understood the importance of “possibility” and “hypothesis”. Progress came to a dead end. Today we are in a similar situation with the belief that analysis of information is enough.
Representative bodies like democracies and the United Nations cannot put forward new ideas. By definition “new ideas” are not representative of existing thinking. They are therefore high risk. Such organizations may be perfectly capable of having new ideas but cannot risk putting them forward.
