– What is lateral thinking?
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You can think of logic as vertical thinking, because, like a physical structure, it is built by layering dependent blocks on top of each other.
1. If A, then B.
2. And if B, then C.
3. Therefore, if A, then C.
You can see how number 3 is dependent on 1 and 2. Without those, you have no reason to believe that 3 is correct. Logic proceeds from the known as you try to answer the unknown. But your conclusions are always built on your starting knowledge and assumptions and the logical rules you follow. It’s a tower. You can reach great heights, but it can also come crashing down.
Sometimes it does.
Lateral thinking is about questioning the assumptions themselves. Looking at the logical rules themselves, and asking if they are sound. Sometimes you have to say “this foundation is crooked – we can’t build upward here – let’s move sideways and find a better spot to build on.”
I’ll use a really old example.
A father and son board a taxicab. En route to their destination, the taxicab crashes and the man is killed. An ambulance rushes the son to a hospital, where he is brought to the ER. A doctor is waiting there, ready in scrubs, but takes one look at the boy and says “I can’t operate on this boy, he is my son.” How is this possible?
In the old days, virtually all doctors were men and so the solution wasn’t obvious to people: the doctor is the boy’s mother.
These days we would have even more explanations: maybe the father is a trans man, maybe it’s an alternative family structure, etc.
But the point is that, to build the right logic tower, you need to start with the right assumptions. If you start with:
1. The father is dead
2. Doctors are men
…then you can’t solve the puzzle. No vertical arrangement of logical puzzle pieces on top of this foundation will stand.
So you need to work laterally to unwind those assumptions.
1. The father is dead.
Is this true? It seems straightforward.
2. Doctors are men.
Is this true? Is this *always* true? It’s not. You just thought laterally.
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