28 Abductive Thinking

Warning: This chapter may shake up your world a little bit. You may never look at things the same way again.

An Educated Guess

Have you ever heard of abduction? (It has nothing to do with aliens.) It's an incredibly important kind of thinking but one that school generally doesn't teach. Abductive thinking is a guess. Guessing in critical thinking—how bizarre is that? But when your premise doesn't yield satisfactory solutions, inside or outside of the box, it might be time to look at abductive thinking.

You form abductive conclusions by using knowledge but not experience. It's an educated guess based on what you know. Therefore, abduction requires a deep, extensive knowledge base. Abduction supports Sir Francis Bacon's view that “Knowledge is power.” Knowledge gives you choices. Where do you get most of your knowledge? From your experience. The more experience you have, the more knowledge you have.

As you can see, there's somewhat of a paradox to abductive thinking. You need an extensive base of knowledge to abduct (guess). More experience gives you more knowledge, but the more experience you have, the stronger your inductive reasoning—making it less likely that you'll guess, because you know already. For example, if I take 10,000 marbles out of a bucket, and all 10,000 are red, what will be the color of the next marble I take out of the bucket? Your 10,000 experiences make your premise very strong, so you would say “red” and be willing to wager on it. Of course, it could be blue; but there's a very low probability of that. The point is that you're not going to guess, because your premise is so strong that you think you know and that there is no value to guessing.

Figure 28.1 is an amazing, thought-altering illustration of a premise so strong that you'll completely lose the ability to consider any other possible answer. Take a look at the checkerboard illustration, and describe the shading for the squares labeled A and B. Dark gray and light gray, right? What if I told you they were identical shades of gray—no, not the letters, the actual checkerboard squares labeled A and B? Well, they are. Make a copy of this page, and cut out a piece from square A. Now move that piece to square B. Now move it back. Do the same thing with piece B. Cut it out, move it to A, and then move it back. Are you freaking out yet? Yes, they are both the same shade, and they are both dark gray. How is this possible?

There are three things going on here:

1. A long time ago, you were born. Soon after you were born, you opened your eyes and you saw shadows. Where there are light and objects, there are shadows. There are shadows all around you, and you've seen them trillions and trillions of times. Based on your experience with shadows, you know things in shadows are really lighter than they appear, so your brain assumes B is lighter.
2. You also saw perspective when you opened your eyes; that is, things farther away were darker than closer things. You've seen that trillions of times, too, so you assume square A, being farther away, is darker than B.
3. Last, you're a pattern recognition machine, and you've seen this checkerboard pattern many times. We've seen in Chapter 1 how our mind assumes, distorts, and discards things so that what we experience fits a pattern.

Therefore, you have an unbelievable amount of experience with shadows, perspective, and patterns. Your inductive reasoning is so incredibly strong here that your brain says, “Eyes, you must be having a really bad day, because you are sending me information that makes no sense, so I will change it.” Your brain alters what the eyes see and makes it wrong. Squares A and B are the same shade of gray, yet because of an overwhelmingly strong premise, your brain changes the shades to match its conclusion and completely ignores evidence to the contrary. There is no consideration that another possibility could exist.

Old Dog Thinking

Your inductive reasoning in the preceding example is so incredibly strong that there is no opportunity or capability to guess another outcome. You've heard the expression “You can't teach an old dog new tricks.” Usually this refers to someone who has been in the same job for a long time, when his or her response to having to learn something new is “Hey, I've been doing this for 30 years. I know how to get this done.” However, in the checkerboard example, it's not that you don't want to see it; you cannot see it. We call that old dog thinking—where your experience is so strong that you can't see any other solutions. You lose the ability to abduct because there's no need to guess, because you know.

The real world isn't quite like the checkerboard example. You have experiences from your job but not trillions of them. The difference is that although your very strong premise prevents you from seeing another solution, your reaction when someone points out something new to you is often, “Ah, of course, why didn't I think of that?” The truth is, you would have never thought of it. Your inductive reasoning is too strong.

Your experience is valuable, so don't discard it. Just know that it means you are less likely to guess at another solution because there's no need to guess; you know.

Knowledge with No Experience

Abductive thinking requires knowledge but only works when there isn't much experience. How do you do that? There are two ways:

• If you're trying to solve a problem but have no experience with it, it's easy to abduct. You have to gain knowledge, so you read, ask questions, and research—all of which allow you to learn despite your lack of experience. At some point, you've gained enough knowledge to say, “I think I know what's going on here, and based on what I've read, the solution is this.” For example, the Internet gives people access to a tremendous amount of information in the medical field. If you have a pain somewhere in your body, you can use the Internet to get all kinds of information about pains and other symptoms. (Note: Not everything you read on medical websites is credible.) You can accumulate an incredible amount of medical knowledge just by reading. However, you have no experience, so you guess, or self-diagnose, your problem—which can lead to some very bad conclusions and a great deal of anxiety. However, your guess might be spot-on and different from what someone with experience might conclude.
• If you have experience in the subject matter, then you'll need to team up with someone knowledgeable who doesn't have very much experience. Your experience will make your inductive reasoning strong, but the person you teamed with will have to come to conclusions based on knowledge and guesses. You'll be surprised how many times you utter, “That's a great idea. I would not have thought of that.”

Old Dog Thinking Cures

What's the cure for old dog thinking? There are a few things you can do:

• You can't ask yourself in what ways are you an old dog, because you can't see it. However, you can ask yourself, “Where do I run the risk of being an old dog?” The following was a wake-up call for me. I was eating in a restaurant with my family, and I observed another family with two middle school–aged children enter and sit at a table near us. The two children were using their phones, and after a few minutes it became obvious to me they were texting each other, despite sitting across the table from each other. I said to my daughter, “Look at that, they can't even have a conversation with each other; they have to text.” My daughter turned to me and said, “Dad, they're having a private conversation.” Hmm—they were talking about something they didn't want their parents to hear. Rudeness aside, I thought that was amazing; I'd never thought of using phones that way. Because of that evening, I thought about my very technical background and asked myself: Where do I run the risk of being an old dog with respect to technology? For me, it is being unable to recognize a new world of communication, be it private, public, or even with our HeadScratchers training. Using texting, Facebook, and Twitter in training? I'm not there yet, but I'm sure there's a use for them. When the time comes, I'll need to team up with a Generation X, Y, or Z person for help, because I won't see it.
• You can team up with a knowledgeable person who has less experience than you. He or she will ask you the seemingly stupid question you'll never ask because you know better. He or she will try something because he or she doesn't know it won't work—and maybe it'll actually work this time. Watch kids build something. They don't have much experience in materials, engineering, or physics, or years and years of experiencing the mistakes you have.

  For several years, I was a coach with the Destination Imagination organization (www.idodi.org) for a team of seven kids of elementary and middle school age. The teams receive huge challenges—some technical, some theatrical, and some a mixture—and compete to see whom the judges deem best. One year, the team members chose a difficult technical challenge, and came up with a few solution designs. I said to myself, “Oh, that's just never going to work.” However, as a coach in this organization, you aren't allowed to help the team (which is good practice for being a thinking coach). I couldn't tell the team it was a bad idea; they'd have to figure that out it for themselves. They discovered a few things that didn't work, and I of course thought, “I knew that wouldn't work.” Then they tried one idea I was certain would fail, and it worked. I was amazed. Based on my experience with materials, building, weights, and kids' talents (or lack thereof), I was positive their design couldn't be successful; I would have never tried it. The lesson here is, ask someone with less experience than you to help, watch, make suggestions, and ask stupid questions. One of those questions might not be stupid and might generate an idea or solution you never would have imagined.

  Some of my clients have a great process for fighting old dog thinking. When they are working on a technical problem to solve, they put their very experienced people in a room with some junior folks. For the first 30 minutes or so, only the junior people can ask questions. You have to make it very safe for them to ask loads of stupid questions. Every so often, they'll ask a question that will prompt one of the senior folks to follow with, “Why did you ask that question?” When the junior person explains, the response from the senior people is sometimes, “Wow, that's a great idea. I would have never thought of that,” and that's precisely the point.

• Watch out for expressions such as “That's a no-brainer” or “It's obvious.” Something is obvious when there is strong inductive thinking, and you have a strong premise. It's a no-brainer if you now have to do something you've done before a hundred times with the same result. You've done it so much; why think of anything else? Although this works often, you've halted abductive thinking at the expense of new ideas.

Getting Started with Abductive Thinking

Here are a few times to employ abductive thinking techniques:

• When you have a room filled with experienced senior people: You'll have great experiences and many solutions that leverage that experience; but it's all old dog thinking. It's time to ask the question “Where do we run the risk of being an old dog?” (Take care asking this question because some may take offense because of the traditional definition of old dog. Perhaps read them this chapter first.) Bring some junior people into the room, and make it safe for them to ask stupid questions—because some of the questions might be terrific.
• When you hear, “It's obvious”: Understand the experience that made this conclusion so obvious. Ask what else is possible if the obvious solution were not available.
• When you have no experience at all: You have no choice but to gain knowledge and guess a solution. Perhaps your kids ask you to help them plant a vegetable garden, but you grew up downtown in a large city neighborhood, and the closest to a garden you've ever been was a flower shop. Do some reading, and then guess at solutions for the garden. You might also want to check with someone with experience. Although some of your guesses might be brilliant, some will be stupid and your kids might not be as patient as your coworkers.
• When existing solutions no longer work: It's then time to discard experience and start over from your knowledge outside of that experience. Perhaps you're in sales, and you've spent 20 years successfully closing deals face to face, with in-store customers. People are using the Internet to buy differently now. You no longer get to shake their hands, so—what next?