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On Sat, 8 Jun 2002, Michael Edmiston wrote:
Hugh Haskell said, "I have been in brainstorming sessions where no one was
allowed to criticize any of the ideas proposed, no matter how ridiculous..."
Thanks Hugh, I thought maybe this was a northwest Ohio phenomenon.
Perhaps it's a distortion of this concept: ridicule stifles creativity.
Or this one: a state of "group synergy" can greatly aid creativity.
Two quotes:
"The man who cannot occasionally imagine events and conditions of
existence that are contrary to the causal principle as he knows it will
never enrich his science by the addition of a new idea." - Max Planck
"It is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet
hypothesis every day before breakfast. It keeps him young."
-- Konrad Lorenz
If the goal of a brainstorming session is to originate good ideas which
would otherwise be too crazy to consider, then it might be counter-
productive to pounce on each bad idea as it's offered. But it's also
counterproductive to offer ideas which are not solutions to the problem
being discussed.
You have
confirmed it is wider spread. All the "brainstorming sessions" I've been to
in the last several years have come with these explicit instructions. I
think all the administrators must have gone to the same workshop or read the
same management magazine.
Maybe the participants don't understand that ridicule is merely postponed
until the end? They're supposed to get the ideas flowing, and THEN be
ruthless afterwards.
Here's a widely-quoted piece by Carl Sagan. It applies both to Skeptical
Organizations and to brainstorming sessions.
"It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two
conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are
served up to us and at the same time a great openness to new ideas.
Obviously those two modes of thought are in some tension. But if you are
able to exercise only one of these modes, whichever one it is, you're in
deep trouble."
"If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you. You
never learn anything new. You become a crotchety old person convinced that
nonsense is ruling the world. (There is, of course, much data to support
you.) But every now and then, maybe once in a hundred cases, a new idea
turns out to be on the mark, valid and wonderful. If you are too much in
the habit of being skeptical about everything, you are going to miss or
resent it, and either way you will be standing in the way of understanding
and progress."
"On the other hand, if you are open to the point of gullibility and have
not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish the
useful as from the worthless ones. If all ideas have equal validity then
you are lost, because then, it seems to me, no ideas have any validity at
all."
"Some ideas are better than others. The machinery for distinguishing them
is an essential tool in dealing with the world and especially in dealing
with the future. And it is precisely the mix of these two modes of thought
that is central to the success of science."
"Really good scientists do both. On their own, talking to themselves, they
churn up huge numbers of new ideas and criticize them ruthlessly. Most of
the ideas never make it to the outside world. Only the ideas that pass
through rigorous self-filtration make it out and are criticized by the
rest of the scientific community. It sometimes happens that ideas that are
accepted by everybody turn out to be wrong, or at least partially wrong,
or at least superseded by ideas of greater generality. And, while there
are of course some personal losses -- emotional bonds to the idea that you
yourself played a role inventing -- nevertheless the collective ethic is
that every time such an idea is overthrown and replaced by something
better the enterprise of science has benefited. In science it often
happens that scientists say, "You know that's a really good argument; my
position is mistaken," and then they actually change their minds and you
never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't
happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is
sometimes painful. But it happens every day. 1 cannot recall the last time
something like that has happened in politics or religion. It's very rare
that a senator, say, replies, "That's a good argument. I will now change
by political affiliation." SKEPTICAL INQUIRER, V12 Fall 1987
http://www.positiveatheism.org/writ/saganbur.htm
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William J. Beaty SCIENCE HOBBYIST website
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