Starting from the assumption that this is learned(“Nurture”):
Generally, through the ambient feeling of your experiences, learning to see yourself as someone who can find solutions vs. learning that other people have the answers. This would be a very tricky edge to ride, since often other people DO have the answer (experience, expertise, whatnot). More on that below, first just a few examples:
-
Imitation approach: I suspect that being exposed to role models who invent and think will help anyone. This might even offset negative reinforcement directed at oneself to some degree (In stories, the hero(scientist etc) can also meet adversity.)
-
Reinforcement-explanation approach: Experience of having your ideas shut down, ignored, etc. Being punished for generating ideas would leave two options: Stop or at least shut up about it. Alternatively the “support” should obviously not look like endless praise, but like interest and questions/suggestions where more information might be found—unless of course something is clearly corect/incorrect, in which case that should be said. Positive reinforcement here would have to aim at the process of investigation—and getting closer. No meaningless fetishizing of the search.
-
Never getting anywhere/learned helplessness. Thinking is hard, aandhaving that pay off too rarely (that may differ from person to person) will teach us to avoid the trouble in the future.
Picking up from above: I find that learning something is often more or less tricky, depending on how easy it is to formulate an ideal that can be “blindly followed”. When someone says “just train/read/empathize etc MORE”—implementation may still be difficult, but the mindset is simple. You only need to be a maximizer. When you start adding “don’t be too hard on yourself/don’t overdo it...”—the problem is hidden in the implied but unclear “too much”.
With many activities the solution may be in understanding the goal and the process properly. Sticking with the examples so far:
Training requires rest, nutrition etc to be effective. Treat adhering to the dosage that’s right in your case (you can consult professionals) as part of the discipline, not as breaking the discipline. If you injure yourself, that’s inefficient training. Reading til you damage your eyes, compromise your sleep etc. is not efficient if you actually want to learn. Don’t empathise to the point where you can’t distinguish between other and self. That’s not empathy, that’s confusion.
In such cases it’s “don’t fetishize the process, but remember what you’re trying to accomplish, and redefine your approach such that it implies everything you have to take into consideration”.
This is often tricky, but once done, we can, in principle, max out again, which is cognitively easier.
With regards to problem solving/actually thinking own thoughts I think it’s difficult, because firstly you have to be able to:
recognize what are your own thoughts, or as “your own” as thoughts can ever be.
you have to value having these, although they tend to be “trouble”, at least in the short term—at the same time you can’t allow yourself to fetishize having your own thoughts versus learning from others, if learning from others would be more efficient, so that’s again the issue of “too much”.
not fall into the trap of priding yourself on your thinking “too much”, which is to mean “protect your ideas because they’re yours”—at the same time don’t mistrust thoughts simply because nobody else has them yet.
etc.
It’s the same problems, only as other skills/habits, only seeing the problems is more tricky, and there are no coaches you can rely on to tell you exactly how much of something is too much, and how to redefine your approach. The best I have heard is what I call Eliezers “winning” approach. Ask in every instance how it may be better done, and what is required to MAKE IT HAPPEN vs. going through all the correct motions/procedures.
Asked in this fashion the question of why this skill is rare seems to answer itself. It’s very hard to learn—for more reasons than I named now, of course.
Starting from the assumption that this is an innate ability thing (“Nature”) I can’t see anything beyond “Well, it’s a raw brainpower thing”. This seems anecdotally refusable, so I’m not in this camp. Nonetheless more smarts helps, of course—not least in developing a positive attitude towards problem solvin, but obviously just in terms of “resources”—and maybe if we enhance people’s intelligence we’ll see more problem solvers? I don’t know. I find it hard to see why people wouldn’t just use their greater intelligence to prove they don’t need to change anything, if no “nurture” elements come in and help.
Thank you.
I will follow up on that right away.