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from the it's-harder-to-reverse-engineer-someone-else's-work-than-the-new-stuff-we-just-came-up-with dept.
Here's Why Our Brains Solve Problems by Adding Things, Not Removing:
Have you ever noticed how we usually try and solve problems by adding more, rather than taking away? More meetings, more forms, more buttons, more shelves, more systems, more code, and so on. Now scientists think they might know the reason why.
A study of 1,585 people across 8 different experiments showed that our brains tend to default to addition rather than subtraction when it comes to finding solutions – in many cases, it seems we just don't consider the strategy of taking something away at all.
The researchers found that this preference for adding was noticeable in three scenarios in particular: when people were under higher cognitive load, when there was less time to consider the other options, and when volunteers didn't get a specific reminder that subtracting was an option.
"It happens in engineering design, which is my main interest," says engineer Leidy Klotz, from the University of Virginia. "But it also happens in writing, cooking, and everything else – just think about your own work and you will see it."
"The first thing that comes to our minds is, what can we add to make it better? Our paper shows we do this to our detriment, even when the only right answer is to subtract. Even with financial incentive, we still don't think to take away."
[...] "The more often people rely on additive strategies, the more cognitively accessible they become," says psychologist Gabrielle Adams, from the University of Virginia.
"Over time, the habit of looking for additive ideas may get stronger and stronger, and in the long run, we end up missing out on many opportunities to improve the world by subtraction."
The research has been published in Nature.
Journal Reference:
Gabrielle S. Adams, Benjamin A. Converse, Andrew H. Hales, et al. People systematically overlook subtractive changes, Nature (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03380-y)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by istartedi on Monday April 12 2021, @03:20PM (9 children)
One of these things is not like the other. You can easily remove poor prose. You can't remove salt from soup, so maybe you add water and more ingredients. Then you add more salt if you over-did that, because while water will be removed as the soup cooks, it might take more time than you want.
If you find that your several quarts of soup progresses to several gallons, perhaps cooking is not your bag.
Anyway, maybe we're biased towards addition because there have historically been a lot more cooks than writers.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @03:30PM (3 children)
> there have historically been a lot more cooks than writers.
Too many cooks spoiled the hogwash?
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Monday April 12 2021, @03:54PM (2 children)
Historical literacy rates in Europe [ourworldindata.org]. Now do you want to come at me for being Eurocentric? Care to gamble on me finding data for other regions?
Now, how many of those people do you think were cooking? Do we even need to bother researching that?
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @04:00PM (1 child)
Someone is sensitive today, come at the joke. [thefreedictionary.com]
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Monday April 12 2021, @04:29PM
If you can actually get a +Funny mod for that, I'll have to re-evaluate; but it didn't look like you were trying to be funny.
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(Score: 5, Funny) by JoeMerchant on Monday April 12 2021, @03:34PM (1 child)
Please forgive the long letter; I didn’t have time to write a short one.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @09:05PM
Long letters...
When I was in college, mom wrote me a note that she would really enjoy a nice long letter.
As if term papers were not time consuming enough.
But I complied. She got a really long letter.
Written on a roll of adding machine tape.
But she was still disappointed.
It was only a one liner.
But it was long.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @04:03PM (2 children)
Another counter example is modern corporate management.
Problem: profits are too small
Solution: subtract costs subtract people. Never "add new products" or "make better stuff" or "sell more"
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DannyB on Monday April 12 2021, @04:36PM (1 child)
They call it "cutting the fat". But if that were the case, wouldn't they be starting at the top?
The anti vax hysteria didn't stop, it just died down.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 13 2021, @12:14AM
As my Uncle used to say, "If you want to cut the fat, why not start with the fat cats?"