Those Eureka Moments 209
Phoe6 writes "If you're one of those insufferable people who can finish the Saturday New York Times crossword puzzle, you probably have a gift for insight. The puzzles always have an underlying hint to solving them, but on Saturdays that clue is insanely obtuse. If you had all day, you could try a zillion different combinations and eventually figure it out. But with insight, you'd experience the usual clueless confusion, until--voilà--the fog clears and you get the clue, which suddenly seems obvious. The sudden flash of insight that precedes such "Aha!" moments is characteristic of many types of cognitive processes besides problem-solving, including memory retrieval, language comprehension, and various forms of creativity. Although different problem-solving strategies share many common attributes, insight-derived solutions appear to be unique in several ways. PLoS Biology explains the Neural Basis of Solving Problems with Insight.
The Complete Research Article is here."
JUMBLE (Score:1, Funny)
Eureka is overrated (Score:5, Informative)
-Isaac Asimov.
Re:Eureka is overrated (Score:5, Interesting)
In college, I discovered that math was in reality very different from what I'd expected. The Aha! was simply not there. It was a different beast altogether. Everything went in several incremental steps rather than one flash of insight. It required vertical rather than lateral thinking. Fortunately math wasn't my major, and I eventually dropped out.
Back to what you said, its perfectly true of science, but this article is about problem solving. Eureka doesn't herald new discoveries, but it sure makes the world go round, helping people find non-obvious solutions to tricky little everyday problems.
Plenty of Aha! in math (Score:5, Insightful)
Differentiation (basic calculus) is a grind. You learn a few simple rules and apply them. Integration, beyond the most basic, is all eureka. You learn a few rules, but they all require insight into how to rearrange the thing you're integrating so it fits a pattern.
My favorite classes were about proofs. A proof is all eureka. A proof is a series of simple, basic steps that takes you from the given to the thing you're trying to prove. However, finding which basic steps go together to get what you want is all eureka. Many times in graduate level math courses I would work on a problem until midnight, go to sleep, wake up at 3am with the solution to the problem, write it down, & finish the problem in the morning. The interesting thing to me about proofs is that virtually always the way to prove the answer you want is to prove something much, much more powerful, of which the answer you want is a minor subset. It's as if your engineering teacher tells you to design a power source that can provide 1.5 volts for a day, and the easiest way you can find to do it is to build a Mr. Fusion. For example, to prove that all groups with 113 members are really the same group with different names for the elements, the easiest way is to prove that all groups with a prime number of elements hold that quality.
Re:Plenty of Aha! in math (Score:2)
Re:Plenty of Aha! in math (Score:2)
Re:Eureka is overrated (Score:2, Insightful)
From the original article: "Illustrating the strong emotional response elicited by such a sudden insight, Archimedes is said to have run home from the baths in euphoric glee..."
I think this is one of the places our education system is missing a bet. I have never met a person who does not get that rush of joy from solving a problem. If our education process stressed problem solving instead of rote memorization, we would have a population addicted to learning.
Re:Eureka is overrated (Score:3, Insightful)
With college math, I had the same disenchantment as you. There are some courses that are more insight-y (eg. analysis) and less so (eg. partial differential equations). But this is not a reason to lose heart. You cannot apply insight if you have not first fully grokked the available tools. Part of training for IMO geometry problems is learning dozens of theorems and tidbits of information (eg. incircle, circumcircle, triangle equalities, sin & cos formulae,
it's not "that's funny" either (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Eureka is overrated (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Eureka is overrated (Score:3, Funny)
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I've found it!), but 'That's funny...'
True story:
A professor narrates the Archimedes-bathtub incident to a class of freshman engineers. Concludes with "Eureka! Eureka!" and after a pause, asks his class if anyone knows what it means.
Guy in the back row yells out "I'm naked! I'm naked!".
Re:Eureka is overrated (Score:2)
Actually, Eureka means "OMG!!! That bathwater is HOT!!!"
thinking = eyeball for concepts (Score:2)
"Just as the eye percieves colours and the ear sounds,
so thinking percieves ideas; it is an organ of perception. "
(Goethean Science [elib.com])
| THE SUDDEN FLASH OF INSIGHT OCCURS WHEN solvers engage distinct
| neural and cognitive processes that allow them to see connections
| that previously eluded them.
maybe its the other way around -- perhaps the distinct neural
processes occur when one has the flash of insight.
(but anyone who starts with the kantian presuppositions
must reject that idea).
regards,
john [earthlink.net]
That's my take, too. (Score:2)
| neural and cognitive processes that allow them to see connections
| that previously eluded them.
maybe its the other way around -- perhaps the distinct neural
processes occur when one has the flash of insight.
That's my take, too. My impression is that the processing takes place for some time (and the mechanism is not wired for introspection of its operation, so you're largely unaware of it), producing one type of activity. Then, if a solut
Re:On the other hand, Edison used (Score:2)
Re: tesla on edison (Score:4, Insightful)
with the diligence of the bee to examine straw after straw until he found
the object of his search.
I was a sorry witness of such doings, knowing that a little theory
and calculation would have saved him ninety per cent of his labour. "
(Nikola Tesla, New York Times, October 19, 1931)
like Star Trek. (Score:2, Insightful)
about in the very last episode "All Good Things...". When we learn something, we open ourselves up for more.
Someday hopefully we will learn everything.
Re:like Star Trek. (Score:3, Insightful)
Honestly though, wouldn't that be boring?
Taking a break (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Taking a break (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Taking a break (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Taking a break (Score:2)
Re:Taking a break (Score:4, Funny)
If it doesn't work, then the people who come over to see why you are talking to yourself may be able to help.
Re:Taking a break (Score:2)
There is an AI (Artificial Intelligence) issue that is similar. There are some kinds of algorithms that search for the correct answer by picking a point, checking it, and then jumping to a different point. They can get stuck a
Re: Taking a break (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course, it does help to have someone to send email to. Right now I'm working on a piece of software with one other author; we tend to code separately, but do most of our design by email -- this not only forces us to get things clear in our heads, but the input from someone else can remind you of factors you'd forgotten, or lead you to simpler and/or more elegant solutions.
Re: Taking a break (Score:2)
Re:Taking a break (Score:4, Interesting)
If I only I had a duck, then I wouldn't have to endure my house-mate jeering at me when he finds a stupid mistake in 2 minutes when I've been stuck for hours...
I wonder if it would work with a sock-puppet...
Re:Taking a break (Score:2)
I've thought about it, but my co-workers already think I'm borderline insane.
Re:Taking a break (Score:2)
Re:Taking a break (Score:2)
I think it happens if you have a problem halfway through a piece of code, but you only 'back-think' a few steps. When you start to explain it to a colleague, your brain is forced to go back to step one. There's been a number of times I've gone over to a colleague and just said, "Hi, uh, oh, never mind, thanks", and then walked away again.
The best way to learn is to teach (Score:2)
I think explaining your work is similar: to explain it, you have to start with the fundamentals which you normally wouldn't revisit when trying to solve a higher problem.
Re:Taking a break (Score:2)
While you are taking a break from conscious awareness of the problem, processing continues in localized regions of neurons. This is possible when you have already parsed the problem into distinct components, for example, when the crossword clue is:
Long serving English Monarch, 19th century
_ _ C _ _ R _ A
you mentally establish two threads. The first thread searches your database of English monarchs, isolating values that conform with "long serving 19th Century". Each one of these results (a noun)
For nerds, this is not news. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:For nerds, this is not news. (Score:2)
Re:For nerds, this is not news. (Score:2)
strong emotional response (Score:5, Funny)
Illustrating the strong emotional response elicited by such a sudden insight, Archimedes is said to have run home from the baths in euphoric glee--without his clothes.
But really, haven't we all done this at one time or another?
Saturday puzzle (Score:4, Insightful)
Saturday NYT puzzles frequently don't have themes.. That usually makes them harder.
Re:Saturday puzzle, or "Shortz is shit" (Score:2, Interesting)
His predecessors at the Times wrote charming, witty and fun puzzles, filled with exactly what this article is about: eureka moments, moments of insight because of the double entendres or humorous literary references, etc.
And, Will Shortz is equally horrible on NPR. He just doesn't understand "fun": anagrams are not
Re:Saturday puzzle, or "Shortz is shit" (Score:2)
Re:Saturday puzzle, or "Shortz is shit" (Score:2)
I have to agree with you on this one. Did you do the April 1 puzzle this year?
Certainly not every puzzle is going to be a work of art, but as far as crosswords in the US go I'd have to rank the NYT at or near the top of the list.
Re:Saturday puzzle, or "Shortz is shit" (Score:2)
where there is a trick to how certain boxes can be filled in, for example a single box meaning 'ying' horizontally and 'yang' vertically
Awesome that you should mention this. The two authors of this puzzle are/w
Re:Saturday puzzle, or "Shortz is shit" (Score:2)
I think this is it... (Score:2, Insightful)
apple, the answer is apple. (Score:5, Insightful)
Eureka! ... or at least you did (Score:2)
Are you sure? (Score:2)
Think about it -- piney, crabby, saucy!
Oooh - saucy...
And RMS *of course* is 100% sure the answer is "GNU/" but I still like mine better.
Re:apple, the answer is apple. (Score:2)
how did you work it out?
It only took me about 2 seconds to get the answer, but I would be at a loss to try and say how I did it, or how to explain to someone else how they could work it out in a similar timeframe.
If I were writing a computer program, I would take a dictionary, look for words matching "pine(.*)", then see if "sauce\1" or "\1sauce" and "crab\1" or "\1crab" were also in the dictionary.
However it just doesn't seem that this is the way that my brain worked it out.
How about foreigners (Score:2)
I was thinking about the fact that I couldn't come up with the answer to this particular riddle, and I guess that is because english is only my second language (I am quite good at solving swedish crosswords, for example). What I wonder is. would the anterior superior temporal gyrus (aSTG) be involved in the same way, even for me - solving a problem in a non-native language?
Re:I think this is it... (Score:2)
Thank goodness Slashdot is here to give me the answers. Although, I'll have to check back later since I am not convinced that either "fish" or "white" is the correct answer. I don't think many people have heard of Pine-fish or white crabs.
Re:I think this is it... (Score:2)
Oh wait, this is slashdot, not Fark...
EEG? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:EEG? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:EEG? (Score:2)
Re:EEG? (Score:2, Informative)
Excellent book with examples (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry for the Amazon link, but it was easy to find there. Strangely, going through this book, especially if you don't resort to the hintws and answers in the back, helps develop just the sort of insight mentioned.
As always, your mileage may vary.
Re:Excellent book with examples (Score:2)
Re:Excellent book with examples (Score:2)
Anyway, even though Martin Gardber is a pompous fool, that book is very good when we get past his condescendence.
Difficult study (Score:4, Interesting)
Hopefully the real experiment is more bulletproof than this fluff piece suggests.
Re:Difficult study (Score:2)
Re:Difficult study (Score:3, Informative)
Perhaps the news reporting in the first link qualifies as a "fluff peice", however you could have simply followed the second link - the Complete Research Article. [plosbiology.org] - to see that it was quality science and that your critisism were misplaced.
severe methodological issues... they could be picking up any of a variety of mental processes that have nothing to do with the insight experience. Most obviously, it could merely be the in
Re:Difficult study (Score:2)
Sorry I didn't read the article, but I've got alot to do in a given day
An interesting point (Score:2, Interesting)
Author Site (Score:3, Informative)
Quantum Consciousness (Score:2)
-JT
Re:Quantum Consciousness (Score:2)
Our brain is perfectly equipped for dealing with more than one possibility at a time. It's a massive parallel
Re:Quantum Consciousness (Score:2)
Not so.
The concious mind is well-equipped to deal with multiple outcomes from unmeasured states. Ever watch someone make fun of an "uneducated" person not wanting to jinx a piece of mail?
And generally the most literate people are the ones least likely to engage in parallel thinking. (Grumbles the frustrated science fiction writer wannabee who has a story stuck in his head, but he can't tell it all at once.)
Make some arbitrary cho
Re:Quantum Consciousness (Score:2)
However, the concious mind can only deal with one possibilty at a time.
I would say that one of the concious mind's essential functions is to narrow things down to one possibility at a time. It is the decision maker that collapses the possibilities thrown up by the rest of the brain into one fixed state. There's no reason to believe it, but the parallel to the original posters mention of quantum conciousness is a nice one.
Our entire liv
What is a non-insightful answer? (Score:3, Insightful)
Subjects pressed a button to indicate whether they had solved the problem using insight, which they had been told leads to an Aha! experience characterized by suddenness and obviousness.
So really, how would one solve a word problem without insight? Did any of the participants solve it by writing a dictionary searching algorithm into their PDA? Did they open a dictionary and start checking answers systematically? ("Bart, Cart, Dart, Eart... Nope, can't see any problem with that!")
In my own experience it just seems like it's the obscurity of the answer that makes it seem insightful or not. If I had read the three words and instantly known the answer I don't think I would have felt the Aha! moment that I felt after staring at it for a minute. So am I less insightful if I solve it faster?
1 Across : sudden, intuitive realization (8) (Score:3, Insightful)
Epiphany
One would have thought one with a decent vocabulary would have known the word for it rather than 'a eureka moment'.
Re:1 Across : sudden, intuitive realization (8) (Score:2, Funny)
Theese guys are running out of studies to do.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Akerue Moments (Score:5, Funny)
I often have Akerue! moments.
Those are when you knew something, but suddenly, it's gone, and you can't for the life of you remember. I hate those.
Re:Akerue Moments (Score:3, Funny)
Gesundheit.
Re:Akerue Moments (Score:2)
(v1) to dawn; to become daylight [monash.edu.au]
Not to far from the feeling of that 'eureka' moment at all.
Incubation and the 3 Bs (Score:5, Interesting)
Next, an incubation period, where you go and do something else, or stare into space and 'woolgather,' that fuzzy day-dream-like state in which you actually start organising thoughts, although it may not feel like it. The three Bs come into play here- bed, bath, and bus- the three likeliest placest to have a eureka moment, because those are incubatory periods, in which your brain starts approaching the puzzle from different angles.
There are other good places- i find washing dishes helps, it's an activity that lets my mind wander and it's always been a quiet spot in the day after dinner. I know someone who goes for long walks.
Sleeping on a problem really does help, partly because the brain trains during sleep, and you'll wake up better at the problem-solving activities because your brain has run through them in sleep. It may not solve abstract problems, but it at least helps with concrete skills, so who's to say it doesn't help with abstract thinking abilities as well?
Beyond that, all i can think is... what kind of eureka moment results in... an article about eureka moments??
I have most of those moments in the shower.. (Score:2, Funny)
In fact, I am thinking of moving my office.
Re:I have most of those moments in the shower.. (Score:2)
So what's the connection? (Score:2, Interesting)
Look and see: (Score:2)
nut crab
nut sauce
I'm sure this isn't the "correct" answer, since nut crabs arn't extraordinarily well known. But it is the first answer I thought of. There's another answer that also grows on trees. How many answers can we come up with?
In the shower (Score:3, Interesting)
This is where I solve the really tough problems.
The simple stuff is what I do every day. The tougher problems like the large scale designs and unique solutions for unique problems rarely get solved while I am at work.
I think about the big problems for hours or days and the solution finally comes to me.
The only downside of solving problems in the shower, is that I am doing it on my time and the boss doesn't pay me for that.
That is why I NEVER feel guilty about slahdotting at work.
I live the greatest adventure anyone could wish for. -Tosk the Hunted
Anyone can do it., In fact, ... (Score:2, Funny)
cragen
Different View of Insight (Score:3, Informative)
We are given three discrete states of cognition by nature:
Sleeping so deeply there are no dreams (delta or deeper)
Sleeping with dreams (alpha, beta state)
Eyes-open sleep (ordinary waking)
But we can have several others:
Observation and info-gathering (adult ego-state)
Understanding and compassion (unnamed by science)
Insight (unnamed by science)
Oneness with God
The fourth and later stages of consciousness usually are unpredictable and come and go by mood.
The first three stages are culturally-defined and mandated, and the later stages are spoken of in metaphor by mystics, as language is incompetent to describe them.
Eastern religious practices (yoga, zen, t'ai chi) are curricula for attaining these states.
In Christianity, Insight is called "The Holy Spirit (or Ghost)." Anyone who has had an insight can remember wanting to sing, dance, shout, tell the world -- this is a religious experience that even scientists can share.
In fact, science has another vector of similarity with religions: The scientific method (do it and see what happens) is exactly as useful as faith (I'll do it because I know God wants it done.)
--
We are not humans in search of the spiritual, we are spirits out to experience the truly human.
The word is... (Score:3, Informative)
n. pl. epiphanies
A comprehension or perception of reality by means of a sudden intuitive realization: "I experienced an epiphany, a spiritual flash that would change the way I viewed myself" (Frank Maier).
Where's Waldo (Score:4, Interesting)
For example, people who do well on Where's Waldo-type problems will tend to do well on seemingly unrelated insight problems (like NYTimes crossword puzzles
This is also true for people who are really good at flipping the Necker cube [wikipedia.org].
If anyone is interested, this is from two studies done by Schooler in the 1990's. The article here actually references those two:
Schooler JW, Melcher J (1997) The ineffability of insight. In: Smith SM, Ward TB, Finke RA, editors. The creative cognition approach. Cambridge (Mass.): MIT Press. 97-133.
Schooler JW, Ohlsson S, Brooks K (1993) Thoughts beyond words: When language overshadows insight. J Exp Psychol Gen 122: 166-183. Find this article online
maybe I'm nuts but... (Score:2, Insightful)
Also, tv doesn't help, neither do all those bad things that all the religions talk about, they seem to diminish the trust that the insightful part of you has in your concious.
Moo (Score:2)
Re:Superior attitude (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Superior attitude (Score:4, Insightful)
I disagree. Look at how some people find picking up new languages (I'm not talking computer languages, although the same principles probably apply) really easy, and other people of similar apparent intelligence seem to have a complete inability do this.
It must be down to differences in thinking. During my bike ride across France [plus.com], I found that after only a couple of days of "immersion", I was thinking and dreaming in French, despite having a relatively limited knowledge of the language. I'm not claiming to be elitist (should that be 31337157 round these parts?), but I'm sure that some people clearly have a particular gifting for languages.
Languages (Score:2)
I took a "Psych of Language Acquisition" course in college, back in the '60s - while trying to complete a language distribution requirement, hoping it would give me pointers. Instead it hexed me.
The theory at the time was that there were certain "critical periods" in brain development, for different aspects of language acquisition (
Re:Superior attitude (Score:5, Insightful)
Potential vs. actual ability (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Superior attitude (Score:2)
Re:Superior attitude (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hm (Score:2)
Being someone who finds crossword puzzles hoplessly boring and one who ignores them religiously, I found the story pretty good. This actually is a important step in understanding the computational network of the brain and thus design structures for computers.
Projects like the DARPA Grand Challenge and others of great importance to us all rely on the dream that we will come up with "Artificial Intelligence" some day. The failures in such projects arise from their failure to reverse engineer the already we
Re:Insight, no.... Programming Yes (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Insight, no.... Programming Yes (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Insight, no.... Programming Yes (Score:4, Interesting)
I firmly believe that insight is one of the more wonderful gifts that one can have and something that makes human beings extremely powerful. for example apocryphal or not, the falling apple that lead to gravity or the tram travelling away from the clock on the station building for time dilation are two examples of moments that depend on extraordinary insight.
I think that insight represents our ability to see abstract patterns in things and recognise those patterns in many forms. One of my favourite examples is the proof that a complex number (rcis[theta])^n can be expressed as r^ncisn[theta] in cis notation the proof is complex and nasty but just the simple insight that it can be expressed as (re^i[theta])^n makes the proof trivial. Recognise the pattern and proceed with the discovery.
Cryptic crosswords (Score:2)
For the uninitiated, here's [guardian.co.uk] an excellent article from the Guardian describing what it's all about.
The Guardian also had an article on how these things seem to be popular only in cricket-playing parts of the world (Britain, Australia/New Zealand, the Indian subcontinent, the Caribbean, South Africa). Both pastimes take forever to complete
Re:Insight, no.... Programming Yes (Score:3, Informative)
While I know some of the folks who create the NYTimes Crosswords (and other published puzzles) and have spoken with Will Shortz on occasion, I do know that there are plenty of
pwned (Score:2)
Pineapple [reference.com]
Applesauce [reference.com]
Those are all compound words according to reference.com, personally I think "apple sauce" should be two words, but what do I know?
What are:
pine white or white pine?
crab white or white crab?
White sauce I can see...but unless you're describing a pine and a crab as being white, they're meaningless, you may as well replace white with any colour. Unless I'm missing something...