From the chapter and lecture materials this week we learned that Inductive reasoning, or induction, is making an infe

From the chapter and lecture materials this week we learned that Inductive reasoning, or induction, is making an inference based on an observation, often of a sample and deduction. You can induce that the soup is tasty if you observe all of your friends consuming it and smiling. Abductive reasoning, or abduction, is making a probable conclusion from what you know. If you see an abandoned bowl of hot soup on the table, you could use abduction to conclude the owner of the soup is likely returning soon. This is similar to System 1 and 2 thinking but through observation. At it’s hear it is an educated 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 conclusion by using knowledge but not experience. – an educated guess based on what you know. Therefore, abduction requires a deep, extensive knowledge base. Where do you get most of your knowledge? From hour 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 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 ALREADY KNOW – OR THINK YOU

For example, I have 10,001 marbles in a bucket. I take 10,000 marbles out of the 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. However, it would be blue. 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.

Take a look at this checkerboard. This is an example of strong inductive reasoning at work. Look at 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 actually checkerboard squares labeled A and B? Well they are. Make a copy of this page and cut out the piece from square A. Move it back to square B. Now move it back. You can do the same thing with piece B. Are you freaking out yet? Yes, they are both the same shade, and they are both dark gray. How is this possible?

There are 3 things going on here:

1. A long time ago, you were born. Soon after you were born, you opened your eyes and 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. Base you 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 say perspective when you opened your eyes; that is, things father away were darker then closer things. You’ve seen that trillions of times, too so you assume square A is being father away. is darker than B.

3. Last, you’re a pattern recognition machine, and you’ve seen this checkerboard pattern many times. 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 the 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.  However, as we saw with the checker board example, strong inductive reasoning can sometimes trick our brains and lead us to form incorrect premises. In Think Smarter, Michael Kallet stated that “it’s not that you don’t want to see; you cannot see it.” This is OLD DOG thinking – where “experience is so strong that you can’t see any other solutions. You have lost the ability think abductively.” You don’t have to look at the problem because you already see or KNOW the answer/solution.

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 figure it out, 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 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 hard truth is, you probably 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; YOU KNOW.

For this discussion you will write a post about an area of your life were Old Dog Thinking could exist. This exercise is important on a professional and personal level as awareness is the key to breaking through automatic barriers to good decision making

Use the discussion prompts below as a guide to making your initial forum post. (Do not repeat the prompts in your posts).

• Discuss a frequent activity where you personally run the risk of being an old dog – where you have so much experience that you’re unlikely to recognize other opportunities. These can be professional processes or parts of your personal life.
• Discuss, in detail, why you are at risk of Old Dog Thinking in this area.
  
• Then, discuss how you are going to guard against this and utilize abduction to combat it.