To me, conceptual thinking is simply the ability to effortlessly walk up and down the ladder of abstraction.
I think a lot of people think that great conceptual thinkers have more abstract thoughts than non-conceptual thinkers. I don’t think this is sufficient. Don’t get me wrong — abstract thought is good, and those able to think abstractly are able to solve problems easier (a lot of the details that are unimportant for the problem go away–many problems, when seen abstractly, also turn into similar problems that are more tractable), learn faster (since they can make deeper connections) and are probably less anxious in life (deeper understanding, no annoying and distracting detail, etc.).
But someone who is just an abstract thinker isn’t actually all that useful. For one, they simply can’t communicate with those who can’t think abstractly — which is the majority of the population. They are also probably unable to turn their thoughts into reality, because, like it or not, reality is concrete and not abstract.
To make their thinking useful, abstract thinkers need to be able to convert something abstract into something concrete, and vice versa. This ability is what I call conceptual thinking. A conceptual thinker starts in the concrete, then walks up the hierarchy of abstractions. At some level they make connections between the abstract representation of the concrete thought and another abstract representation. If need be, they can then walk that abstract thought back into another, very different concrete thought. The idea is that a local search (i.e. making connections) in the abstract space is easier than a local search in the concrete space. And so that person can either communicate more effectively, or solve the problem more effortlessly.
For example, suppose I have to solve a difficult puzzle. If I am a conceptual thinker, I can turn the problem into a more abstract one (recognize it as an instance of a more generic class of problems). The “abstraction tree” is more narrow the higher you go (because each time you walk “up” the hierarchy, you extract an equivalence class–there are fewer equivalence classes than instances those classes represent) so you’re more likely to have seen the more abstract problem before than the specific one. That way, instead of solving hundreds of puzzles in hope that in the future you will encounter one, you really just need to solve one per equivalence class.
I make it all sound so easy. Unfortunately, it’s not. I’ve replaced one ability (the ability to solve a concrete problem) with another (the ability to turn concrete things into abstract things, and vice versa). The latter is a generic ability, which makes it hard. The higher the abstraction tree you go, the harder the walk becomes–which makes sense, because the higher the abstraction tree you are, the fewer equivalence classes there are (so solving problems should be easier–fewer things to compare).
An interesting thought experiment is to take this to its logical extreme — it’s possible to have the ability to walk so far up the abstraction tree that there really is only thing, only one equivalence class. Every thing, every thought, every idea is equivalent to every other thing, thought, and idea. It’s a fascinating concept which I’ll be exploring much more in dedicated posts. Right now though, just think about it.
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Makes perfect sense to me. I like you “abstraction tree”.
I work in the oil industry with subsurface data. This means few control points with lots of geology in between. Consequently, keen observations (paying attention to detail) are essential to building a better mousetrap.
As a geologist, I’m constantly faced with new observations that challenge existing ideas. Years ago, my interpretations of core, would come fast, but I had a terrible time explaining how I arrived at my answer. Now I’ve vastly improved my ability to take the concrete evidence and lead people through the various observations, what they imply and how they are consistent with one another in support of the new working hypothesis. Even then, I loose some and it is frustrating when that happens. It clearly indicates I’ve not done a good enough explanation. Sometimes the communication breakdown centers on too narrow a background. My expertise is in carbonates, a suite of rocks that necessitate and understanding of paleontology and it helps to also integrate ecologic concepts. Few are adequately versed in al three disciplines, something I often forget.
All kinds of thinking are necesar . Conceptual thinking for me is something that breaks all boundaries bethwwen concrete reality and future reality !
[...] This definition from the Eleven Seconds blog: conceptual thinking is simply the ability to effortlessly walk up and down the ladder of [...]
Ok, it’s not a ladder or a tree, your trying to explain conceptual thinking using the Ladder of Inference, your using one style of reasoning to explain another style of reasoning and the result while amusing is completely inaccurate. It’s like your trying to describe an apple by making reference to a banana. They are closely related conceptually because they are both fruit, they both came from flowers, they are both sweet, they are both often eaten with cereal, etc….however, you are never going to get someone to understand what an apple looks like or tastes like by referring to a banana.
It’s a rolodex, the only thing is it’s not organized in any particular order because it doesn’t need to be. we store thousands upon thousands of scenarios in our heads, we don’t do it on purpose, our brains just put it into long term storage. But it’s not like regular long term memory, we don’t actively retain every detail of every scenario. Imagine that you could see all of your mental files which consists of everything you have every seen, heard or read at the same time, there wouldn’t be any need to organize it if you could see it all at the same time. Ok take your sock drawer for example. You only have three pairs of socks, one pair with a red stripe, one pair with a blue stripe, and one pair with a green stripe. Would you need to put your three pairs of socks into an organizational system to keep track of what kind of socks you have? Of course not, you have one pair with a red stripe and one pair with a blue stripe and one pair with a green stripe. You just know it, you hold all three of those variations in your head at the same time, you don’t need a system you simply know what kind of socks you have. We do that on a massively larger scale, but it’s the exact same concept. It’s like the rolodex is compressed like a zip file until a scenario that has significant point matches triggers the uncompressing of the rolodex and then there is like this “ththththththhththt” as the rolodex whirls, if it’s one of the more obscure scenarios it may take our brain a moment to pull the file, but then once we have we begin making a more detailed examination of the real world scenario versus the stored scenario, and even as we are doing it, this real world scenario is being taken down in fine detail to go into the rolodex. A potential conclusion and/or explanation to the observed pattern is extrapolated by using past patterns with high percentages of point matches, anything that doesn’t fit, we investigate, we break the real world scenario down into several miniature scenarios and do another search in the rolodex, when we find a match, we place it next to the real world scenario, next to the miniature scenario inside the real world scenario whole, and if it still matches and makes sense, we leave it there as a potential directional indicator based on where that particular miniature scenario went last time, but we understand that it is only potentially the case. As we do this we break the real world scenario into ever increasingly smaller miniature scenario sections until almost by mitosis, a whole new scenario has been born, but that is actually very rare that a whole new unique scenario is found, 82% of encountered scenarios have been previously recorded as someone one else somewhere else doing the exact same thing. The longer this type of person lives, the higher that percentage gets. Generally when we encounter a scenario that triggers the rolodex, the observed scenario has a 98% point match to a or to a group of previously recorded scenarios. This allows us to quite easily know how the scenario started, why, and where it will go next, we will even have a list of variations that can predict different outcomes to the scenario. Conceptual thinking is a rolodex that our brain can access instantly and all at once.
Oh I forgot to mention, if we encounter a scenario that does not match any stored scenario, meaning there is only a 15% point match or lower then the scenario is simply stored as is on a card that goes into the rolodex, however, it won’t be long before we encounter other scenarios that will match that one and comparitive analyzations are made and stored as well