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Re:Do We Worship Complexity? by phkahler on Tuesday October 16, 2018 @05:31PM (#18233483)
When I was in college one of the candidates for some open position in the engineering school gave an open talk which I attended. He had this whole thing where he researched the right/left brain tendencies of engineering students. He actually had two axis on his pictures but I don't recall what the other axis was so lets keep to the the left/right (logical/creative) axis. He said most students entering engineering were more left brained. He also said retesting people exiting engineering has shifted. Not that the right brains dropped out, but that the same students tested more to the left after an engineering education.

It wasn't clear if that was a shift in thinking or just improving ones skills at a particular way of thinking. In other words, no evidence of any loss just a shift in score on a right/left test. The other notable thing he said is that the right brained people who complete an engineering degree were rather likely to spend some time working in the field and then just change to something completely different.

I remember this well because I tested as a dominant right-brain thinker and have always had this odd feeling that I might want to just stop and do something completely different. Fortunately I've been able to find ways to use creativity in engineering :-)

Re:Do We Worship Complexity? by otabdeveloper2 on Wednesday October 17, 2018 @01:42AM (#18236391)
> left/right (logical/creative) axis

The logical/creative dichotomy is bullshit based on fake science.

In reality the left brain (dominant for most people) prefers sequential, step-by-step thinking, while the right brain prefers simultaneous and spatial thinking.

Math professionals are actually biased towards right brain people. (It's hard to get anywhere in real math using step-by-step algorithms.)

Re:Do We Worship Complexity? by phkahler on Wednesday October 17, 2018 @06:57AM (#18237861)
>> The logical/creative dichotomy is bullshit based on fake science.

>> In reality the left brain (dominant for most people) prefers sequential, step-by-step thinking, while the right brain prefers simultaneous and spatial thinking.

I've never seen anyone make such a direct contradiction so clearly ;-) You define left-brain thinking the same way the "bullshit" does, and then you define the right brain in a way that reflects creativity - at least to me.

Re:Do We Worship Complexity? by deltron3030 on Wednesday October 17, 2018 @05:14AM (#18237418)
>simultaneous and spatial thinking

But can it really be simultaneous (at the same time)? I mean there's still a "micro sequence" involved. it seems that the real skill here is context switching, pattern recognition and applying patterns to different contexts.

Re:Do We Worship Complexity? by Double_a_92 on Wednesday October 17, 2018 @06:21AM (#18237710)
The brain can think about things without you "hearing" it. Then it just mashes everything togheter in a coherent result that you can actively think about.

When I have to think about something hard I try to do it without words in my mind. I believe this makes it easier for the brain to subconsciously work on those, without having to "translate" it first.

However I still use "pictures" in my mind. I wonder if it's possible to actively think about something without using things linked to our physical senses (hearing, seeing, touch,..).

Re:Do We Worship Complexity? by deltron3030 on Wednesday October 17, 2018 @10:09AM (#18239158)
>The brain can think about things without you "hearing" it. Then it just mashes everything togheter in a coherent result that you can actively think about.

Sounds like intuition based on experience, where a new situation is compared against your experience, with the brain filling in the gaps.

>When I have to think about something hard I try to do it without words in my mind.

Hard in the sense of difficult to solve and unfamiliar, or in the sense of the level of focus or concentration?

Re:Do We Worship Complexity? by otabdeveloper2 on Wednesday October 17, 2018 @03:57PM (#18243127)
Probably you're right, yeah.

For example, I know a heavily right-brained person, and when he reads a book, instead of the intuitive sequential pattern (even page-odd page-even-odd-even-odd) he may read it in a zig-zag (even-even-odd-odd-even-even).

The analogy is synchronous processing (left brain) vs multithreaded (right brain).

On the other hand, right-brained people seem to have problems doing 'obvious' things like finishing chores in order, telling left from right or positioning something on a blank page.

Re:Do We Worship Complexity? by Finch2193 on Tuesday October 16, 2018 @10:07PM (#18235395)
Is there really such a thing as left or right brained? Here's [1] an article discussing this. In this talk, what defined a person as "left brained" or "right brained"

1: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/right-brainleft-brain-ri...

Re:Do We Worship Complexity? by otabdeveloper2 on Wednesday October 17, 2018 @01:44AM (#18236401)
> Is there really such a thing as left or right brained?

Yes, there really is, but the way it's described in American media is a load of crap. I don't think anybody published actual real science about this in English.

Re:Do We Worship Complexity? by rabidrat on Wednesday October 17, 2018 @01:13AM (#18236290)
Such a left-brained thing to say :)
Re:Do We Worship Complexity? by nicoburns on Wednesday October 17, 2018 @09:14AM (#18238593)
Anecdotally, I've noticed a significant difference in how I think in parts of my life where I was studying philosophy vs parts of my life where I've been doing primarily software development. The whole body pretty much works on a principle of use increasing capability, so it pretty much makes sense...