Deep vs. Broad Thinking

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Is it better to be able to think deep yet narrow, or broad yet shallow?

It seems people who think more broadly tend to connect with other people and cope with the rest of the world better. As an analogy, radio transmitters that broadcast over a wide spectrum of frequencies are bound to have more tune in than those who transmit at a single frequency, even if the transmitted signal is less intense.

I can't see the line betwen those two... If "deep yet narrow" stands for little profesor in some field - than I must be "broad yet shallow" thinker. Or maybe I just have below average inteligence? I don't know. Yet certainly - I do not "connect with other people and cope with the rest of the world better". It's all the opposite. I'm poor at contacts with the outside.

I figured if you're a broad thinker, you can make smalltalk with anyone about anything anywhere anytime.

the best is to be able to do both which might sound like a paradox but it the exact same paradox that drive a lot of the seemingly strange quirks and idiosyncrasies of the autistic because many of our traits,such as "aloofness" or an uncanny attention to details are sourced at our living beyond the 3d space which dictate this paradox,
the anger and frustration r also stem from the fact that no one seems to notice or respect our unique angle to this frustrating dilemma,
ppl see the and love the "magic" while despising the magician.

Last edited by nara44 on 13 Dec 2008, 3:05 am, edited 1 time in total.

I don't think either one is necessarily better than the other. I suppose if you think about a lot of different things then you will have more things to talk about, but that doesn't mean you'll actually be good at talking about your thoughts, or be capable of selecting the thoughts that are appropriate to talk about, or even be willing to talk to other people at all...

It seems what small talk requires is spontaneity, the ability to come up with clever sounding one-liners and jokes on the fly. I notice that a lot of NT’s are very good at making conversation this way. Sometimes they can be very proficient at coming up with clever banter but not good at providing any 'meat' to the topic. They always say things which are extremely obvious and trivial yet the say it in a funny way and that alone keeps people listening.

It's all good.

I agree with this. Small talk seems to be more about postures and verbal attitudes and vignettes rather than intellectual process.

False dichotomy, faulty analogy. Neither one is preferable; the ability to do both is the ideal. Human cognition is far more than being in tune. I can engage in small talk, but choose not to, when it's avoidable, and I've chosen to avoid the kind of situation where it's unavoidable. Small talk is a waste of my time because it's repetitive and predictable, which is what most NTs seem to prefer.

i am a shallow lake of a mind.
i think in a "broad and shallow" way .
the sunlight dapples the floor of my soul, and i feel warmed and content in my complacency.
i am like manta ray that glides through a very small range of depths in a stable security of temperateness.

i have a "friend" who is deep. he ruminates over the deepest meanings that he "gleans" from what he sees.
he worries about things that are at the bottom of the frigid holes of his deep perception.
things are stagnant at that depth, and there is crushing pressure, and frigidity and darkness.
who wants to encounter a fault line that is a psychic drain that drags ones attention into subterranean chambers of irrelevant concern such as my friend is concerned with?

i prefer to bask in the shallows of my ignorant contentedness. it is not up to me to save the world, and, the second after i die, i care not for what the world becomes.

I suppose that, to cope better with the rest of the world, the ideal is to think narrow and shallow - I think that both "broad thinkers" and "deep thinkers" have difficulty in be interested in day-to-day issues.

I can do both, but my problem lies in switching from one to the other. I think it is the switch that is the key thing in social adaptability, and that is hard for a lot of Aspies because our minds don't have that type of easy flexibility.

Really inventive minds can do both at once... you have a head start in that you can do both (but maybe at different times).

I think doing both at once is quite normal in the NT world, but is difficult for people with ASDs, because (according to the research and brain scans) we have disruptions in the links between those two different ways of thinking. The broad picture thinking is in one part of the brain, and the narrow detailed thinking is in another part of the brain. Apparently in NT brains there are fluid links between these two parts. Whereas in ASD brains the links are disrupted.

I'd guess a lot of people here can do both at different times. The very act of participating in this conversation - taking a step back and thinking about how we think - that is more a broad thinking thing. If we couldn't do broad thinking, we wouldn't be able to take a step back from ourselves and analyse ourselves in this way. We'd just be in the moment, concentrating on what we are doing, and not how we are doing it or how our brains are working.

^
Thank you for the info... never thought of the cognitive differences in terms of broad/narrow bf.

I don't know ... a balance between the two modes of thinking might be best. Otherwise, a person devoted to broad thinking will think less and less about more and more until he eventually has no thoughts about anything. Conversely, a person devoted to narrow thinking will think more and more about less and less until he eventually devotes all of his thinking to nothing at all!