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Abstract thinking

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superfantastic
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03 Sep 2006, 2:45 pm

paulsinnerchild wrote:
I use money as an example. I cannot avoid thinking of money in concrete terms like hard cash, food on the table, land and material possessions. But economists are for more abstract. They think of it in terms of GDP interest rates and dividends, negative gearing, options and swaptions etc; often use jargon that goes way above my head.

Paul


That happens to me too. I didn't understand "capital" until I understood it was just money used for businesses or whatever. Then I guess I'm a concrete thinker.

marcus-AS wrote:
I am highly abstract and can mix and merge things on planes that other people just cant think.


What do mean by that? Could you give an example for us concretes?



anandamide
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03 Sep 2006, 7:43 pm

marcus-AS wrote:
I am highly abstract and can mix and merge things on planes that other people just cant think.


What do mean by that? Could you give an example for us concretes?[/quote]

I think that an above average abstract thinker can more quickly imagine the subtleties and solutions to a logical argument that most people would not be able to conceive.



marcus-As
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04 Sep 2006, 12:50 pm

Can you give me a prompt.

What should I abstract for you?



anandamide
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07 Sep 2006, 5:04 am

marcus-As wrote:
Can you give me a prompt.

What should I abstract for you?


How about freedom of speech as a topic?



Tim_Tex
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07 Sep 2006, 5:13 am

Whether thinking should be concrete or abstract depends on the situation.

Tim



Dalebert
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07 Sep 2006, 7:58 am

Plato's theory of forms is something that really resonates with me. I think I am good at abstract thinking, but then I'm not currently diagnosed.

For instance, I tend to annoy my friend by telling him "Math is God". He doesn't follow my line of thinking, but it's loosely based on Plato's theory of forms. I don't mean that literally math is God, but math's an example of how an abstraction of perfection manifests itself imperfectly in the real world. For instance, a soap bubble looks really perfect but it's not. It's a finite amount of molecules bumping into each other in a roughly spherical shape and "trying" to be the perfect sphere which, because it has infinite points on it's surface, is better represented mathematically: x^2 + y^2 + z^2 = r^2.



superfantastic
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07 Sep 2006, 1:17 pm

marcus-As wrote:
Can you give me a prompt.

What should I abstract for you?


No idea what what can be abstracted. Can you abstract "going shopping"? Please don't laugh if you can't and it's just a stupid idea.