Is it worth it?

Posted by Cassius
Sep 9, 2007 at 05:33 AM

Stephen R. Diamond wrote:
> >If you don’t mind disclosing, what tests indicate your
>visualization abilities are poor? I’m not convinced your self-assessment is
>correct, in that the use of analytic features in a spatially-based format requires
>spatio-visual ability. Some studies indicate that tests classically thought to
>represent analytic ability, such as figural analogies and matrices, load even more
>on spatio-visual ability than on “fluid ‘g.’”
>

Well, since SD insists, in high school, I took a comprehensive IQ test. I scored rather well on all parts except visualization, where I scored “average” or worse.

What is “fluid ‘g”?

>Your opinion expressed at point 4 was
>for a long time mine. Mind mapping is advertised as being for “visual thinkers,” and I
>think mostly in words, at least consciously. What convinced me to give mind mapping a
>chance was a comment by legal writing authority Bryan Gardner (now editor of Black’s
>Law Dictionary) that he for years avoided mind mapping (Gardner uses a different name
>for it that I don’t recall). He now uses it in the early stages of planning, having found
>it improves the availability of insights.
>

I doubt that mind mapping would help me as it has Mr. Gardner. Although I am retired now [for my health—I could no longer tolerate the unethical behavior of my management], I often received praise or condemnation for my ability to see things others didn’t. Praise when I pulled an important project out of the toilet, condemnation when management wanted it to stay in the toilet. I don’t attribute this ability to visualization, but rather to an innate urge to keep thinking when most others stop and a willingness to challenge “the generally accepted”. For example, in high school, I designed a slide rule scale that later went to the moon. It really was nothing special, but apparently no one thought it would be useful or that it could work—I thought further. (If you ever used a Pickett slide rule, it may have been on your rule…the Ln scale.) A former colleague once said, “You’re thinking all the time, aren’t you?” I finally realized that not everyone does, and now, being rather a “bum,” I probably don’t either.

Software, like Personal Brain or Inspiration, that permit the construction of non-heirarchal webs or nets might improve my insight, but ‘till now I’ve only used such to create process diagrams (including feedback loops) for others to follow.

-c