I was contemplating a minor business problem with a colleague. He sat quietly while a stream of words came out of my mouth. Eventually he commented that we were both thinking, but he was doing so in his head while I was doing so out loud. I think he meant that my stream of words wasn’t going to yield much because he was preoccupied. But often enough the noises coming from my mouth help my brain work better.
You may be familiar with the show House M.D. It’s a medical series about Dr. Gregory House, a diagnostic genius with a Sherlock Holmes-like approach to solving complex medical mysteries, often breaking norms and clashing with peers to diagnose patients correctly. [Credit: ChatGPT]
There’s a line from one of the episodes that has always stuck with me:
Dr. Gregory House : How come you guys have never tried to yank me off this case? I’m having hallucinations. Blackouts.
Dr. Eric Foreman : But you’re always insane and you’re always right.
Dr. Gregory House : I’m *almost* always *eventually* right.
My track record of being right is not comparable to House’s. Yet, I think the nature of my process could be. The point is that an iterative approach to problem solving (“eventually”) is the one that works well for me. One of the most powerful ways for me to iterate is by moving my lips and listening with my ears. When an idea is in my head, it often “sounds” better than it is. When it escapes my mouth and enters my ears, I evaluate it more critically. When you hear me say something and then immediately question or qualify the thing I said, that’s what is happening.
A few more comments on this topic:
-
When there is no other person present, I don’t do this. I’m not sure why! Upon reflection, maybe this is the reason rubberducking involves an actual rubber duck.
-
When the other person does participate in the dialogue, that is often even better! It turns up the heat, creating more opportunities for new ideas and sharper explanations.
-
This phenomenon can work for me in chatroom-style text interactions. If I’m feeling comfortable, I will tend to post one sentence at a time. That gives me time to course-correct with interjections like “wait, that’s not right.”
The last comment makes me wonder about how LLMs might be able to eventually support this iterative process for improving ideas and solving problems. Today’s common one-response-per-prompt interaction model doesn’t quite fit.
As always, I am hungry for your thoughts, tips and comments on the subject.