Claude Shannon: Attacking a Problem
It took Claude Shannon about a decade to fully formulate his
seminal theory of information. He first flirted with the idea of establishing a
common foundation for the many information technologies of his day (like the
telephone, the radio, and the television) in graduate school.
It wasn’t until 1948, however, that he published A
Mathematical Theory of Communication.
This wasn’t his only big contribution, though. As a student at
MIT, at the humble age of 21, he published a thesis that many consider the most
important master’s thesis of the century.
To the average person, this may not mean much. He’s not exactly
a household name. But if it wasn’t for Shannon’s work, what we think of as the
modern computer may not exist. His influence is enormous not just in computer
science, but also in physics and engineering.
The word genius is thrown around casually, but there are very
few people who actually deserve the moniker like Claude Shannon. He thought
differently, and he thought playfully.
One of the subtle causes behind what manifested as such genius,
however, was the way he attacked problems. He didn’t just formulate a question
and then look for answers, but he was methodological in developing a process to
help him see beyond what was in sight.
His problems were different from many of the problems we are
likely to deal with, but the template and its reasoning can be generalized to
some degree, and when it is, it may just help us think sharper, too. Shannon’s
mind showed how best to do this by:
• Building a core before filling the details
• Harnessing restructuring and contrast
• Multiplying the essence of every input
All problems have a shape and a form. To solve them, we have to
first understand them.
Build a Core
Before Filling the Details
The importance of getting to an answer isn’t lost on any of us,
but many of us do neglect how important it is to ask a question in such a way
that an answer is actually available to us.
We are quick to jump around from one detail to another, hoping
that they eventually connect, rather than focusing our energy on developing an
intuition for what it is we are working with.
This is where Shannon did the opposite. In fact, he did this to
the point that many of the mathematicians he worked with thought that he wasn’t
as rigorous as he could be in the steps he was taking to build a coherent
picture. They, naturally, wanted the details.2
Shannon’s reasoning, however, was that it isn’t until you
eliminate the inessential from the problem you are working on that you can see
the core that will guide you to an answer.
In fact, often, when you get to such a core, you may not even
recognize the problem anymore, which illustrates how important it is to get the
bigger picture right before you go chasing after the details. Otherwise, you
start by pointing yourself in the wrong direction.
Details are important and useful. Many details are actually
disproportionately important and useful relative to their representation. But
there are equally as many details that are useless.
If you don’t find the core of a problem, you start off with all
of the wrong details, which is then going to encourage you to add many more of
the wrong kinds of details until you’re stuck.
Starting by pruning away at what is unimportant is how you
discipline yourself to see behind the fog created by the inessential. That’s
when you’ll find the foundation you are looking for.
Finding the true form of the problem is almost as important as
the answer that comes after.
Harness Restructuring
and Contrast
In a speech given at Bell Labs in 1952 to his contemporaries,
Shannon dived into how he primes his mind to think creatively when addressing
things that are keeping him occupied.3
Beyond simplifying and looking for the core, he suggests
something else – something that may not seem to make a difference on the
surface but is crucial for thinking differently.
Frequently, when we have spent a lot of time thinking about a
problem, we create a tunnel vision that rigidly directs us along a singular
path. Logical thinking starts at one point, makes reasoned connections, and if
done well, it always leads to the same place every time.
Creative thinking is a little different. It, too, makes
connections, but these connections are less logical and more serendipitous,
allowing for what we think of as new thinking patterns.
One of Shannon’s go-to tricks was to restructure and contrast
the problem in as many different ways as possible. This could mean exaggerating
it, minimizing it, changing the words of how it is stated, reframing the angle
from where it is looked at, and inverting it.
The point of this exercise is simply to get a more holistic look
at what is actually going on.
It’s easy for our brain to get stuck in mental loops, and the
best way to break these mental loops is to change the reference point. We are
not changing our intuitive understanding of the problem or the core we have
identified, just how it is expressed.
We could, for example, ask: What is the best way to solve this?
But we could also ask: What is the worst way to solve this? Each contains
knowledge, and we should dissect both.
Just as a problem has forms, it also has many shapes. Different
shapes hold different truths.
Multiply the
Essence of Every Input
While it’s important to focus on the quality of ideas, it’s
perhaps just as important to think about the quantity. Not just concerning
total numbers but also how you get to those numbers.
To solve a problem, you have to have a good idea. In turn, to
have a good idea, it’s often the case that you have to first go through many
bad ones. Even so, however, throwing anything and everything at the wall isn’t
the way to do that. There is more to it than that.
During the Second World War, Shannon met Alan Turing, another
computer science pioneer. While Turing was in the US, they had tea almost every
day. Over the years, they continued to keep in touch, and both men respected
the other’s thinking and enjoyed his company.
When discussing what he thinks constitutes genius, Shannon used
an analogy shared with him by Turing, from which he extrapolated a subtle
observation. In his own words:
“There are some people if you shoot one idea into the brain, you
will get a half an idea out. There are other people who are beyond this point
at which they produce two ideas for each idea sent in.”
He humbly denied that he was in the latter category, instead
putting people like Newton in there. But if we look beyond that, we can see
what is at play. It’s not just about quantity.
Every input has a particular essence at its core that
communicates a truth that lies behind the surface. This truth is the foundation
for many different solutions to many different problems.
What Shannon is getting at, I suspect, is that generating good
ideas is about getting good at multiplying the essence of every input. Bad
ideas may be produced if you get the essence wrong, but the better you identify
it, the more effectively you’ll be able to uncover insights.
Doubling the output of your ideas is the first step, but
capturing the essence is the difference.
All You Need
to Know
Much of life – whether it’s in your work, or in your
relationships, or as it relates to your well-being – comes down to identifying
and attacking a problem so that you can move past it.
Claude Shannon may have been a singular genius with a unique
mind, but the process he used isn’t out of reach for any of us. His strength
was in this process and its application.
Here are three things we can steal from his playful approach to
thinking:
I. Build a core before filling in the details. It’s easy to
lose sight of how important it is to identify the form of a problem before you
go looking for answers. If you don’t, then you get stuck with the wrong
details. Adding the right details comes after you have stripped away the
inessential. It comes from developing a keen intuition for the core that gives
a problem its specific qualities.
II. Harness restructuring and contrast. After a while of
working on something, we tend to get stuck in a mental loop, forming a tunnel
vision in a single direction. At this point, the best thing you can do is
change the reference point by restating, or inverting, or semantically changing
the question. It’s a way of playing with the shape of a problem, and it
provides a more holistic viewpoint, one that leads to new ways of thinking.
III. Multiply the essence of every input. Solutions to
problems come from good ideas, and good ideas come from many ideas. But
quantity alone isn’t enough – the right kind of quantity matters. The essence
of every input contains a truth that can build out in many directions, and the
right kind of quantity is born from getting good at identifying this essence.
Good problem-solving is a product of both critical and creative
thinking. The best way to combine them is to have some process in place that
allows each to shine through.
Thinking patterns shape our minds. The goal is to have the right
thinking patterns doing so.
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