Puzzles are a crucial tool that train us how to solve life’s problems, from minor personal issues to the world crises
uzzles saved my sanity during the pandemic—and I believe they can save the world.
The secret is what I call the Puzzler Mindset. This is the mindset you need to be a good puzzle solver, and it’s a mindset that, I find, spills over into life outside of puzzles. The hallmarks of the Puzzler Mindset include being deeply curious, solution-oriented, rigorous, cognitively flexible, and good at taking other people’s perspectives.
Research shows this puzzle-solving approach might be the best way to actually evolve our views. One promising technique— calledThis brings up another advantage of the Puzzle Mindset: It brings people together. And that’s not the only evidence that the Puzzle Mindset makes us less tribal. Harvard Psychology professor Joshua Greene conducted an experiment where he gave logic puzzles to one group of people, but not the control group. He then asked the subjects questions about moral quandaries.
Puzzlers show amazing grit when tackling problems. One of my favorite puzzles is called Kryptos. It’s a sculpture located at the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, and it contains a baffling cipher of 1,800 letters that has yet to be solved, even by the CIA itself. I’m on an email list of thousands of solvers who, every day, propose another theory.
This is, of course, lacking in so much public discourse, where we are ruled by motivated reasoning, where changing your mind is seen as a mark of shame. The best puzzlers and scientists take the opposite approach. As Nobel-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman says, “being wrong is the only way I feel sure I learned anything.”
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