Experts solve the problem in an efficient and effective way. However, there are special types of problems called “Goldovsky Errors”. A type of error that can be spotted by an inexperienced person. Boris Goldovsky is an Opera Producer cum conductor who noticed a misprint of much used Brahms musical notes. When he noticed the error in the music notes and asked them to fix it, pupils were all confused. To his surprise, the person had indeed played the printed notes correctly – but there was an apparent misprint in the music. Goldovsky wondered why no one in the music community noticed this error?
This got Goldovsky curious. So he did his own experimentation. He told skilled sight-readers there was a misprint somewhere in the piece and asked them to find it. He allowed them to play the piece as many times. In the end, not one musician ever found the error. So, what’s happening here?
Researchers give an explanation that our brain is strongly wired to build hypotheses to create patterns. This process is also highly context-driven.
When a thing becomes more and more familiar to us, we tend to notice far less about how it is than how it should be. In short, we do not see things the way they are but the way they should be based on our own preconceived idea.
Here is one example to test it ourselves, Here is a nine-dot puzzle
The goal is to,
Connect all nine dots
You should not lift the pencil from paper or retract a line
Use only four straight lines.
Most people struggle to solve this puzzle as these nine dots resemble the picture of a square box. We start to think that the solution lies within this box. However, we miss thinking that the 4 lines can be drawn outside those nine dots.
The structure of the 9 dots created a mental template of a square box blocking us to think outside the box. An unconditioned mind solves this problem much more easily.
Here is the solution for the above puzzle meeting all three conditions,
Next time, when your kid asks a naive question, he/she might be helping you to unblock a Goldovsky error. Their curiosity is beyond our expertise.
Quoting John Maynard Keynes here is very apt.
"The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify into every corner of our mind."