All of illusionary's Comments + Replies

Helium Balloon

Hot air balloon

Rocketship

Slingshot

A solid and powerful throw

A very bouncy ball

A bird wearing a spacesuit

A missile

A very tall and bouncy trampoline

A diving board with rocket propellers

A giraffe with genes only useful in long necks

An RPG

A helicopter

A plane

A massive anti-gravity simulator 

A giant robot with piston arms

A very tall building 

An elevator

A paper folded x number of times

A long crane

An object propelled by an atomic explosion

A roller coaster 

A wind seeker that launches you at a very high speed

A windmill 

A ladder

An up

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"if a solution to someone's problem looks obvious, assume it isn't and try to understand why." This struck me pretty hard. I was wondering though, how effective this is.  How much has it improved your listening skills and maybe even your empathy? I find that it could also be counterintuitive - how much has it made you overthink?

2qazzquimby
I guess it generalizes to: if there's an unsolved problem and the solution looks obvious, you're probably missing something. * Beware the natural tendency towards overconfidence * It's easiest to think of the easy happy path. The problems are usually more nuanced and less mentally available. * Other people thinking about it are probably not being dumb or thoughtless. I don't think it's caused me to overthink in that if something seems one dimensional it's probably being underthought. There are learnable exceptions, like a friend might have a mental blindspot to a certain kind of solution, or you might consistently overthink certain situations. To be honest, I'm still not a great listener because I haven't squashed the urge to think of advice before empathizing.