@mulout,
You make a good point, mulout.
mulout wrote:To expand, I am saying that the world functions (necessarily) by acting on the basis of what accredited figures believe. Our stock of accredited figures (for example, environmentalists quoted in the New York Times) is presently (more so than in the past) sieved at every point in the educational process by (as happens, inexpensive, computer driven) memory testing. As we face new challenges, climate change for example, a problem which those who excel in the business of solving unrelated historical problems by recollection are unsuited to cope with, we leave ourselves in a precarious position.
However, I think I also had a good point. The problem-solvers you mention, who are able to deal with all the novel stuff, are very creative and intelligent people. They can use that genius and learn as they go how to find loop-holes in the school system and in the rest of the bureaucracy that will allow them to get by, even if they don't always torch the memory tests. Or as I said before ... who better to solve the problem of his own exclusion than a problem-solver?
Do you think someone is either purely bureaucratic or innovative? Or do you think there are shades of grey in between, putting those two cognitive types at opposite ends of a spectrum? And if memorisers and problem-solvers really are extremes on a continuous spectrum, is the population normally distributed along that spectrum, or is our distribution along that spectrum bimodal? My hunch would be that there is a spectrum, but that we are bimodally distributed along it.
If we assume there's a spectrum, solvers need to target the mid-spectrum types (the people who are half-innovator, half-bureaucrat) for collaboration. If a pure solver and innovator started collaborating with another person (one who just "knew the details" mainly, but could tolerate new and innovative ideas and could formulate innovative ideas into arguments that the accredited figures could understand), then I believe the stuff that the pair of them could come up with would put the ideas of the accredited masses to shame.
That's how I optimistically see the situation.
Fil Albuquerque wrote:Problem solvers, or the also called renaissance man´s, are in their eccentricity loners by definition
Loners by birth, collaborators by choice--these days at least, if they want to succeed.