Logic

 personal anecdote

Back when I went to university, majoring in Computer Science, we had to take some courses in the humanities or social sciences departments, "to keep our minds from becoming too narrow".
One favorite was the "Logic" course offered by the Philosophy department.
It was astounding to see how people who are not of a mathematical bent had a really hard time with what seemed trivial to us.
For example, the teacher would say:
"Given that (1) Everything green sprouts flowers and (2) alligators are green, what conclusion can we draw?"
The class would explode "But that's not true! Only plants have flowers! My marker is green and will never flower!" and so on.
Or the teacher would say, "I told my son that if he behaved himself I would take him to the beach. He misbehaved, and we went to the beach. Did I lie?" and everyone would say "yes!" and "you're spoiling the brat!"
They could not detach from real-world knowledge and "sense" enough to view a statement as just an example of "All A are B" or "If p then q" and deal with it at an abstract level.

Needless to say, the few Natural Sciences and Engineering majors in the room had absolutely no difficulty going GIGO mode...

I'm not totally sure which mode of thinking is better, to be honest.

In bolded is what I believe to be the whole crux of this discussion. As a Microbiology and English double major, my life consists of utilizing both hemispheres of my mind in the metaphorical "right brain/left brain" sense. Considering I'm personally more passionate towards the Humanities, I initially read the logic statements from this anecdote deriving the same conclusions as the rest of the class. But it wasn't difficult to switch over and easily understand what they were actually saying, what you all call "trivial thought."

The thoughts are trivial to you because they're so unconsciously simple, devoid of any need for thought beyond what is literally in the sentence. In other words, it's quite easy to figure something out when all of the necessary information and the answer itself are contained in the same statement. I'm sorry if this is an pimento comment to make, but it's ironic that such courses are acceptable as fulfilling humanities requirements "to keep your mind from becoming too narrow," as the courses require nothing more than narrow-minded thought.

The reason the Humanities students “could not detach from real-world knowledge and sense” is because that’s not what they’re trained to do. SaptaZapta raises the point that he’s not totally sure which mode of thinking is better, and I think the answer to that question is that it depends on what problems you’re attempting to solve. Computer Scientists, Engineers, Mathematicians all deal in this realm of logic, and while their deductions can have real-world implications, it’s more important for them, at a foundational level, to be able to simply look at a situation within its own context and derive the most logical conclusion.

The issue arises when the aforementioned professions are required to apply their logic skills to real-world situations. The real world is not a collection of situations isolated in their own contexts, but rather a summation of all situations, interconnected and having an effect on one another. This is what the Humanities students understand, and approach a singular logical statement such as those proposed by the professor with the mindset of how they operate in the web of our world. For example, the statement of the alligator alone has a logical conclusion that the alligator will sprout flowers. However, this conclusion is illogical when weighed alongside the real-world logical statement that reptiles do not sprout flowers; hence, the initial reaction of the Humanities student is that the statement is illogical.

In the end, I suppose the best way of saying this is that logic-based professions like those I listed above tend to, understandably, pointedly view the world through a narrow lens of dissection, fully grasping the complete whole of the specific thing within a particular plane of view. The Humanities professions, on the other hand, are capable of viewing the entire world as a whole and how each part relates to one another, without actually needing to understand the specifics of each aspect. That doesn’t mean each method of thought can’t grasp concepts of the other, but simply that, instinctually speaking, one prevails over the other based on what type of thought is predominantly necessary for the individual.

Sorry for the long post; hope that answers the thread and the excellent, bolded comment SaptaZapta made. The question is not which mode of thinking is better overall, but which is more important for your specific profession. In my opinion everyone should be capable of each mode of thought, and most people are if they think about statements through a different perspective (ex.: SaptaZapta, I’m willing to bet you left out the part of the anecdote where the professor explained the mode of thinking behind each statement, to which the class responded “oh, I knew that!”).