Photo from open sources
This interesting story happened in 1978 in America. IN Pontiac branch of a well-known automobile corporation “General Motors” received a letter, the contents of which looked utter nonsense. That’s what this amazing thing said the message:
“Hello! I understand perfectly that I may seem to you a joker or an idiot, but all I will tell you now is pure truth, and I can easily prove it. Everything is in my family love ice cream. Every night I get in my car and drive to a supermarket to buy this treat. After we purchased your new “Pontiac”, we cannot afford vanilla ice cream. I know that sounds absurd, but it really is. Is worth I buy a vanilla variety, as the car refuses to start and to go home, so you have to call a tow truck. And the next day with the car everything is in order. But if I buy chocolate, creamy or any other ice cream, the machine does not react in any way this starts up normally. I don’t know: maybe in “Pontiac” there is any details that are contraindicated in the cabin vanilla? ”
Support staff naturally reacted to this information extremely skeptical and twisted a finger at the temple. However, the client, as usual, is always right, therefore, to check sent an engineer.
The owner of the “Pontiac” was polite and prosperous a family man who never made the impression of a madman. They are the master sent immediately went to the same supermarket, bought a bucket of vanilla ice cream … and the machine is really flat refused to start!
They called a tow truck. The next day we went and bought chocolate ice cream – the car behaved as expected. Engineer considered that it was necessary to think sensibly, and refused to believe that vanilla allergy machines. General Motors employee several days noted all the details of travel: speed, travel time, stops at gas stations, the brand of gasoline poured into the tank, even weather and outdoor temperature.
In the end, breaking his head, he nevertheless managed to find out in what’s the matter. Vanilla ice cream really related to this a riddle, but far from the most direct. All the fault, as it turned out, there was an arrangement of products in the trading floor of the supermarket. Vanilla ice cream was in the refrigerator at the very entrance, and you can buy it was much faster than other varieties stored in the opposite end of the store.
The task, therefore, passed from the category of mystical to category technical – it just took to figure out why Pontiac wasn’t starts when the owner of the car returns to her, not lingering in a supermarket. And the answer was extremely simple: in the car carburetor remained traffic jams caused by intense fuel vapor. Such an unexpected discovery made General Motors “to immediately improve their carburetors.
According to psychologists, this story perfectly demonstrates distinction between straightforward and critical modes of thinking. Human with straightforward thinking connects only the initial and final facts (vanilla ice cream is in the car, so it won’t start), in while an individual with critical thinking carefully analyzes the situation, iterates over all possible options and establishes the correct sequence of links in the chain Problems.
Time
