My Mindsight Exercise 15
A certain book comes to mind — Deviate, by Beau Lotto. This topic also makes me this of our built-in biases.
The gist of the Deviate (to my recollection) is that our thinking and perceptions are confined to a box or a limited possibility space. And the only way to escape this confined space is to challenge our conscience and unconscious assumptions and biases. This exercise can lead us along a path to ideas that others are less likely to reach.
If we define independent thinking as thought that is unique and novel– truly disconnected from other ideas– then we may have no such thing.
But if we define independent thinking as the effort to expand our possibility space and discover ideas that seem new to many others, then this seems possible.