Are people losing the ability to think abstractly?

I’m sorry, but I found your first Q too inane and silly to bother with. Determining that “people are losing the ability to think abstractly” because they didn’t answer in any way you found satisfactory s really reaching.

Something is not connecting, I think abstractly.

For the most part,yes.

Left handed right brained blonde here, I am the embodiment of abstract.

You walk into a room full of strangers and ask if they can think abstractly because you didn’t like the answer they gave to a question. Do I have that right? You had a chance to make friends.

No.

I can think abstractly, but I haven’t seen Jurassic Park and lack sufficient interest to research it to offer an answer to a question that makes no sense to me out of context.

Though in general, questions of the form, “if an inanimate object were a person, what features would it have?” usually don’t inspire much creativity in me unless something immediately comes to mind.

Like, if a Dodge Ram truck were a person, I’d think the person might have the features of an an unbalanced, not-so-bright, pushy, egotistical, swaggering, insensitive, gluttonous, overly large, wide and heavy rural person whose main redeeming quality is a willingness to carry and pull things for others.

That’s a very big stretch of a conclusion to be drawn from the answers to your bizarre question. You are in effect asking folks to assign a personality to an inanimate object, then complaining about the primary reaction being on the question’s absurdity. But you’re missing the point that the absurdity of the question overwhelms any other consideration. There is no deficit in cognitive thought in pointing this out. The proof that this is indeed the case can be readily appreciated if you consider that the people least likely to find the question obtuse would be children 3 or 4 years old. These are the people who find (for example) a face on the front of a locomotive a plausible proposition.

Dunno, can dolphins do math?

I am sorry but I have to be honest and let you know I missed out on your first question regarding you inquiry here. Either way you have come to the right place (with me) if you desire a response laden with abstract thinking. From 7 am to 5 pm M-F abstract response is under lock and key by my attorney mostly….but abstract is the world I live in with a ginormous filter in between us and them that is faulty as shit. Keep your distance unless you enjoy getting zapped.

Maybe but then it seems people have already lost the ability to ask interesting and thought provoking questions.

You had to ask a whole question regarding the general ability to think abstractly because I’m not able to turn a gate into a person?
What is abstract to you? You’ll have to forgive me, but questions here usually have more elaboration and detail, unless it’s a game question. Now I know that it isn’t really fair because there is no rule that every question on here needs to be a university project. That is, however what I am used to, so your question just seemed totally inane. I do apologize if you did not like the answer, and I don’t blame you, but even in this question your details seem to address the replies you got rather than the actual premise your question is presenting.

People here can think vety abstractly, I’ve seen it plenty of times, but I agree with an old user we used to have, Onedayatta or whatever the hell his username was, I forgot; there really is no “outside the box”. Being completely bloody random is not an automatic proof of abstract or imaginative thinking.

Sing with me…tis the season to be Jolly….fa..la..la.la…..la…la.la.la

Humbug.

The first question made me stop and read three more times to make sure I was reading it right.I see were you were going it blew my mind I had no answer.Rock on!

I’m so wasted

@Lightlyseared Maybe but then it seems people have already lost the ability to ask interesting and thought provoking questions.
Is it so much people lost it, or they just don’t strive for it? If this place was a sliver representing a much larger pie, people just care not to ask, they would rather play games.

A couple of studies have shown there is some synaptic structural difference between conservative and liberal thinkers….and no, this is not a cheap shot. The same differences also show up in liberal brain structures among liberals who tend to be single issue folks.

Effectively, these folks are unable to hold conflicting concepts in creative tension while they investigate independently to ascertain factually which of the conflicting concepts is actually correct, or more nearly correct. They will accept which ever concept is closer to their core value and then create rationale for their choice, at times using both pretzel logic and motivated reasoning.

Again, I am not being critical of supporters of PEOTUS Trump supporters yet there are some fairly recent examples relating to the ACA health insurance issue. Voters self-indentified as Trump supported and who were using ACA benefits (for many of them the first time they had health coverage in decades) cited they voted for Trump, even though he stated he would dismantle ACA, stating they didn’t think he wouldn’t do that so they voted for him anyway.

So, not sure if it is the media, a loss of the ability to think critically or think abstractly…or a question if there is an inability to really understand consequences of actions…or simply what might happen next…

Let’s just be blunt about this. What passes for conservatism today amounts to an appeal tailored to dummies. While the dumbing down of the country is clearly proceeding apace, it is the conservatives alone who have managed to cultivate and refine the techniques required to manage their expanding and logical base——the “low information” voter. Pundits rattle on about Democrats being “out of touch” with voters, but Trump’s election was not a shocking setback for democrats alone. Plenty of conservatives are alarmed at the depth and extent of the “dummy panic” epidemic and the resulting implications which must accompany Trump’s success.