Problem solving

Gary Klein observa un patrón general entre los expertos. Ellos no definen un objetivo primero y luego planean las actividades para llegara ese objetivo. Sino que las acciones y el objetivo llegan juntos:


"What triggers active problem-solving is the ability to recognize when a goal is reachable. There must be an experiential ability to judge the solvability of problems prior to working on them. Experience lets us recognize the existence of opportunities. When the opportunity is recognized, the problem solver working out its implications is looking for a way to make good use of it, trying to shape it into reasonable goal."

Gary Klein, Sources of Power, 125.

Simon found that expert chess players do consider multiple options, but in sequence, not all together. They think through the first option that strikes them as promising. In thinking it through they might see a major flaw and give it up. Or it suffices and they go ahead and do it. If they give up, they think through the next option that strickes them as promising. And so on through the game. They don't compare several options against each other. And where does each option come from? They recognize elements from previous games the have seen or played. Simon explained:

In particular, recognition of familiar patterns is a major component of expert skill, and experts can consequently replace a great deal of heuristic search with solutions, or partial solutions, thay they discover by recognition. Moreover, problem solving by recognition has all the characteristics of what is usually called "intuitive", "judgmental", or even "creative" problem solving. The experimental data show that masters and grandmasters search very selectively, using their recognition of cues to guide the selectivity. They search the right part of the space of possible move sequences, achieving great computational efficiency.
Herbert A. Simon, Models of thought: Volume 2