I think a big contributing factor is having some kind of intellectual community / receptive audience. Having a social context in which new ideas are expected, appreciated, and refined creates the affordance to really think about things.
The way I see it, contact with such a community only needs to happen initially. After that, many people will keep developing ideas on their own.
A school/work setting doesn’t seem to count for as much as a less formal voluntary group. It puts thinking in the context of “for work” / “for school”, which may even actively discourage developing one’s own ideas later.
Also, it seems like attempts to start intellectual groups in order to provide the social context for developing ideas will often fail. People don’t know how to start good groups by default, and there is a lot which can go wrong.
Editing to add:
Another important bottleneck is having a mental toolkit for working on hard problems. One reason why people don’t go past the first answer which comes to mind is that they don’t have any routines to follow which get them past their first thoughts. Even if you’re asked to think more about a problem, you’ll likely rehearse the same thoughts, and reach the same conclusions, unless you have a strategy for getting new thoughts. Johnswentworth’s answer hints at this direction.
The best resource I know of for developing this kind of mental toolkit is Polya’s book How to Solve It. He provides a set of questions to ask yourself while problem-solving. At first, these questions may seem like object-level tools to help you get unstuck when you are stuck, which is true. But over time, asking the questions will help you develop a toolkit for thinking about problems.
...and since there is a particular pleasure in derailing community thought, if one manages to find a place where one does not go over to the Dark Side when doing it, one likely should go for it :)
I think a big contributing factor is having some kind of intellectual community / receptive audience. Having a social context in which new ideas are expected, appreciated, and refined creates the affordance to really think about things.
The way I see it, contact with such a community only needs to happen initially. After that, many people will keep developing ideas on their own.
A school/work setting doesn’t seem to count for as much as a less formal voluntary group. It puts thinking in the context of “for work” / “for school”, which may even actively discourage developing one’s own ideas later.
Also, it seems like attempts to start intellectual groups in order to provide the social context for developing ideas will often fail. People don’t know how to start good groups by default, and there is a lot which can go wrong.
Editing to add:
Another important bottleneck is having a mental toolkit for working on hard problems. One reason why people don’t go past the first answer which comes to mind is that they don’t have any routines to follow which get them past their first thoughts. Even if you’re asked to think more about a problem, you’ll likely rehearse the same thoughts, and reach the same conclusions, unless you have a strategy for getting new thoughts. Johnswentworth’s answer hints at this direction.
The best resource I know of for developing this kind of mental toolkit is Polya’s book How to Solve It. He provides a set of questions to ask yourself while problem-solving. At first, these questions may seem like object-level tools to help you get unstuck when you are stuck, which is true. But over time, asking the questions will help you develop a toolkit for thinking about problems.
...and since there is a particular pleasure in derailing community thought, if one manages to find a place where one does not go over to the Dark Side when doing it, one likely should go for it :)