[giancarlostoro]

> it was one of hundreds of avenues that were explored, and ruled out basically as soon as it was explored.

Sounds like me during a troubleshooting call trying to think of the wildest crap possible based on current available information, even if I sound crazy, sometimes my crazy question hits the nail. Never shun someone for trying to think of any crazy thing, sometimes they hit the nail on the head.

[scarab92]

Very rarely is it appropriate to brainstorm widely.

You want to start with a high level of discernment, focusing on the most plausible theories first, then broadening only if necessary.

If someone started out with crazy low-discernment ideas, I’d probably ask them to leave to stop distracting everyone else.

[tremon]

You really do want breadth-first exploration, because once a group has identified and explored a few scenarios of high likelihood, the brain is already biased towards those events and more exotic scenarios are less likely to be imagined.

Only after that first exploration should you narrow it down according to likelihood. Then, if those likely scenarios appear to be dead ends, you can circle back to the earlier less likely scenarios. But trying to come up with less likely scenarios after your brain has already explored a different scenario in-depth takes a lot more effort.

> If someone started out with crazy low-discernment ideas, I’d probably ask them to leave to stop distracting everyone else.

Then you'd be doing it wrong. Valuing an idea (i.e. rating it in terms of relevance, likelihood, discernment, whatever you want to call it) is not part of the brainstorm, it's part of the post-brainstorm evaluation. Creativity and logic exercise the brain differently, trying to do both at the same time does not give the best results.

[scarab92]

Not convinced.

Creativity is much easier than reasoning and discernment.

Rarely do I need people to be more creative when problem solving, what I need is better judgement.

[smallmancontrov]

Sure, but give a group too long a leash and they will overindex on a tarpit idea. The reason why conspiracy theories are notorious is not because conspiracies don't exist, it's because they are non-falsifiable, fun to speculate about, and easy to understand so everyone can participate. Viral, in other words. Good leaders should steer away from tarpits (and privately ensure that they were scouted, just in case).

[giancarlostoro]

Of course, and I hold back the wilder theories ;) I usually let it rummage through my brain a bit first. I have a "hint" of ADD so my brain can jump all over, but I can get hyper focused on an outage, especially when trying to figure it out involves a bit of brain storming sometimes, and following a methodology to look under every rock.