When did your analytical ability emerge?

[BurnedOut]

I was quite analytical as a toddler as well because I was in the habit of dissecting toys, playing video games on my computer. I had my first encounter with the internet when I was 6-7. My analytical side got suppressed significantly as I grew up. By 10 till 14 I was a pretty normal kid except my intense love for computers. Depression caught up with me when I was 14 but despite that, I discovered psychology and quickly realized that I have knack for analyzing things. Since then I have been pretty much quite analytical.

I don't believe in MBTI but I do believe that most of you here consider yourselves analytical to some extent. When did your analytical ability started shining?

 

[birdsnestfern]

I occasionally liked taking things apart and then frantically trying to put them back together because they weren't mine, like alarm clock was the first item, I actually put it back together - very young, maybe 7. Yes, analytical and very detail oriented with tons of data.

 

[Rook]

i did well at school but analyzing things wasn't something integral to my being, i would understand concepts but not go out of my way to analyze them. Imagination and curiosity took precedent, I loved to learn about the world. knowing facts that were cool, learning about other beings and places, collecting rocks and whatever, but I don't recall being way into finding out how things work or obsessing over a single subject matter... just wanted to have fun tbh. curiosity>practicality basically.

I think analysis is integral to us, we are born with it, tho some definitely have earlier and greater aptitude than others.

 

[EndogenousRebel]

In the beginning I never really 'judged' anything, my mind was usually quite to me. I remember the night of the US presidential elections in 04 vividly. It's pretty on the mark considering developmental psychology 4-6 years, but I was already intensely focused on theory of mind. I saw adults with mixed and strong feelings and youngling with the same mentality. I was already trying to make connections between why they believed those things.

The kids I suppose were easy. I would make a judgement and thoughts revolving around them based off of something causal that I would remember about them, and my mind would go quite. But with the adults, I'm not sure if I understood this at the time, but framing it in the now, they had more nebulous things going on that I couldn't see. No doubt because their formative years we're behind them. But I didn't assume, nor really investigate to dig deeper, my mind was just looking at the surface, but pondering deeply.

Trying to understand was silent, up until an acceptable conclusion emerged and then on to the next thing. I didn't realize how 'bad' I was at it till many years later, I was 17 when I was suddenly hit with expanding awareness and with it insecurities and propensity to overthink.

I guess I would illustrate this as having analysis as a hobby, and then it turning into an obsession with neurosis. I used to have a deep insecurity when I realized a blind spot in my construction of the world. I can understand why Rick did this basically.

But it's not really that helpful a skill, I need at least a masters to get paid a cushy job for doing it. Also I have done a pretty bad job at aiming that analytical drive at things that actually help me.

 

[onesteptwostep]

In terms of intelligence I was put in a grade one year lower than me to compensate for the fact that I didn't speak English, so cognitively I had an easier time at school. I think the whole grades thing reinforced my confidence in my intelligence, and I didn't have academic problems until high school.

As for my analytic ability it probably came from too much video games, since grade school. I had come from Japan then, so the whole game/aracde culture was natural to me. I also remember enjoying watching documentaries borrowed from the library... Back when we had VHS tapes. My most extreme analytic pastime was playing Starcraft though. I'm also pretty damn good at playing Monopoly, something which I think I perfected playing in college.

 

[Puffy]

Mostly imaginative as a child and teenager. The type of kid who'd always be sat in the corner day-dreaming and staring into space. I wouldn't have identified as analytical or intelligent.

I'd say I started developing analytical ability from the age of 19 when I started university. Mostly as it was a period in which most of my time was focused on developing academically.

 

[Ex-User (9086)]

Started playing chess at age 5 and I was reading books around that age too so it's safe bet I was a thinker from as early as I remember.

I was explaining the big bang to children in the sandbox at age 6, no kidding. Must've been weird. In hindsight I'd ask them to play hide and seek if I could go back.

 

[Black Rose]

I am 34 and I have no analytic ability. The test I took puts me at borderline retarded at that. I am an intuitive perceiver with a limited ability to manipulate variables.

 

[ZenRaiden]

I am 34 and I have no analytic ability. The test I took puts me at borderline retarded at that. I am an intuitive perceiver with a limited ability to manipulate variables.

Yeah me too.

Plus I have a hearing problem.

 

[dr froyd]

i recall when i was a kid and i listened to the stuff adults were telling me, nothing made any sense. If they said x and I said: ok so if x is true, that means y? But then they said oh actually not, because x wasn't actually true or it can be interpreted in different ways, etc.

eventually i realized that people actually don't know anything - most of the things people say should instead be interpreted from a psychological and historical perspective. So up until my early 20s i was generally extremely suspicious of any kind of structures of reasoning and i was not interested in the details of anything - only the big-picture stuff, human psychology, and understanding the historical aspects of things.

it wasn't really until university, when i was exposed to math and science etc, that i became interested in analytical thinking in terms of logical structures. In certain domains you can definitely say that if x is true then it implies y, but it is usually limited to theoretical domains like math. I still rarely trust anything people say about the empirical world (sometimes to my own detriment), but in cases where formalization and abstraction of reality demonstrably yields useful empirical results, i try to adhere to that.

 

[ZenRaiden]

I think it was Tuesday.

 

[Cognisant]

I dunno, early.

One time when I was about 5-6 my mother was talking to a friend of hers about smacking children and admitted should couldn't remember the last time she'd smacked me. So as a joke she smacked me there in the shopping centre carpark, not hard or anything just a tap on the bum.

Much to their amusement I was very indignant, how dare you smack me like I'm a child, I hadn't even done anything, what justice is there when punishments are doled out without cause?

 

[Hadoblado]

I was a mixed bag of strengths and weaknesses compared to my peers. Still am I suppose.

I tend to assume people exaggerate these stories a lot. I see the way parents talk about their children, which is what children learn to believe about themselves. But parents tend to misinterpret a lot about what's going on with children. Parents are insanely biased when it comes to their children. Children's self-perception is downstream from this error, compounded by their own cognitive immaturity. Then, adult recollection of their childhood aptitude is further complicated by the ravages of time as well as the loss of the greater context (people tend to remember their successes and great failures but not much between). I view it as extremely unreliable.

I consciously divorce my identity from anything I deem too unreliable a memory. I'll explore it if I have a way of checking, but I won't identify with it. More recent information is just far more relevant. One of the things I find annoying about my family is that on both sides many of them are stuck in a long-past race for validation as if they don't get much validation now so cling to what they once had.

 

[ZenRaiden]

See this is what really these question mean.... analytical dividing things into smaller units and then working with those units in different context.

That is what analytical specifically means.

Analytical thinking however evolves with age, and not in linear fashion.

Some kids yes, how lot more of it. Some kids have some much of it its scary.

On other hand you don't really have much feedback on analytical thinking.

Some of it might happen in one area not so much in another. Depends on focus and motivation.

So to know the answer Id have to be aware of it, which is hard since it happens naturally in early age.

No one lacks it. Its more about how much you do it.

Science for example goes way deep, and philosophy goes super deep in this with logic.

I certainly lacked analytical thinking in school, as in not doing much of anything since i hated school.

You also have the ability exact opposite as in synthesizing I guess? The ability to take units and put them in larger context.

This is the quality you have in other activities and not very valued in school, but essential in other parts of life and artistic and sports activities or anything larger context related.

Obviously these two ways of thinking analytical and synthesis are both conjoint.

So depending on which is which and how they coincide in your head you get some form of thinking.

Its also hard since analytical thinking and overall thinking changes due to pruning of neurons.

Depending on various things.

Eventually lots of things change in life over periods of time.

I am certain I had some of analytical thinking.