A Lesson in Lateral Thinking
Something that’s become more prevalent online these days is the satisfying takedown. Usually, it’s a screenshot making the rounds of someone casually demolishing someone else with “facts” and “logic.” It’s a dopamine hit. Sweet, sweet internet justice. But sometimes the person delivering that coup de grâce is just as wrong as the person getting nailed.
A “viral” post from Reddit is a perfect example.
Let me set the scene for you…
Someone says, “2,000 miles isn’t that much. I could drive that in a day.”
The reply comes fast, smug, and mathematically flawless. “If you drove a steady 75MPH without ever slowing down, it would take over 26 hours. More than a day. It’s called math. You should try it sometime.”
Cue the applause. They got ‘em. And the internet nods in unison. Another ignorant fool on the internet defeated by our educated hero.
Except…
Not really.
Yes, of course. The math is correct. But the mindset isn’t. And that’s what happens when people mistake accuracy for intelligence. The self-certified genius treated a day as a fixed, universal concept. They narrowed in on the fact that yes, 2,000 miles divided by 75MPH is, in fact, 26.67 hours. That’s literal thinking. Smart on paper… useless in the real world.
A lateral thinker asks, How could I reframe this?
And the answer is simple. Add one variable: Geography.
Drive east to west, and you cross time zones. The math doesn’t change, but the clock does. Given their gracious variables of “a steady 75MPH without ever slowing down,” you could gain three hours.
Start at 12:01 AM in New York and drive nonstop; you could theoretically arrive in California at 11:41 PM the same day. Is that cheating? Maybe. But is it true? Yes.
And that’s the point.
The smug corrector wasn’t wrong by any means. They just had tunnel vision. So obsessed with being technically right, they missed the bigger truth. That’s the trap of certainty: it makes you blind to anything outside your frame. Literal thinkers live to win arguments. Lateral thinkers live to change them.
The next time you see a clean, airtight “gotcha” moment, take a breath. Ask what’s being assumed. Ask what they’re leaving out. Because the smartest person in the room isn’t the one who calculates faster. It’s the one who considers all the variables and questions the assumptions everyone accepts as truth.
