Stephen Shapiro shows how swapping one word in a problem statement opens new solutions. Asking how to buy a car versus how to get transportation shifts you from vehicles to ride-share, hitchhiking, or teleportation.
Chapters
What if changing just one word in a problem statement can completely change your thought process? So the hypernim lens basically means how can we use a word that is less specific? Imagine you're looking to buy a new car so that you get to work. So what if you swap the word car with vehicle? So vehicle is a less specific word of car. Well, now you have other options, such as motorcycles, buses, bicycles, and a whole bunch of other different ways to go. But we could take vehicle and look at the hypernym for vehicle, and now you get to transportation. Well, transportation is even different, because now it doesn't even mean we have to own. What if we had access? What if we had ride sharing apps? Or hitchhiking or teleportation? Each of these gives us a different range of possibilities.