A consistent-ish trait I found among the so-called “quick thinkers” is pattern recognition; or rather, the willingness to force a new situation to fit an already solved old pattern, and then if necessary address the differences. That alone makes me question the very analogy this text is built upon, and its conclusions.

I think the matter is not one of “processor” speed, as if our brains operated faster or slower for the same algorithm; I think instead we’re running different algorithms, in similar processors. With the so-called “quick thinkers” first retrieving data from memory, and then using their processing power only to address the differences.

I’ll extend an example from the text to show that. Suppose the restaurant bill was €349.20, and you’re splitting it among six people. Here are two ways to do this. By “textbook division”:

• 3<6, so skip; carry 3 over
• 4 with the carryover is 34; 5*6=30 (lower), 6*6=36 (higher), then the result is 5. 34-30=4, so carry 4 over
• 9 with the carryover is 49; 8*6=48 (lower), 9*6=54 (higher), then the result is 8. 49-48=1, so carry 1 over
• Mind decimal dot.
• 2 with the carryover is 12; 2*6=12 (bullseye), then the result is 2
• we found a 0 and there’s no carryover so transfer it to the result. End result, 5-8-dot-2-0 = €58.20

Or by approximation:

• 349.20 ≃ 360. 360/6=60.
• 360-349.20 = 10.80 ≃ 12. 12/6=2.
• 12-10.80 = 1.20; 1.20/6=0.20
• 60-2=58, 50+0.20 = €58.20

The second method is way faster. It evokes patterns you memorised from school times - you see that “36” in “360” and it triggers “6x6=36”, in a way “34” wouldn’t. And you can even drop it midway, with the intermediate result being already useful (“it’s a bit less than sixty bucks”).

Other examples seem to be like this, too. Like, the “witty responses” will be often similar to each other, because you already got a similar context in the past. But note how being quick at mental maths won’t automatically make you good at quick witty responses or vice versa, it’s field-dependent - because your pattern recognition is trained from your experience; as you perform the same activity over and over you’re memorising more patterns, and you’re able to retrieve faster, but only for that activity.

That might explain why being a “quick thinker” isn’t so much of an edge as the writer thinks - because it isn’t something intrinsic. As you’re in a craft you’ll eventually become a quick thinker for that craft.

Just my two cents.