system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5 - What is lateral thinking?
gpt
Lateral thinking is approaching a problem in a creative or unexpected way to solve it.

For example, imagine that a person has been stabbed, and the police sealed off the building and are investigating everyone present.

"We passed everyone through a metal detector and no one is carrying a weapon."  "Well, metal detectors only detect metal.  Could there have been a knife made out of wood or plastic?"

"We frisked everyone, and no one is carrying a weapon."  "Does anyone have a prosthetic leg or other accessory they could hide the weapon in?"

"No one does."  "Is it possible the weapon no longer exists?"

"How could a solid weapon disappear?"  "Perhaps it is not solid anymore.  Is there a pool of water anywhere that was left behind by a knife made of ice?"

No one would ever leap immediately to the idea of an ice blade, or a leg prosthetic, or a wooden blade.  It requires thinking creatively and questioning your own assumptions and biases to see how an unexpected situation could have occurred.