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How to Think: The Skill You’ve Never Been Taught

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Re: How to Think: The Skill You’ve Never Been Taught

#51

Post by codegrappler »

rzz3 wrote: post #40
keiferski wrote: post #23

This is such a huge topic that any answer shorter than a book will be inadequate. But I've found two things to be helpful for learning "how to think." 1. Study philosophy. While defining philosophy precisely is difficult/impossible, it's essentially the study of thought. But, it's very important to study philosophies outside of your normal frame of reference. Read books from different eras, languages, countries, and…

I don’t enjoy reading the old language and lack of modern context. Any more modern philosophers you recommend reading? Or modern summaries of older philosophers?

If you are American I would recommend “Democracy in America” by Alexis de Tocqueville. Very easy to read and has some really mind opening lines. “Americans are cartesians without ever having read Descartes” still sticks with me to this day and I last read it over ten years ago.

Re: How to Think: The Skill You’ve Never Been Taught

#52

Post by ethanbond »

0xBABAD00C wrote: post #36
keiferski wrote: post #23

This is such a huge topic that any answer shorter than a book will be inadequate. But I've found two things to be helpful for learning "how to think." 1. Study philosophy. While defining philosophy precisely is difficult/impossible, it's essentially the study of thought. But, it's very important to study philosophies outside of your normal frame of reference. Read books from different eras, languages, countries, and…

> pick an idea that you are 100% sure is true. Not "the Earth is round" but "X value is good." Then search for people who disagree. The risk, of course, is getting convinced otherwise and having to live with that, in cases where "X value is good" is a socially useful and/or mandatory lie. Learning to think comes with its own dangers: knowing something isn't true requires more energy to hide it, and civilization is bu…

When that happens go to William James and read Pragmatism, then realize you can just decide what you want to believe based on what is adaptive for you. (Easier said than done, and first requires convincing yourself that “true” is often less valuable than “useful.”)

Re: How to Think: The Skill You’ve Never Been Taught

#53

Post by MrPatan »

runald wrote: post #39
ignoramous wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Trying to understand how an intelligent person could come to an opposite conclusion will improve your thinking ability. I don't think you can term flat-earthers intelligent. That's a dangerously low bar. > A good method for this is: pick an idea that you are 100% sure is true. Not "the Earth is round" but "X value is good." Then search for people who disagree. This is a neat trick (does it have name?), but the true…

I don't have any numbers on this, but I'm certain lots of "flat-eathers" are just trolls that enjoys annoying people who tries to act smug and smart, but in actuality failed to get the humour behind the flatness of earth. Anyone who is seriously trying to argue with flat-earthers have a very low bar for intelligence. Which is not to say that there aren't actual dumb people who actually believe the earth is flat, but…

And you can find videos with ex-flat earthers saying "I was wrong, it's round".

Now look for the same kind of videos in other categories. Which I'm not going to name here so as not to offend HN's sensibilities, but yeah, that one.

Re: How to Think: The Skill You’ve Never Been Taught

#54

Post by toolslive »

You can also limit yourself to a very small universe to make it easier to think correctly. However, results might be disappointing. Take for instance the game of chess. It's embarassing that we humans are not very good at thinking correctly and we're not very good at thinking deeply neither. It turns out we're better at using shallow pattern recognition, instincts, gut feeling and gambling.

Re: How to Think: The Skill You’ve Never Been Taught

#55

Post by marginalia_nu »

keiferski wrote: post #23

This is such a huge topic that any answer shorter than a book will be inadequate. But I've found two things to be helpful for learning "how to think." 1. Study philosophy. While defining philosophy precisely is difficult/impossible, it's essentially the study of thought. But, it's very important to study philosophies outside of your normal frame of reference. Read books from different eras, languages, countries, and…

> If you're from the modern secular West, that likely means you should read premodern, religious, non-Western writings

I wouldn't skip the western writers.

A lot of us walk around in the ruins of thousands of years of western thought, without even realizing it. So many things are taken for granted without any sort of motivation, it's a very shaky foundation once you start poking at it a bit.

Ask almost person simple questions about central themes in western thought, ask them why freedom is a desirable thing, ask them why society should be just or why we should have equality, why we should care about human rights, and they'll most likely just get flustered and call you an idiot for not already knowing the answer which they refuse to tell you because you're obviously too dumb. These are fairly simple questions that could come from the mouth of a child, and they absolutely do have well thought out answers, but the point is that almost nobody dares pose these questions, so they live in ignorance instead. Everyone's a skeptic but only when it comes to things that differ from what they already believe is true.

To that end, Plato is a fantastic teacher on how to identify things we take for granted, how to challenge assumptions and how to arrive at answers, and an all-round enjoyable read to boot.

Re: How to Think: The Skill You’ve Never Been Taught

#56

Post by marginalia_nu »

rzz3 wrote: post #40
keiferski wrote: post #23

This is such a huge topic that any answer shorter than a book will be inadequate. But I've found two things to be helpful for learning "how to think." 1. Study philosophy. While defining philosophy precisely is difficult/impossible, it's essentially the study of thought. But, it's very important to study philosophies outside of your normal frame of reference. Read books from different eras, languages, countries, and…

I don’t enjoy reading the old language and lack of modern context. Any more modern philosophers you recommend reading? Or modern summaries of older philosophers?

If you don't mind a podcast or two, you can get a lot of context from these: Stephen West's "Philosophize This!" as the light-weight option, and Peter Adamsons' "History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps" as the more academic option.

Both go chronologically, from pre-socratics onward. West's podcast is a bit rough in the first episodes, but it keeps getting better.

Re: How to Think: The Skill You’ve Never Been Taught

#58

Post by passion__desire »

https://www.citatum.org/book/Intuition_Pumps_and_Other_Tools...

You can`t do much carpentry with your bare hands and you can`t do much thinking with your bare brain.

- Bo Dahlbom, quoted by Daniel Dennett in his book

"Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q_mY54hjM0 (talk by Daniel on Google Campus)

Re: How to Think: The Skill You’ve Never Been Taught

#59

Post by ithkuil »

keiferski wrote: post #49
rzz3 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t enjoy reading the old language and lack of modern context. Any more modern philosophers you recommend reading? Or modern summaries of older philosophers?

I generally don't like summaries, as you just get a contemporary interpretation of what the translator/academic thinks the philosopher was saying. Far better to go straight to the source. Eventually you'll need to read the original works, but I'd recommend starting with philosophical fiction. Crime and Punishment , The Plague , Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance , etc. Plato's dialogues are pretty readable, to…

Original texts are important but you also need to have a very good understanding of the historical language and wider context in order to not fall in similar pitfalls yourself as the ones you wanted to avoid on the first place.

Re: How to Think: The Skill You’ve Never Been Taught

#60

Post by heavenlyblue »

0xBABAD00C wrote: post #36
keiferski wrote: post #23

This is such a huge topic that any answer shorter than a book will be inadequate. But I've found two things to be helpful for learning "how to think." 1. Study philosophy. While defining philosophy precisely is difficult/impossible, it's essentially the study of thought. But, it's very important to study philosophies outside of your normal frame of reference. Read books from different eras, languages, countries, and…

> pick an idea that you are 100% sure is true. Not "the Earth is round" but "X value is good." Then search for people who disagree. The risk, of course, is getting convinced otherwise and having to live with that, in cases where "X value is good" is a socially useful and/or mandatory lie. Learning to think comes with its own dangers: knowing something isn't true requires more energy to hide it, and civilization is bu…

Your opinion on this is akin to my parents opinion about sports: those who do sports get traumas and then regret it. Therefore don’t do sports.

This is a very weak fallacy.

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