I'm pretty sure you can find convincing articles that would explain that overthinking leads to bad decisions and that you should be more spontaneous.
Some of the best/well known books have also been written in less than a month.
How to Think: The Skill You’ve Never Been Taught
111–120 of 136 posts
Re: How to Think: The Skill You’ve Never Been Taught
#112This 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…
This is an inherent risk to a lot of things that not many people talk about. Learning more things, seeing more of the world always comes with a risk of feeling trapped in your old life at the end. This is true for abstract things like thinking about freedom or liberty or equality, but also for pedestrian things like trying a better than usual toilet paper.
Re: How to Think: The Skill You’ve Never Been Taught
#113> Schools don’t teach you a method of thinking. Colleges do. At least, liberal arts colleges do. There is definitely a financial problem with the cost of college, I don't want to diminish that fact. Our higher educational system needs a refactor for a plethora of valid reasons... But how to think - how to deconstruct, compare, contrast, and reconstruct into something new - this is exactly the basis for traditional li…
> Colleges do. At least, liberal arts colleges do.
Engineering/Scientific schools do as well.
The scientific method pretty much requires to question every assumption and serious engineering is all about looking at and understanding tradeoffs.
> I feel the understated problem in our educational system is that people are being encouraged to think of it as a place to get job skills to get your first job, and thereby people don't even realize the underlying lessons that it really teaches.
Exactly. Why take rigorous classes and master the fundamentals when you can go to a coding bootcamp and rote memorise algorithmic questions to pass interviews?
Re: How to Think: The Skill You’ve Never Been Taught
#114> Schools don’t teach you a method of thinking. Colleges do. At least, liberal arts colleges do. There is definitely a financial problem with the cost of college, I don't want to diminish that fact. Our higher educational system needs a refactor for a plethora of valid reasons... But how to think - how to deconstruct, compare, contrast, and reconstruct into something new - this is exactly the basis for traditional li…
University does not teach critical thinking. They teach assignments and tests, where the information is forgotten as quickly as it was received. You do not learn critical thinking having to remember every definition in the textbook. Yet that is still how classes work. Whatever the intent of liberal arts, it's a clear demonstrable failure now. You should not be able to graduate without being able to think for yourself…
There are plenty of university classes that go beyond “teaching assignments and tests”, though they’re easy to miss. My favorite courses were those in a room of less than 20 where speaking in the class felt natural and encouraged, whether a math or philosophy class, and grades were evaluated from demonstrating understanding.
I believe that making student loans expellable in bankruptcy would go a long way to righting the bloated costs and budgets we see today. There’s also probably a case for setting a price ceiling based on a multiple of the local minimum wage, as well as a whole slew of strategies to be explored before launching a salvo against the research institutions that power our scientific progress.
Re: How to Think: The Skill You’ve Never Been Taught
#115> Schools don’t teach you a method of thinking. Colleges do. At least, liberal arts colleges do. There is definitely a financial problem with the cost of college, I don't want to diminish that fact. Our higher educational system needs a refactor for a plethora of valid reasons... But how to think - how to deconstruct, compare, contrast, and reconstruct into something new - this is exactly the basis for traditional li…
University does not teach critical thinking. They teach assignments and tests, where the information is forgotten as quickly as it was received. You do not learn critical thinking having to remember every definition in the textbook. Yet that is still how classes work. Whatever the intent of liberal arts, it's a clear demonstrable failure now. You should not be able to graduate without being able to think for yourself…
The only university courses I know of that are about rote memorization are biology classes, but those aren't liberal arts per se.
Re: How to Think: The Skill You’ve Never Been Taught
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.”)
> 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. Now when that happens, also make sure to remember all the adaptationists who stayed silent and turned a blind eye on all the atrocities committed by their governments and leaders, in their name and with their silent agreement. Ultimately this comes down to individua…
Let us search for novelty and new niches! That’s why I love this forum, above all else it brings in similar types who blaze epistemic trails.
Re: How to Think: The Skill You’ve Never Been Taught
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
A good translation will contain a lot of that information as in the notes. I like the Oxford World Classics series as the translations are very good and the notes are often fantastic, the Cambridge Companion-series also make a very solid complement.
Ah sorry I thought we were talking about untranslated original texts. Translations with a lot of notes are surely more faithful to the original than a random summary, but there is still plenty of room to interpretation.
Re: How to Think: The Skill You’ve Never Been Taught
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don't think you can term flat-earthers intelligent. That's a dangerously low bar. Well if they aren't intelligent, wouldn't understanding their reasoning be easier to understand? I at least don't associate simpletons with convoluted logic.
Yeah, dismissing people who believe dumb things as dumb is a horrible thought-terminating cliche. Even the dumbest functioning human is really smart. We're just much better at creating stories ("convoluted logic") than we are understanding our belief-making process.
> Yeah, dismissing people who believe dumb things as dumb is a horrible thought-terminating cliche.
Dismiss them? The context is: I don't think it is necessary to understand the thought processes of truth deniers [0] to cultivate the "how to think" skill for yourself.
[0] Something that's a 100% true: Square has 4 sides, 0 + 0 = 0, The Hubble Space Telescope is real, etc
Re: How to Think: The Skill You’ve Never Been Taught
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, dismissing people who believe dumb things as dumb is a horrible thought-terminating cliche. Even the dumbest functioning human is really smart. We're just much better at creating stories ("convoluted logic") than we are understanding our belief-making process.
> Yeah, dismissing people who believe dumb things as dumb is a horrible thought-terminating cliche. Dismiss them? The context is: I don't think it is necessary to understand the thought processes of truth deniers [0] to cultivate the "how to think" skill for yourself. [0] Something that's a 100% true: Square has 4 sides, 0 + 0 = 0, The Hubble Space Telescope is real, etc
This implies you have access to undeniable truth, which is sort of rare. Statements about geometric shapes and numbers can be true by definition, but they are not statements about the entities in the world (numbers and shapes are from a separate ontological category than a telescope; you can't show me where the number 3 is for example -- it doesn't have a location, it isn't an object).
The Hubble telescope may be real. I have more reasons to think it exists than to think it doesn't exist, but I wouldn't call the reasons undeniable. I haven't even seen the thing, nor have I touched it. I've only heard people talk about it, seen text written about it, I haven't been to space, nor have I talked to anyone who was involved in building it. I've also heard people say the earth is flat, and seen that written in text too, so evidently, spoken and written accounts alone is not undeniable evidence.
Re: How to Think: The Skill You’ve Never Been Taught
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Yeah, dismissing people who believe dumb things as dumb is a horrible thought-terminating cliche. Dismiss them? The context is: I don't think it is necessary to understand the thought processes of truth deniers [0] to cultivate the "how to think" skill for yourself. [0] Something that's a 100% true: Square has 4 sides, 0 + 0 = 0, The Hubble Space Telescope is real, etc
This implies you have access to undeniable truth, which is sort of rare. Statements about geometric shapes and numbers can be true by definition, but they are not statements about the entities in the world (numbers and shapes are from a separate ontological category than a telescope; you can't show me where the number 3 is for example -- it doesn't have a location, it isn't an object). The Hubble telescope may be rea…
I get the gist of your stance, but undeniable truth does exist. Just because a few deny it, doesn't make it untrue, if that makes sense. And those few who do deny it... what are we going to learn from their thought processes to aid our thinking? I don't think much that we wouldn't already know. It is an interesting experiment to make one self go through, however. 4chan is one click away.