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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

#121

Post by SamPatt »

Archer6621 wrote: post #99
SamPatt wrote: post #22

This claim that the best writers write slowly is suspicious at best. Many of the best writers out there were prolific. And there are innumerable bad writers who barely write at all. Writing is an iterative process. I'm skeptical of advice about slowing down writing intentionally. I've found writing more and editing more improves my writing more than slower, more deliberate writing, particularly since it's less likely…

I also don't believe in this claim, or at least in it being a generally applicable thing. There's a point at which slowing down gives diminishing returns in my experience. I'm a music composer and I had to learn that the hard way. Sometimes my first ideas end up being good enough already, or even better than previous/future ideas that I had iterated a lot on. I also found that working for too long on a piece can pote…

I find the same with photography. I notice when editing that the first photo of a scene / subject is the best photo much more frequently than chance.

Though it's also true that the last photo is also much more frequent. If I took 20 photos of something, I'd say I use either the first or last photo taken probably 1/3 of the time.

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

#122

Post by thunkshift1 »

> ‘I find for myself that my first thought is never my best thought. My first thought is always someone else’s; it’s always what I’ve already heard about the subject, always the conventional wisdom. It’s only by concentrating, sticking to the question, being patient, letting all the parts of my mind come into play, that I arrive at an original idea.’

Spot on

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

#123

Post by marginalia_nu »

ignoramous wrote: post #120
marginalia_nu wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What do you mean when you say that a proposition is true?

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

#125

Post by csh0 »

devwastaken wrote: post #104
codingdave wrote: post #67

> 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…

OP mentioned that he believes that liberal arts colleges do teach critical thinking. You responded by saying that universities do not teach critical thinking and then you went on to claim that the liberal arts initiative is a "clear demonstrable failure" but I am not really sure what you mean by this. I think you are conflating liberal arts the subject, sometimes used as an umbrella term for the humanities, with liberal arts colleges. Could you explain?

Liberal arts colleges, as OP was referring to, have only awarded 4-5% of all bachelor's degrees conferred on a yearly basis for the last decade[0]. In light of this information, I find it difficult to believe that liberal arts colleges are the source of the problems you claim, considering that the vast majority of bachelor's degree holders went to a non-LAC. It would be strange to look at the entire population of BA/BS recipients, note some lack of critical thinking ability in them, and then focus your energy on the source of only 5% of them.

If you are interested to point fingers at a major source of student debt and a place where "critical thinking skills" are definitely not being taught, consider for-profit colleges as a potential candidate. "For-profit colleges only enroll 10 percent of students but they account for half of all student-loan defaults."[1]

[0]https://www.gettysburg.edu/offices/institutional-analysis/pd... [1]https://www.chicagobooth.edu/review/whos-fault-student-loan-...

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

#126

Post by the_only_law »

csh0 wrote: post #125
devwastaken wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

OP mentioned that he believes that liberal arts colleges do teach critical thinking. You responded by saying that universities do not teach critical thinking and then you went on to claim that the liberal arts initiative is a "clear demonstrable failure" but I am not really sure what you mean by this. I think you are conflating liberal arts the subject, sometimes used as an umbrella term for the humanities, with libe…

Scary thing is, I’ve seen non-profit public and private universities start to act like for-profits.

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

#127

Post by loki49152 »

bnralt wrote: post #83
codingdave wrote: post #67

> 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. Where's the evidence that they do? And how would we determine which schools/teachers/courses do this effectively, and which don't? It's not unusual that people who are taught to think less critically believe that they are thinking more critically (conspiracy theorists are a good example of this, as are most ideologues). So let's consider another possibility - perhaps…

This should be what we expect to find, at least in US schools, because it was the explicitly stated, intended purpose of Progressive Education. They designed the entirety of their program after the Prussian model which was to produce workers trained enough to succeed in farms or factories but not smart enough to question the orders of their leaders.

Read William James. Read John Dewey - but really read him, because he was more aware that he had to soft-sell the socialist indoctrination program to an individualistic culture that wasn’t interested in buying.

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

#128

Post by adverbly »

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…

It sounds like you aren't quite talking about the same sort of thing as the author is. The author seems to be focused more on independent, original thought, and actually recommends more or less the opposite to your points:

> Thinking means concentrating on one thing long enough to develop an idea about it. Not learning other people’s ideas, or memorizing a body of information, however much those may sometimes be useful. Developing your own ideas. In short, thinking for yourself.

Your advice seems to be focused on how to "build a better intuition/thinking" skills(what a CEO might typically want to learn), where the author's sounds to be more around "how to build high quality original work"(what a creator might want to do). Your advice probably fits the title of "how to think" better, but there's something to what the author is saying as well - high quality, original work is extremely valuable. Again, you're right - this deserves a book.

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

#129

Post by MCllorf »

bnralt wrote: post #83
codingdave wrote: post #67

> 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. Where's the evidence that they do? And how would we determine which schools/teachers/courses do this effectively, and which don't? It's not unusual that people who are taught to think less critically believe that they are thinking more critically (conspiracy theorists are a good example of this, as are most ideologues). So let's consider another possibility - perhaps…

Producing data for something like that sounds like an incredible ask and I'd be super interested to see how other people have tried to tackle that problem.

My anecdotal experience is that they teach something close to that in philosophy departments, at least insofar as you need to be able to present the logical steps and connections you're making in a plain way so your paper is easier to engage with regardless of how abstract the topic is.

I think the actual critical thinking is something that happens internally and you can't really correct or improve that as a teacher if the student isn't capable of explaining what they're thinking - and if you can teach the student to explain what's going on inside their head, they can learn more effectively from people more intelligent than them later on because then it's public knowledge what they're screwing up instead of private. So to that end good writing might be even more fundamental than critical thinking skills.

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