Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The thinking path

robinsloan.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 45 posts

Re: The thinking path

#21

Post by episteme »

pixl97 wrote: post #11
csours wrote: post #2

A humble suggestion: Load up contradictory thoughts or points of view, and think about them as you walk. Here's a starter pack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2a-DsX9Ezg I don't want to tell you what you should get out of this; it took me a long time to understand what 'dialectic' means. This may be intro level material to many people, but not everyone gets to go to a four year college, or gets raised in an open-mi…

> This may be intro level material to many people, but not everyone gets to go to a four year college, or gets raised in an open-minded community. Hopefully if you're a person that analyzes contradictory thoughts you've already realized that a huge portion of society cannot do this. It's always fun at family reunions when attempting to discuss a complex topic has confused their opinion for being a fact and they canno…

This still leaves room for believing all your views are the 'right' ones. Perhaps the third hard part is accepting that some of these views are valid.

But perhaps when you say views you are implicitly saying that all views are valid, which is a different kind of acceptance I suppose.

Re: The thinking path

#22

Post by f1shy »

jiehong wrote: post #8
csours wrote: post #2

A humble suggestion: Load up contradictory thoughts or points of view, and think about them as you walk. Here's a starter pack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2a-DsX9Ezg I don't want to tell you what you should get out of this; it took me a long time to understand what 'dialectic' means. This may be intro level material to many people, but not everyone gets to go to a four year college, or gets raised in an open-mi…

If you go to high school in France, this will more than ring a bell: it’s the expected essay format. Often named “dialectic plan”, or “thesis, antithesis, synthesis” [0] [0]: https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thesis,_antithesis,_synthesi...

In Germany they call it "Eröterung".

Re: The thinking path

#23

Post by tiffanyg »

csours wrote: post #2

A humble suggestion: Load up contradictory thoughts or points of view, and think about them as you walk. Here's a starter pack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2a-DsX9Ezg I don't want to tell you what you should get out of this; it took me a long time to understand what 'dialectic' means. This may be intro level material to many people, but not everyone gets to go to a four year college, or gets raised in an open-mi…

I love this comment. You've packed a lot of snippets of wisdom and good ideas into an "economized" length (# of words). And, you're exactly right - I see a lot of "meat" here, but even a decade ago, I would have seen a lot less and some of this would be more of a starting point ... some outlining and ideas to learn more about.*

Picking up a habit of 'reaching for dialectic' is one of the most valuable things I've ever learned. I've found that it even helps to 'decouple' 'ideas' from 'identity' more completely and thoroughly than quite a lot of learning about and practicing 'mindfulness' in various forms - at least, for someone like me. And, that is about as helpful as anything gets if you want to be able to "see clearly" ... to get more clarity in terms of what is "more actually true" (as opposed to whatever mix of nonsense and shades of truth(s) any of us may have in our heads at any given time).

In that vein, and I may have written this on HN before ... not sure and not bothering to check this second: true 'skepticism'** STARTS with skepticism of one's own thoughts! It's about as inefficacious as 'methods' get to spend all of one's time picking apart ideas and 'information' and the like presented from 'the outside'*** while spending no time subjecting what's presented internally to any amount of scrutiny at all.

* vs. a "parsimonious" solid set of wisdom with some breadth even if tending towards a little "ad hoc" - yet, it all hangs off common thread(s), IMO

** In more of an original [Ancient Greek] sense than modern connotation

*** I.e., NOT "the half behind the eyes", as Terry Pratchett phrases it in one of his books

Re: The thinking path

#24

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

Every morning, I get up early (5AM), and take a 5K walk. It's always the same walk, and I usually play some mindless techno, while doing it.

I use the time to "triage" the day's tasks. Sometimes, I even fix bugs, while thinking about a solution that had perplexed me, the night before.

Re: The thinking path

#25

Post by kirse »

rvrs wrote: post #15

I've become known amongst my friends for giving the same advice when it comes to most problems: "Uninstall Twitter and start going on walks." I don't think it's only useful for intellectual pursuits: we rarely get enough alone time nowadays. And when we do, we're bombarded with stimulation and noise. There's no good opportunity to be alone with ourselves. Walking in a safe, familiar place without my phone has become…

I think it's a balance. For "emotional gardening" as I call it, disconnecting from tech / anti-social media and taking a walk is great. But if you still want to assess present reality and make good judgments about the future (or even just have some novel thing to talk about), these tools can still be great for absorbing information context.

I like the Digital Wellbeing app on Android. Set a daily timer for app usage and then it gets blocked once you're over the timer.

Re: The thinking path

#26

Post by nuancebydefault »

kingkongjaffa wrote: post #20
csours wrote: post #2

A humble suggestion: Load up contradictory thoughts or points of view, and think about them as you walk. Here's a starter pack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2a-DsX9Ezg I don't want to tell you what you should get out of this; it took me a long time to understand what 'dialectic' means. This may be intro level material to many people, but not everyone gets to go to a four year college, or gets raised in an open-mi…

> Often people just want the best answer, or the truth. most people want the most convenient, easiest answer that conforms to their own confirmation biases.

Getting confirmation on a confirmation bias releases pleasant hormones and tends to be addictive. (is this true?)

Re: The thinking path

#27

Post by dfxm12 »

nuancebydefault wrote: post #26
kingkongjaffa wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Often people just want the best answer, or the truth. most people want the most convenient, easiest answer that conforms to their own confirmation biases.

Getting confirmation on a confirmation bias releases pleasant hormones and tends to be addictive. (is this true?)

I will say yes, because it makes me feel pleasant.

Re: The thinking path

#28

Post by lisper »

csours wrote: post #2

A humble suggestion: Load up contradictory thoughts or points of view, and think about them as you walk. Here's a starter pack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2a-DsX9Ezg I don't want to tell you what you should get out of this; it took me a long time to understand what 'dialectic' means. This may be intro level material to many people, but not everyone gets to go to a four year college, or gets raised in an open-mi…

> I can't write software that will work a year from now. I have no idea what the world will look like in a year. Specifically, patches are applied and versions change.

The key to solving this problem is adhering to published standards, which tend to be long-lived. I have code still in use that I wrote 30+ years ago. Of course, just adhering to standards is only half the battle. There's more to writing long-lived code than just that. But it is a skill that can be learned.

Re: The thinking path

#29

Post by JadeNB »

kirse wrote: post #25
rvrs wrote: post #15

I've become known amongst my friends for giving the same advice when it comes to most problems: "Uninstall Twitter and start going on walks." I don't think it's only useful for intellectual pursuits: we rarely get enough alone time nowadays. And when we do, we're bombarded with stimulation and noise. There's no good opportunity to be alone with ourselves. Walking in a safe, familiar place without my phone has become…

I think it's a balance. For "emotional gardening" as I call it, disconnecting from tech / anti-social media and taking a walk is great. But if you still want to assess present reality and make good judgments about the future (or even just have some novel thing to talk about), these tools can still be great for absorbing information context. I like the Digital Wellbeing app on Android. Set a daily timer for app usage…

> I think it's a balance. For "emotional gardening" as I call it, disconnecting from tech / anti-social media and taking a walk is great. But if you still want to assess present reality and make good judgments about the future (or even just have some novel thing to talk about), these tools can still be great for absorbing information context.

I don't think Xitter is a good tool for assessing present reality and making good judgments about the future, either. (Actually, I took you to mean "directly obtain accurate information about the world and act on it," but maybe you meant "find out the worst of what people are currently doing and be prepared.")

Re: The thinking path

#30

Post by every »

I find random walks to be too distracting. Instead I prefer to pace in a space, inside or out, that holds few or no surprises for me...
Post reply on HN