Learn To Think Using Thought Experiments: How to Expand Your Mental Horizons, Understand Metacognition, Improve Your Curiosity, and Think Like a Philosopher

Mental flexibility, critical thinking, the ability to reflexively see yourself think and adjust given incomplete information—these are the things that make a person intelligent.

Any time we deliberately manipulate conditions around us and carefully note the outcome, we are doing an experiment. Granted, not every experiment is going to be rigorous or perfectly sound! Nevertheless, experimentation is a method of patterning and understanding our encounters with the world. The concept behind this book is that some of the best

A big part of a thought experiment is thoroughly considering the consequences and implications of certain conditions, actions or choices. It’s more along the lines

They allow us to discover aspects of ourselves we might not have otherwise, and think of the ramifications of certain possible acts long before we are technologically capable of them.

What philosophy in general, and thought experiments in particular, can teach us is twofold: firstly, that we are inhabiting a way of thinking at all, and secondly, that our way of thinking can be changed.

perceptions (or indeed your anxiety) be fooling you right now? Can you find evidence that a person who doesn’t hate you could still act in that way? (Yes, you can—you did the same thing last week to someone you genuinely like). So, have you stumbled upon an unshakeable law of the universe or is it merely a thought your brain has come up with, beari

our conceptions of reality are not identical with reality. Maps are, necessarily, simplified

It’s habitually asking “in what ways could I be wrong?” instead of “where can I find evidence that I’m right?” It’s this willingness to look at things one or two layers deeper that characterizes a higher quality of thought. While most people,

For Plato, being able to turn your head and educate yourself on the real sources of your immediate experience is akin to learning about his Forms. (He was, ironically and unfortunately, rather