Thinking About Thinking
Indy Neogy and
Thinking About Thinking
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.
-Neil Postman, 2005
Everyone belongs to a tribe and underestimates how influential that tribe is on their thinking. There is little correlation between climate change denial and scientific literacy. But there is a strong correlation between climate change denial and political affiliation. That’s an extreme example, but everyone has views persuaded by identity over pur... See more
Collaborative Fund • Ideas That Changed My Life
sari and
Neuroscience research also teaches us that our emotional brains needn’t always operate beneath our radar. Richard Peterson, a psychiatrist who applies behavioral economics theory in his investment consulting business, advises clients to cultivate emotional self-awareness, notice their moods as they happen, and reflect on how their moods may influen... See more
Gardiner Morse • Decisions and Desire
The metaphors we use shape how we view the world. Is the brain like a computer? Maybe, as Gurwinder says, the brain is the opposite: a machine that tries to circumvent thinking . Cognition costs time, and in a society that is information-rich and time-poor, people will use shortcuts to make decisions - feelings, aesthetics, environment, relationshi... See more
sari azout • Things I'm thinking about
No! The brain doesn't seek to circumvent thinking, this misunderstands the optimisation that goes on. The brain seeks to circumvent (where possible) computation - because computation is not only inefficient, but very often ineffective. Incidentally, beware of writers who decide they are PCs and you are an NPC.
But that’s physics, and physics deals with the natural. Engineering, on the other hand, is a science of the artificial , and it would be downright strange to insist that engineering artifacts have no purpose or telos.
Maxim Raginsky • Engineers as philosophers, Part 3
Important point about engineering, but also something I regularly raise about how economics misunderstands itself
how to make a complete map of everything you think
Lion Kimbro’s classic! Mapping everything in your brain
learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cli... See more
andrea and
Perhaps that is why so many of us have half-done tasks on our to-do lists and half-read books on our bedside tables, scroll through Instagram while simultaneously semi-watching Netflix, and swipe between apps and tabs endlessly, from when we first open our eyes until we finally fall asleep. One uncomfortable explanation for why so many aspects of m
... See moreCasey Cep • What Monks Can Teach Us About Paying Attention
from Peter Watts: "We're not thinking machines, we're feeling machines that happen to think."
sari and
I think our starting hypothesis should be that behaviors that spread in the population arise from social learning, rather than from a mysterious unconscious process of thoughtless copying