(un)learning

School tests weaknesses. Life rewards strengths.

Spending more time on our weakest areas is tempting, but life mostly rewards us for investing in our strengths. Imagine a student who struggles with math but excels at writing. In school, they might spend hours raising their math grades from a C to a B. However, spending the same time on writing might

Neuroscience, neuroanatomy, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, psychoanalysis, and phenomenology are some of the most directly relevant fields to choose from; however, trying to summarize their findings would result in an account similar to the descriptions the blind men gave of the elephant: each different, and each unrelated to the other

While specialization is necessary to develop the complexity of any pattern of thought, the goals-ends relationship must always be kept clear: specialization is for the sake of thinking better, and not an end in itself. Unfortunately many serious thinkers devote all their mental effort to becoming well-known scholars, but in the meantime they forget

Requiring proof is an enemy of progress. This is why companies like Amazon use a principle of disagree and commit. As Jeff Bezos explained it in an annual shareholder letter, instead of demanding convincing results, experiments start with asking people to make bets. “Look, I know we disagree on this but will you gamble with me on it?”20 The goal in

I believe that good teachers introduce new thoughts, but great teachers introduce new ways of thinking.

The brighter you are, the harder it can be to see your own limitations. Being good at thinking can make you worse at rethinking.

When we’re in scientist mode, we refuse to let our ideas become ideologies. We don’t start with answers or solutions; we lead with questions and puzzles. We don’t preach from intuition; we teach from evidence. We don’t just have healthy skepticism about other people’s arguments; we dare to disagree with our own arguments.

Thinking like a scientist involves more than just reacting with an open mind. It means being actively open-minded.27 It requires searching for reasons why we might be wrong—not for reasons why we must be right—and revising our views based on what we learn.

When psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi studied eminent scientists like Linus Pauling and Jonas Salk, he concluded that what differentiated them from their peers was their cognitive flexibility, their willingness “to move from one extreme to the other as the occasion requires.”29 The same pattern held for great artists, and in an independent stud