Don’t judge a book by its cover
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- 5 yr. ago
- Posts
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- 5 yr. ago
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Could be thinking out loud or reflection via writing 🤷♂️
If you play the original version, the history is different. The original version was rock, scissors, plant. Rock destroys scissors. Scissors cut plant. Plant grows and cracks rock.
Dead-easy, beautiful web apps so groups can quickly and easily vote using Ranked-Choice Voting or Majority Judgement (with or without uncertainty). Something FLOSS with reproducible builds, to build trust in the software.
Automated systems (could be an app 🤷♂️) to go from a textbook, a YouTube video, or a web course to a comprehensive set of spaced and interleaved quizzes and flashcards.
Fair enough. If it is fundamental, it affects many things. How do you think it’s best taught or developed? What are the specific activities that you as a teacher or as a student would do to improve it?
Ah. It sounds as if you’re saying that critical thinking skills are the base of many skills. That’s actually an interesting issue: could you increase skills by skill and end up with someone that is a critical thinker? Or is critical thinking something fundamental that naturally manifests in many different skills?
Omg I just squinted and saw the pirate ships. Thanks for your contribution.
As foretold 🙏
other things
Interesting. So you're saying that critical thinking is not what I mentioned, but rather it is something different (an "other thing"). What would you say critical thinking is?
People have said “critical thinking”. I agree, but we can be more specific than that:
- Formal logic to think clearly
- Relational frame training to think fluidly
- Human cognitive bias awareness and mitigation strategies to avoid magical thinking or otherwise systematic cognitive errors
- Discourse Analysis to be critical of any message https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LKiaYBVAEUk&pp=
- Mindfulness and acceptance skills to engage with what our thoughts and body tell us, regardless of whether it’s painful or difficult
- Visible Thinking Routines to make thinking and communication with others easier
- Research design (Joseph A. Maxwell) and system design (How to Design Programs) to seek information critically and how to systematically tackle challenges
I’ve been trying to find this meme but with SpongeBob SquarePants’ fish
I love this method. It’s how I solve cubes. It’s fast and it minimizes the amount of turns you do. While new methods (methods with optimized algorithms) trump this method, there was a time this method won many tournaments. The method is still fast and gratifying.
It requires thinking, but it requires minimal memorization of algorithms. With this method, you can get away with learning only one or two algorithms. It’ll be much less like memorizing history dates and much more like learning to ride a bike: learn it once and never forget it.
“Deep” or “profound” means nothing in research design. If you read it somewhere, see if it defined precisely in this context. If not, see if you can mentally replace it with a more precise word. If not, be skeptical of the validity of the claims.
My Research Design professor
I’m being a bit cheeky but this has actually stuck with me over the years and I do think it’s helpful.
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Depending on what I eat, it stinks more than or less. Have you tried tinkering with your food for those purposes?
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Same here. That’s why if I’m eating alone I actually clean everything before eating (except for the plate or plates I’m eating from and the cutlery I’m using).
Ironsworn and Starforged
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You may not realize it, but you're pointing your laser towards having money and winning at games. These are sensible enough values, since a lack of money can make life difficult and losing at games can be frustrating. In this regard, you are much like other people who share those values.
You claim that "low yields games are objectively irrational", a statement that only ever makes sense if you take for granted what objectivity is. From this perspective, it's easy to argue that the Holocaust was a loss of rationality, a mass hysteria, but this ignores the thorough tracking, meticulous record-keeping, massive logistics planning, and investigation that it involved. Once again, rationality is a tool, it's a laser that can be pointed anywhere, including bigotry and inhumane values.
There is a difference between science and values, between actions and values, between tools and values. The fact that most humans agree on values doesn't mean they are 'objectively true'. These humans are like fish in water, fish who don't realize they're in water. They have been socialized into the values of this culture and are absolutely certain they are right and others are wrong. Their gods are the only true gods (which is exactly what their neighbors, who hold other gods dear, believe). These humans don't realize it, but they too are pointing their lasers toward their beliefs, their gods, and everything they hold dear.
Maybe it helps to look at this inside the brain. Decades of research has shown we build our concepts through relational frames, or conceptual Lego bricks. These tiny bricks relate concepts, such as "low yields games are worse than high yields games", and they combine to create cognitive palaces. Rationality is a set of relational frames, a ladder of sorts that can be taken anywhere in the palace to help us solve problems and embody our values. Once again, to use the tool we need values; we point the laser; we take the ladder somewhere.
In our mental palaces, we like to keep things organized. We like coherence. But not all order is the same. There is something called literal coherence, which leads us to use deduction, logic, and probabilistic thought —rationality— so that we are right. "Aktchually" guys are literally coherent. Many OCD patients are literally coherent (it doesn't mean they're not suffering). They always carry their rationality ladder with them, even if it has a high price.
And then there's something else, called functional coherence, where we care less about being right and more about what works, what's helpful, what gets us closer to a valued life and what doesn't. With functional coherence, we accept that we can't clean the whole palace. It's okay if there's leaves on the paths next to the gardens. It's okay if the books aren't in alphabetical order. We know we can use the ladder when we need it, but we sometimes decide to be nimble and run to greet our loved ones, or decide to look in the mirror and be compassionate with whom we see, or really savor the banquet we're about to eat. This doesn't mean the ladder can't help us put up the mirror or fetch the ingredients for our meal. It just means that we don't get stuck with the ladder.
I'm using metaphorical language because it's a fast way to convey information in limited time, but if you're interested in how rationality is built through cognitive bricks, how we can sometimes get stuck in the webs of thought that we build, and how we can use our cognition to live a valued life, you can check out Relational Frame Theory.
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Others in the thread have already hinted at this fact: logic and optimization are lasers that can be pointed at anything. Point it towards money and of course it’s irrational to forfeit profits for good wine. Point it towards the good wine and of course it’s irrational to forfeit evenings drinking good wine with friends.
Put another way, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.
Of course, this doesn’t mean most people don’t share some common values. Most people want both wine and profits!
Not only is logic and optimization a laser, but optimization can happen at many levels.
There are many experiments where the most egg-laying hens are selected and bred, but often these hens are aggressive and kill each other. However, when whole groups of hens (e.g. a group of 5 hens) are chosen, some of the hens do not lay eggs but are peace-makers and create the perfect environment for egg-laying eggs to lay many eggs.
In this example, optimization happened at the group-level and not at the individual level.
Similarly, rich people who leave high-tax societies end up in a ‘Lamborghini in a road made of mud’ situation. However, if rich people contribute to the societies that made them rich in the first place, everyone benefits. There are lower anxiety, depression, and suicide rates for everyone (including the rich) in more egalitarian societies. Here you can see the laser and the levels: the laser is either pointed at the luxury car or the quality of life, while the level is either the individual or whole society.
Group-level selection seems irrational for those who think that being an egotist is the only way.
Of course, life is not just about lasers and levels. It’s about values. Rationality is a tool. It can help us live valued lives or trip us up. If you want good wine, good cheese, money to buy something else, good friends, and a good society, that’s what matters.
You can actually train for this!
You can train yourself to become more attuned to your interoception. This will make it easier to identify internal prompts like anxiety or hunger. In fact, a friend of mine was studying to become a psychotherapist and last year had me serve as a guinea pig for interoception interventions. In summary, if you find mindfulness practices that involve your body and your own thoughts, you'll be more attuned to your interoception. Things like active meditations can help a lot. You can check out evidence-based and peer-reviewed programs like Healthy Minds.
You can train yourself not just to notice your interoception, but also to use interoception to build habits. I suspect this is what the people who do not use external prompts (like stickies) do: they have habits that kick in with not-so-evident prompts. They could be using something called an 'action prompt' or an 'internal prompt'. I'm using the language of Tiny Habits because it's helpful in this context.
Tiny Habits can teach you how to create habits of all kinds, whether you use external, action, or internal prompts. Tiny Habits prefers prompts that are actions (e.g. "After I put the toothbrush down then I will pick up the dental floss"). But internal prompts are perfectly viable (e.g. "When I feel the heat on my skin and the tension in my jaw, I will describe my inner emotions to myself as if I was listening to a good friend").
You can understand cues and habits more in depth with contextual behavior analysis. CBA or a qualified professional can help us notice when we struggle to pay attention because of conditions like ADHD or anxiety. Something else that CBA can reveal is that, sometimes, we struggle to pay attention because we haven't developed the mental information highways that can make our thoughts flow freely. Things like relational frame training can help us build those highways faster. Another option is to learn to think visibly (Harvard's Project Zero) about our everyday life, so that we build dense information highways that we can later use in daily life.
Of course, the fact is that plenty of humans use external prompts deliberately to help them coordinate and remember things. There's a reason Scrum boards and Kanban are so popular. There's a reason calendar apps and Getting Things Done are so popular. There's a reason many societies have daily, weekly, or yearly rituals. You're among friends :)
Long ago I had a friend who claimed something similar. In front of the camp fire, he claimed he was feeing spirits inside of him and that he became possessed. He gained attention from the group for about a minute. At first they asked if he was okay. He continued to act possessed, so they stopped being kind. They yelled at him, made fun of him, imitated him….
I sat next to him and quietly asked if he was okay and needed anything. I didn’t really know what his reaction would be because I didn’t know him. He was a friend of a friend. Still, I told him that him and I could leave to take a walk and talk. He didn’t respond and simply stared at the fire. He ignored us for the rest of that night.
The following morning, he decided to act ignorant. “What happened? I don’t remember anything.” The group was pissed at him and barely talked to him. He hasn’t been invited to anything ever since.
This whole thing was very unfortunate. It’s a memory of mine that is painful. I understand back then we were teenagers. Teenagers explore their identities, sometimes in cringy ways. That’s normal. But still, the event isolated him from the group. And if I talk about this whole incident to anyone who was there that night, they still resent him.
I suppose this is a long answer to your question. If someone claimed they had a vision of the vehicle crashing/exploding and everyone dying, nobody would believe them and they’d be in for a tough time.