How to improve thinking skills
The best solution to improve thinking skills is to write and try more I guess (if there exists another way you are REALLY welcome to introduce what it is)
However, I cannot construct a feedback mechanism that will help me to correct things other than sending my zettels to another person.
Any thoughts on how to improve thinking skills or build a feedback loop by myself?
Selen. Psychology freak. https://twitter.com/neuro__flow
“You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin
Howdy, Stranger!
Comments
In my opinion, my thinking skills are directly related to the quantity and quality of the mental models I have internalized.
You can internalize (and improve) mental models by
So, how do you build a feedback loop to correct yourself without involving a third person?
Test the predictions of your mental models against reality.
Your mental models should provide a prediction of reality. Do an experiment and see if the prediction of your mental model explains what happens in reality. If there is a mismatch, that error can be used as feedback to improve your mental model.
For example, I have a mental model for writing blog posts. This mental model predicts that, if I follow the proposed workflow of this mental model, writing a blog post should be easy. However, lately, I have been finding it challenging to write for my blog. How is this possible? This error between reality and the prediction of my mental model indicates that there is a mistake in my thinking about writing. Currently, I am improving my mental model about writing, which leads me to a deeper understanding of the writing process.
“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” —Isaac Newton
eljardindegestalt.com
Dare I answer!
Writing is thinking. It is dose-dependent. More writing leads to more thinking, and anything that leads to more writing leads to more thinking.
To build a feedback loop that supports writing, you can use the pantheon of habit-forming paths outlined in the popular literature. Routine review and refactoring are habits that trigger a lot of writing and, therefore, thinking.
Exercise, mostly walking solitary or with a conversation companion, is a powerful feeder to the writing process. It stimulates thinking and, when written, becomes actualized into ideas.
Will Simpson
My zettelkasten is for my ideas, not the ideas of others. I don’t want to waste my time tinkering with my ZK; I’d rather dive into the work itself. My peak cognition is behind me. One day soon, I will read my last book, write my last note, eat my last meal, and kiss my sweetie for the last time.
kestrelcreek.com
I have just found a Wikipedia article which shows this process :-)
“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” —Isaac Newton
eljardindegestalt.com
The phrase mental model somehow clicked here and I gained a different understanding of it especially when combined with the predictions.
But one question... I mainly take notes about cognitive science literature, which I need to be more critical thinker in to come up with research questions. How can mental models inform science?
Maybe I can use time and change as a partner. Thank you.
Selen. Psychology freak. https://twitter.com/neuro__flow
“You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin
Truly by yourself? Then, you would be in an echo chamber of 1, with no concept of even the meaning of improvement.
My middle daughter is a very successful author of adult fiction. As part of her "apprenticeship", she spent 4 years earning a creative writing degree at university. Subsequently, she read the works of other successful authors (old and new) and wrote endlessly and tirelessly, producing book after book. Each one was an improvement over the last, with her best critics being her readers and her second best being her competitors (by analyzing why they were successful).
Always, always, she improved through feedback from others.
Cal Newport, in his book "So Good They Can't Ignore You", emphasizes the importance of building your skills in any particular area by developing a craftsman mindset. The idea of apprenticing to become a master craftsman applies to all of our self-improvement efforts
Of course, you can read what others say on a particular topic and direct your practice to test their hypotheses. But then, how will you know if your application of their ideas is fruitful? By feedback from others. You just cannot avoid it.
First, I note that this discussion seems to be a continuation of the discussion of "The Iceberg Theory of the Zettelkasten Method", in case anyone missed the previous discussion.
Second, I basically agree with what @FernandoNobel said (but with a distinction that I will mention in a moment). In the previous discussion @c4lvorias already mentioned "mental lenses", which seems almost the same as Fernando's "mental models". I am not sure what @c4lvorias meant by "running the math" in the previous discussion. If "running the math" means using a model to run a simulation, then what Fernando said is importantly different: running a simulation is not the same as testing a model against reality.
The distinction that I would add to what Fernando said is that I would not characterize all the relevant models and methods as "internalized", that is, as necessarily being entirely in your head. (But they could still be "mental" in the less usual understanding of extended and distributed cognitive systems.1) I collect diagrams (flowcharts, etc.) and similar tools. I don't have all of them completely internalized. But (I hope) I know when they could be relevant, and I know where to find them when I need them.
@c4lvorias said:
Models can be part of science as both inputs and outputs of testing.1 (See, e.g., Neurathian bootstrap.)
Third, in the previous discussion, @c4lvorias said that they had found only one effective book for improving thinking skills, by Meadows. I assume this refers to Thinking In Systems: A Primer by Donella Meadows. But Meadows only addresses one class of models, system dynamics models. There are other kinds of models you will want to learn, I imagine. In the previous discussion, I mentioned a relevant hierarchy of categories on English Wikipedia that point to other kinds of models and methods. For example, in Category:Problem structuring methods, system dynamics is only one of twelve kinds of problem structuring methods listed. I don't think that all the other PSMs listed there are nonsense and impractical; if you're not familiar with them, you may want to learn about them. Keep learning about different kinds of models so that your conception of "mental model" is not itself modeled on only one kind of model.
Fourth (and this may be obvious but I feel like saying it), although we aim to become autonomous in our thinking, we don't become autonomous by ourselves. I have been continuously learning from others, and I intend to continue to do so. Knowing when to seek help is an important skill too. And it seems that you are demonstrating that skill by asking "Any thoughts on how to improve thinking skills or build a feedback loop by myself?" The goal is to become more autonomous, but we become more autonomous with the help of others.
Ronald N. Giere (2002). "Models as parts of distributed cognitive systems". In: Magnani, L. & Nersessian, N. J. (eds.), Model-based reasoning: science, technology, values (pp. 227–241). New York: Kluwer Academic Publishers. ↩︎ ↩︎
Actually I don't mean to avoid it, just think it as an issue of practicality and speed. Feedback taken.
Oh, Meadows again.
I have problems in application and very high standards of knowledge. I am not satisfied with it. And I didn't imply that they are nonsense and impractical. That statement of mine was completely subjective and casual. I mean I wrote it without thinking twice, just was an ordinary sentence.
I find Meadows' work as directly applicable, though. I read a lot about sciences as mental lenses for example, or now reading Antifragile, never found an application area. (My fault, of course.) I wanted to ask for a cure in a sense to my knowing-what-do-to-but-cannot problem.
(I read Language, Truth and Logic today. I find it directly applicable too for example.)
I'll check the article you cited.
Selen. Psychology freak. https://twitter.com/neuro__flow
“You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin
@c4lvorias said:
If you are referring to the book by A. J. Ayer, keep in mind that he later said, "I don't think much of Language, Truth and Logic is true. I think it is full of mistakes." The verifiability criterion of meaning, for example, is considered by many philosophers to be mistaken. As Elliott Sober put it, "My desire to resuscitate the notion of testability does not mean that I sympathize with the testability criterion of meaning. The epistemological notion of testability has nothing much to do with the linguistic notion of meaningfulness."1
Elliott Sober (1999). "Testability". Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, 73(2), 47–76. ↩︎
The scientific method is based on mental models (they are related to the "hypothesis" step).
Then the workflow would be something like:
Sadly, I know nothing about cognitive science, so I cannot provide a concrete example.
As a caveat, I am thinking of mental models in a very broad sense. For example, in my opinion, all the following are mental models:
But perhaps I am misusing this term :^)
In this case, the simulation of a mathematical model is its prediction. Then, just running a simulation is not enough to validate the model: the simulation has to be tested against something. That "something" we use to test the simulation is the reality. And this reality can be physical (experimental data) or theoretical (internal coherence or, even, the simulation of another model that we trust is good).
Yes, I agree with you. Maybe the word "internalized" is misleading, what I wanted to say is that you deeply understand the model (i.e., that you have processed that model in the Zettelkasten method sense). For example, I don't know how to calculate square roots manually, but I know deeply how they work, how to use them, and, most importantly, how this operation should behave and its limitations.
“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” —Isaac Newton
eljardindegestalt.com
@FernandoNobel: I agree, thanks for elaborating.
>
No, no, I asked out of ignorance. Thank you for a detailed answer!
Selen. Psychology freak. https://twitter.com/neuro__flow
“You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin
You could start with a Zettel to define what "thinking skill" means and collect different definitions
(I'm not sure myself, I only have a vague notion of what everyone could be meaning; loose associations, but nothing concrete)
Author at Zettelkasten.de • https://christiantietze.de/
@ctietze said:
Don't forget to link it to your Zettel that defines what "a thought" is.1
If "all thoughts are signs, or as Peirce calls them: thought-signs", and thinking skills are skills in manipulating thoughts, then "thinking skills" are also skills in manipulating signs. The "mental models" that @FernandoNobel and I have been talking about here could be considered to be the type of signs that Peirce called diagrams. There are probably simpler thinking skills corresponding to simpler types of signs, but by the time we have found our way to the Zettelkasten Forum, it's unlikely that we need help in improving those simpler thinking skills. ↩︎
I think you already pinned it down to the essential problem: Proper feedback.
So, here are some feedback mechanisms (in no particular order):
All have something in common: Testing your ideas and exposing them (and yourself) to failure. The more one is able to engage in self-falsification, the better one's thinking ability becomes. (Which is in part dependent on the individual's pain tolerance, since it is difficult to bear the impression of social rejection, of failure and being wrong in general)
I am a Zettler
I totally agree with the idea of self-falsification. Thank you for explaining it so directly and clearly (maybe this is a golden opportunity to start a note about that) :-)
“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” —Isaac Newton
eljardindegestalt.com
Feedback/testing/falsification is only half the battle; I still think that @FernandoNobel said it quite well in the first comment, where he first mentioned the "quantity and quality of the mental models I have" and then mentioned "testing the predictions of your mental models". Working on both sides (accumulating/developing models and testing them) is important. You probably want to build a repertoire of more powerful/detailed models, and the fastest way to do this is, as Fernando said, "reading and learning from others". When you're reading and learning from others, you want to look for models that fill gaps in your repertoire or that are better alternatives to the models you already have. (You also want to watch out for models that are out there that have already been falsified, like the verifiability criterion of meaning in Language, Truth, and Logic that was mentioned above.)
Hi,
I think there are other parameters to test : your way of life.
Conceptualization, thinking, abstraction, ideation are high level cognitive skills, they need a brain at its top.
To improve your thinking skill - quality and quantity, maybe one should look for their way of living. Like a professional athlete, they should monitor their sleep, time and quality, their food, their body condition, their exercices, if they have enough socialisation, their mental health, how do they begin their day, be carefull about high dopamin shots activity like scrolling social medias...
Such a basic but so essential!
Mental stimulation is essential as well. Our brain craves for new shiny things to learn, to try, to experiment. Try a new sport, try board games clubs in real world (Seven Wonders Duel is a marvelous way of destroying someone for fun)... Craftmanship was already mentionned but hell, it is a powerfull oxygen wave for your brain. Knitting, painting, wood working, whatever suits you.
Humans need using their hands.
You also need nature.
-> Effect of Forest Therapy on Depression and Anxiety: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
I think this is the most important things to look for, even before considering other skills, model representations, rhetoric skills and anything. Healthy body, healthy mind. Healthy mind, high levle of executive cognitive functions so better thinking.
Might be worth chiming in on various aspects of models & theories (and have been written about on this site) in the context of this discussion:
Both models/theories are first guesses, and we use empirical evidence / tests to select which guesses are the best. David Deutsch goes into detail on this (in the book The Beginning of Infinity), which is under the umbrella "Critical Rationalism", which is a kind of unity between empiricism vs rationalism.
Personally, I'm trying to figure out tools to know when I am dealing with a model vs a theory.
Zettler
The Cult of Done is a good reference, when it comes to trying things out:
@JoshA said:
Note that @FernandoNobel said above, "I am thinking of mental models in a very broad sense", and the same is true of my use of the term models above. This broad sense of models is not necessarily representational but could also be procedural. There are other words for the same concept, such as schemas. Scientific models would be a specialization of this broader concept, emphasizing representation, and there are various kinds of scientific models. As psychologist Eiko Fried said:1
Philosopher of science Ron Giere created a template that I found helpful for thinking about models. He said:2
Giere replaced the variables in his key sentence with single letters to give the following form:
@JoshA said:
Well, scientific models/theories that have been around for a long time and are well tested are more than first guesses. David Deutsch is only one of many commentators on critical rationalism, which is most associated with Karl Popper. Mario Bunge was a philosopher with views similar in some ways to Popper, and here's what Bunge said in his 1973 book Method, Model, and Matter:3
For Bunge, theoretical model is a kind of theory, whereas Giere doesn't use the term theory, he says, "because the terms 'theory' and 'law' are used quite broadly both in scientific practice and in metalevel discussions about the sciences. Their use typically fails to distinguish elements that I think should be distinguished if one is to have a sound metaunderstanding of scientific practice."2 What both have in common, however, is that they are talking about representing in science.
Why not try Giere's sentence given above: S uses X to represent W for purposes P. With this template, you can ask, "For what purposes P is S using X to represent W?" without necessarily caring so much whether X is called a model or a theory, although you can also classify representations using any classification that's as detailed as you need.
Eiko I. Fried (2020). "Theories and models: what they are, what they are for, and what they are about". Psychological Inquiry, 31(4), 336–344. Fried's citation is to: Daniela Bailer-Jones (2009). Scientific Models in Philosophy of Science. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. ↩︎
Ronald N. Giere (2004). "How models are used to represent reality". Philosophy of Science, 71(5), 742–752. Giere's levels (in Figure 1 of his article) are: principles plus specific conditions, models, hypotheses and generalizations, and the world. A different widely cited framework for scientific moels is in: Patrick Suppes (1962). "Models of data". In Nagel, E., Suppes, P., & Tarski, A. (eds.), Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy Of Science: Proceedings of the 1960 International Congress (pp. 252–261). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Suppes is cited in, for example, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy articles on "The structure of scientific theories" and "Models in science". ↩︎ ↩︎
Mario Bunge (1973). Method, Model, and Matter. Dordrecht; Boston: Reidel. ↩︎
It's a big point, maybe never considered. We are part of the system we try to improve
@andang76 said:
That is all important, but I would classify most of that as brain health. I think that thinking skills in the original post is a different and more specific topic.
It's clear "how to evaluate" (assessing the effectiveness on the outcome) in the discussion after a first read, but less clear "what" for me.
"improve thinking skills" is very broad.
There are many dynamics involved in the process from think phase to the outcome, so many things that can be improved and many things doable for test.
Just for an example, an improvement to the zettelkasten workflow I use can produce an improvement to the articles I write. Is this dynamic, part of the writing process I execute, in the scope of the problem?
My point was "it would be less effective to train your thinking skills if the basics are not fulfilled." You can search for whatever discpline, model of thinking, read every single philosophers you wish to, even talk with the reincarnation of Socrate, all of that would be less and less effective if your mind is foggy because of a sub-optimal way of life. As @andang76 wrote, it is a dynamical process in a dynamical system with complex interactions.
A really extended critical example of that :
-> Long-term, calorie-restricted intake of a high-fat diet in rats reduces impulse control and ventral striatal D2 receptor signalling – two markers of addiction vulnerability
Too much sugar may hurt your cognitive skills, you need good food to feed what science call your second brains - your guts. You need sport and physical activity to produce endorphines and deep social intereactions to produce ocytocine and serotonin. Meaningful, healthy and balanced life. That's it.
Furthemore, to enhance thinking skills is, for me, a useless question : from what perspective, from what point of view, which is the discipline ? Criterias change.
The answer could be broad;
But a simple program blueprint could come from neurosciences :
If you are a scientist, an artist, a chess player, a scholar, a programmer, any kind of high cognitive level practice or try to learn them : immerse yourself into your discipline, let your brain becomes hyper-specialized into it; take part to the culture associated with that to stimulate emulation, talk to and confront yourself to others people from the same field. Learn among them, with them, from them, against them. You take part to the discipline, you are recognized by other and so on.
What is in play here is broader, but I can stress the Neurons-Mirror :
-> https://www.matec-conferences.org/articles/matecconf/abs/2017/35/matecconf_mse2017_12012/matecconf_mse2017_12012.html
There is a kind of "impregnation" when you practice whatever field - see it like a physical space, a cognitive frame where your brain sets up its mindset. This space possesses its own models, representations, cultural codes and behaviors, good practices, evaluations scales, way of discriminate what is important and what not, same sets of knowledge and shared memories. It can explain why nobody is totaly the same when they visit their parents'house or when they integrate their working place.
That's why there are no "thinking skills" by themselves I think, and that's why I dislike those disconnected questions. There is the brain and the body as a whole, the way they evolve and work, the way we, humans, socials primates, take part of system and recognize ourselves, how we construct our identity and our skills, the way we integrate ourselves into new cultural circles.
If you are an artist, you'll learn thinking in term of shapes, colors, light, composition, empty and full spaces, cultural references, with high development of the visual parts of your brain, a "what if" process and a combining skill really important. If you are a scientist, you'll learn to work with models, theories, studies, science papers, very sharp argumentations skills and learn every formalities to redact correct papers.
That's why education is so powerful and so important, especialy for children. They need to learn how to adapt themselves to a new desired "disciplinary field".
You want better thinking skills? You'll probably have to change your social circles and every habits your developped to immerse yourself into the desired field.
Disclaimer : I apologize of my poor English. I probably made mistakes while trying to express myself.
@Loni: Yes, in general I don't disagree with what you said, and thinking skills without any qualifier is a far too broad term, since everything requires thinking. But @c4lvorias clarified that "I mainly take notes about cognitive science literature, which I need to be more critical thinker in to come up with research questions." So critical thinking skills for science seems to be the main issue.
My second post answered to you, specificaly. Why? Because you wrote:
My posts are still accurate. Immerse oneself into the discipline is what they need to do. This specific learning is what everyone begins to do with their writing here, with giving clues, publication, names, . You, especialy, gave publications and some clues about the field and framework.
This would be my approach to improve myself in whatever I need to learn.
I apologize if I missed the point. I really try to help.
@Loni said:
There is no need to apologize; everything here adds to the discussion. I'm glad you have said everything that you said.
Your comments focus on thinking in a holistic context, whereas my comments focus on more abstract analysis. The forum can hold both aspects.
@GeoEng51 and I said essentially the same, in different words, in our first comments above. So we all definitely agree that having mentors is an important catalyst of the learning process.
ok. A little bit clearer.
But for me, the chain that links critical thinking skills to the outcome, even narrower now, is still too long to consider using (only) feedback loop from the final outcome in a black box manner.
You could have the critical bottleneck in one of the many subprocesses involved before the outcome.
The feedback can tell you if you success or fail, but maybe could miss "why" and "where".
I think there is need to open the black box and isolate and assess the single steps in the process, or trying to reason using an holistic mindset as @loni I think suggests.
What we do in software development, there are many kind of tests (unit, integration,ect).
to directly map the result of the feedback loop to the thinking process, you need to be sure that all the other things work.
It's a question that raises many interesting points.
I'm "surprised" finding myself not prepared enough in this.
It is apparently similar to other activities that I do in another field, but the difference between the two contexts are so big that I can't directly map my experience in a field to the other.
@Andy
Thank you
I'm glad that we all agree with this point.
@andang76
That was my branch of thinking, indeed
I agree.
People can spend years to figure out why something they do does'nt work the way they want and need. They spend time studying the what they can do, but no how or why.
-> You can buy a better CPU to make better calculations hoping to have a faster computer, but if the RAM is dying, it would be useless.
"Diagnostic" could be the helping keyword here. The problem is to know if someone want to see their background analysed.