Szymon Kaliski

Do Your Own Thinking

• thinking by yourself is hard, since understanding requires effort, and the brain tries to not put in the effort when not necessary
• this can be mitigated by some learning strategies:
  • asking "how does that work?", "why?" and not stopping at an answer that "feels familiar"
  • looking for opposite views
• accepting statements at "face value" doesn't lead to understanding something, but to creating "cached thoughts" that someone else has thought
  • instead of accepting what is read as "true", it should be remembered by "X states that Y"
• related fallacy might be to keep browsing through "old masters" (be it Greek philosophers, or Alan Kay's) looking for some hidden knowledge instead of realising that yes, these were great thinkers, but there are still things to invent

Intelligent people simply aren't willing to accept answers that they don't understand - no matter how many other people try to convince them of it, or how many other people believe it, if they aren't able to convince them selves of it, they won't accept it.

— https://nabeelqu.co/understanding ↗

Remember that as you read, you do not have to believe everything you read, nor do you have to reject it. Simply file the knowledge claims (the statements that the author asserts as true) in your mind as "this is what is claimed to be true." As you later gain more knowledge, you will at some point probably be able to move the statement from Claimed to True or to False.

— https://www.virtualsalt.com/learn22.html ↗

Backlinks

1. 2022-04-29Be Honest with Yourself¹
2. 2022-04-26Where Do Ideas Come From?¹
3. 2021-03-29MakeSpace, Clay, Ink&Switch, Haze, Freezeframe, and Personal Experiments¹