Thread by @quipsy

How to think

A thread on solving problems by using mental techniques.

#ToolsOfCognition

This thread has its origins from a decision to study decision-making for 30 days as part of a challenge.

Several books and deliberations later, I am still scratching the surface.

In this thread, I share the most useful things I've learnt: how to solve problems through thinking

Thinking refers to the manipulation of mental pictures with a goal.

This goal could be:

1. To recall an event. "Where I met your mother"
1. To understand things. "How do people get addicted to Twitter?"
3 To explain things. E.g. attending to exam questions

The list is long

A simple view of thinking might explain it as any other natural process, a consequence of being human.

We walk. We talk. We think. We are. Humans.

But how do we think? How do we fetch things from memory, solve problems in our minds?

Those questions are still being investigated by scientists. Here I discuss practices we can use to reach better conclusions through thinking.

The first is thought experiments.

#ToolsOfCognition

Thought experiments are mental probes into the nature of things.

It involves the following steps:

1. Visualise a situation
2. Let the visualisation run
3. Observe the outcome
4 Reach conclusion

Thought experiments differ from normal thinking because they are based on assumptions and depend on manipulation of data.

As in normal laboratory experiments, some variables must be controlled.

Sometimes, thought experiments are the best (or only) ways to prove or disprove theories.

We come to better understanding of the world only through mental simulations.

A famous example is Galileo's tower of Pisa experiment.

We can apply different types of thought experiments to different questions.

Questions like "what will happen if X occurs?" demands prefactual thought experiments. Here we lay out possible future outcomes from our present position.

"If I hammer..."

Questions like "would we be in a recession if GEJ had won instead of PMB?" can be resolved using counterfactual thought experiments.

Here we deliberate on the possible outcome of a different past.

Another very useful type of thought experiments is retrodiction.

Here we break the past into steps and carefully navigate from the present to determine the causes of events.

Sherlock Holmes tins.

The goal in retrodiction is usually specific, to arrive at the final step where the ultimate cause lurks.

To determine steps to get to a desirable future, we can use backcasting.

This involves defining a specific future. Then moving step by step from that future to the present.

This mental practice can keep us focused since we've outlined what we need to do to attain certain goals.

Just as there are bad laboratory experiments, there are bad thought experiments.

We have to control for our biases and try to be as "objective" as possible.