The secret to a good thinking algorithm
The most powerful insight that I was never taught
We are often told that “logic” and “feelings” don’t go together. However, notice that we catch errors in reasoning by noticing a feeling of confusion. Thus, being able to sense your feelings clearly is essential for thinking clearly.
From observing my mentees during my PhD at Stanford, including an experience when a mentee was able to catch an error in a proof that I had missed, I realized that what leads to insight is not so much the hardware of the brain, but rather the quality of the thinking algorithm, and slower hardware can be compensated for by being patient with the thinking algorithm. The speed with which you come up with an answer is not a reliable reflection of the quality of the thinking algorithm, and fast answers could mean you are taking shortcuts in your thinking algorithm (as I was; that was why I missed the error in the proof).
The crux of a good thinking algorithm, I eventually realized, is to iteratively notice feelings of confusion and allocate attention to uncovering the source of the confusion. It is a deep tragedy that many of us have learned to associate the feeling of confusion with a fear of being "stupid", typically because we observed people who refused to take responsibility for their failure to explain themselves and instead decided to blame others for not understanding them (I was one such person for a long time; I am deeply sorry for this). Thus, many have learned to react to a feeling of confusion by panicking and covering it up, rather than gravitating towards it as a source of insight into what was missed.
This is the most critical piece, which took severe trauma and psychonaut-type experiences for me to finally realize: rejecting an idea based on a feeling of contempt is equivalent to rejecting an idea because you are afraid of it, and is an extremely sinister form of obfuscated thinking.
Want to prevent people from noticing your bullshit? Just ridicule them for not agreeing with you, thus flooding their thinking algorithm with fear and compromising its ability to detect clarity of an idea. I am sure you can thinking of many examples where this tactic is employed. I am sure you can think of times when you have been tempted to employ this tactic. It is absolutely poisonous to thinking. For the sake of our collective survival, we have to stop.
This tactic has been employed to great effect by pseudoskeptics who deny the evidence for phenomena that they claim "break the laws of physics" (as if the laws of physics are complete, particularly in regards to the literally open question of whether there are hidden variables that determine what our laws assume to be "random"...).
If you are curious about the (at this point embarassingly strong) evidence for phenomena that people claim "breaks the laws of physics", a good place to start is to look up the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virgina (or look at the article linked below on Princeton’s Global Consciousness Project). These phenomena are important to study because they challenge the belief that we are fundamentally separate from each other, which is the origin of zero-sum selfish behavior.
If we don’t get this right, we will continue to destroy each other. Please have the courage to spread this.
