Dewey added that critical thinking is “suspended judgment, and the essence of this suspense is inquiry to determine the nature of the problem before proceeding to attempts at its solution.”
Intuition serves us so we sustain it: “The reason that intuition and social cognition are so commonly relied on is that they often work. Doing simply what feels right is usually good enough in every domain you either trained for (like playing basketball) or evolved for (like recoiling from snakes). Doing what is normal and fashionable among your peers is good enough in every domain your culture has mastered over time (like cooking techniques).”
Burry said, “Sober analysis on the part of the individual is paramount. We must remember that entire societies can and often do follow the wrong path for a very long time.” Part of Burry’s worldview was that institutions can hold incorrect views, often for long periods of time. This is in contrast to most people’s default reaction to an institutional opinion: trust.
Seat belts haven’t always been status quo: Nader, a critical thinker, started with a different question. He asked, “What might save the most lives?”, rather than starting with accepting the status quo
Simplicity & reps: Nobel Laureate Frank Wilczek once commented that he tries to “…avoid hard work. When things look complicated, that is often a sign that there is a better way to do it.” This is the secret sauce of any high-performing organization but can be hard to recognize if you were not there at the beginning. Edgar Schein, one of the leading thinkers on corporate culture, defined culture as a group of people “who have been together long enough to have shared significant problems.”
Differential diagnosis: In medicine, a “differential diagnosis” is one way to do this. It considers multiple potential explanations for a set of symptoms and then tests the simplest theories first before moving on to the harder to test explanations.
“in the economy of action…” A general “law of least effort” applies to cognitive as well as physical exertion. The law asserts that if there are several ways of achieving the same goal, people will eventually gravitate to the least demanding course of action. In the economy of action, effort is a cost, and the acquisition of skill is driven by the balance of benefits and costs. Laziness is built deep into our nature.
Simple & surprising and even painful is the goal of a consultant. When someone says aha, but then goes how could I have missed that for so long
Mindfulness: Research has shown that mindfulness, “involves two distinct dispositions, present-moment attentional focus and non-reactive monitoring.” Non-reactive monitoring can also be seen as something Psychologists call executive function which covers three actions of the mind: “updating, inhibition and shifting.”
Updating: Active “revision and monitoring” as new information emerges
Inhibition: A suppression or skepticism of emergent thoughts
Shifting: going back and forth between tasks
Schrodinger’s cat: In quantum mechanics, particles can exist in many states at the same time and are reduced to one state when something interacts with it. Schrodinger’s cat represents a thought experiment of a cat in an unopened box being bombarded by radiation. The radiation will eventually kill the cat but we cannot see in an unopened box so we do not “know” that this really exists. The cat exists in two states: dead or alive, and only one can be observed when the box is opened.
Obligation of dissent (McKinsey virtue)
Our social desirability bias often limits our ability to improve/progress. Caring less generally exponentially increases your ability to enhance and care more specifically.
