Trying new approach

Well, clearly blogging once a year is not the best.

I'm going to try something different. Put one idea/concept that I thought it was great/interesting and discuss it a little bit.

This will help me also to remember it and have it for reference later.

Twitter thinking

As millions before me, I've discovered twitter (at www.twitter.com). For those who don't know, Twitter is a way of exchanging short messages (of 140 letters or less) between you and your "followers", that is, people that has subscribed to your list of comments. I have to admit that it's a very entrancing way of communicating with other people. The immediacy of it gives you a feeling of personal interaction that you can't find in most of the other media. But there are other things to consider about it.

While you can use it as a information gathering tool, or just a a blog advertising venue, a lot of people utilize Twitter to post comments or short thoughts about a particular topic. And this is the factor that I don't like. Due to the 140 characters' limitation, your comments on a particular topic have to be, by the nature of the media...up to 140 characters. And while this has the laudable characteristic of making you be more concise and precise in your thought pathways(something that I approve completely and don't apply sadly most of the time!), it has the negative effect of oversimplifying the issues. 

This characteristic makes Twitter a tool only to publish "first level" thinking (see previous post of September 29, 2008). That is, the most basic and rough conclusion that you can come up for a particular problem. While this is avoided when you only publish a link to a more extensive article, what this makes in most of the cases, is to make people complacent on their thoughts. They publish this rough idea, and a lot of times you will not continue developing it, because...well, because you already talked about it!. 

One possible objection to this line of thinking is the conception that if you can't explain something in a short sentence or couple of sentences, then you don't really understand what you are talking about. While I may agree with this premises for certain type of explanations, like basic concepts or definitions that you need to know for a problem, I disagree completely that you can explain a multi layered thought pathway in 140 characters. Saying it in another way...you may easily make a screwdriver with 2 pieces, but the car that you are building with it will by necessity need many pieces. 

What can be the consequences in the long run? Well, if you get used to this way of exchanging ideas, you have the risk of becoming used to it, and start self editing your thought pathways away from Twitter, and making decisions based on this poor amount of evidence. And due to this our grasp at reality will become much more basic(in the bad sense of the word) and tenuous. 

Also this may foster non productive discussions, when 2 members discuss different points of views, without realizing that each one misinterpreted the original statement due to the lack of clarification.

So for myself, I will try to control my impulse of publishing all my thoughts there, without further polishing in a more extensive media...like this blog! Also, I don't want to be unfair with Twitter. I think it's a great tool for exposing yourself to different experiences and thought pathways of people in very different areas of human culture. Just know that you may not be getting their whole depth.

This post is obviously more than 140 characters, I think now it's time to think another thought!

Non conscious misconceptions about value propositions

I was reading Borges "Otras Inquisiciones" (Other Inquisitions) http://www.amazon.com/Other-Inquisitions-1937-1952-Texas-American/dp/0292760027/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238039277&sr=8-1 , and I hit the essay about the cult of books.

He postulates that we have a very different perception today of the relative importance of written knowledge over spoken one. One comment really opened my eyes. He was talking about the burning of Alexandria's Library, and saying that for some historical figures it was not such a problem, because it was written word. It was not spoken word, that was the way that most people acquired their knowledge at that time. So losing some books was not a big deal.

That blew me away! One of the things that has always frustrated me is that if we could have missed the Obscurantism period, we may be at this time much more technologically advanced, and events like the burning of Alexandria's Library are very representative of the trigger (although far in the future) of this period...But then Borges made me realize that I was ascertaining the value of that destruction as if the cultural situation at that time was the same as now! 

I realized that when I start my different thought pathways I have to be very careful about the value propositions that I use as starting points. A lot of times I take them "as is", instead of realizing that they ARE value propositions, so per se they will have multiple factors that modify them, as in this case, the historical time where they should be applied. I will have to make sure to be more sistematic when I use a value proposition to base a thought pathway, as even if I consider something is "obvious", I may be (and will be most probably!) wrong.

Well, it's time to think another thought!

Still Alive

So I have not updated my blog in more than a month...that is not very good. 

I think I have the wrong psychological approach to it, as I try to hammer down as many of the deficiencies in any of the thinking pathways that I am exposing.  While I still think that this approach is worthwhile, it's making me write down tens of ideas but not expanding them, as I never have all the time I need to go through them in the detailed way that I would want.

For this post I wanted to talk about a very interesting book(actually there are two novels but I read the collection of 2 of them)

By Olaf Stapledon, the books are the Last and First Men and the second one is The Star Maker.

From the standpoint of literature per se, these are very dry  Sci-Fi books, so if you are somebody that gets bored very fast, I wouldn't recommend these to you. Also sometimes it can be a little bit repetitive and slow in the flow of ideas, so also if you are intolerant to these characteristics, I would say you will be better at reading something else. But if you do that,  you would be missing some of the best conceptual futurology that has been ever written. 

The concept behind this book is the exploration of how would intelligent life evolve over long periods of time. If you are reading attentively you may have realized that I didn't say "human" intelligence. That is right, he actually kills off human civilization, several times, but in the most internally consistent way. Also when I mention that is over long periods of time, we are talking billions to trillions of years, going from "now"(that is in 1930s) to the end of the universe, when the entropy has gone up to the point that there is no differential of energy in between any part of the universe.

The other interesting characteristic is that there is not a specific protagonist, as in a central personage. There is an omniscient narrator that comments about the evolution of this or that culture/civilizations, but not somebody to relate directly. This can be a little bit bothersome, as is difficult to become sentimentally attached to the book.

But man, the imagination of Mr. Stapledon is superior most of the Sci-Fi authors. His descriptions of how a population evolves both culturally and physically, or how they reach different settings in their civilization lifespan is so engaging that you can't remain unmoved. 

Also the analysis that he makes of the evolution of human civilization in "near" future (meaning approximately now) is very, very on the spot. Some parts are actually scary to read, as he pinpoints the factors that guided us to the situations we can see in this day and age, in a fashion that makes me wonder if he was actually possessed by an entity from the future (as this is part of the "explanation" of where the information comes from).

This book made me think about futurology and the possibility of predicting the evolution of our culture/civilization from general principles. We all like to think that we do have free will, but maybe when we gather in a group, there is an emergent property that makes us predictable. If you follow the reasoning of Mr. Stapleton, you can actually see where he wants to go very easily, and also come into grips with our group "predictability" as a possibly testable characteristic. 

It would be interesting to study this, to see there is such an emergent property of human groups that deviate our thought processes to adjust the evolution of the society, maybe without us noticing it...

Interesting and disturbing.

Hopefully if you read this you will be interested in Mr. Stapledon books. They are more than worth the time involved in reading them. Your perception of humanity, of time and of universal evolution will grow exponentially

Well, it's time to think another thought!

Levels of Thinking

The high gas price is due to the war in Iraq, he said. No, no, says another, it is due to the OPEC countries gaming the system. That is false, says a third, it is due to faerie's dust making disappear the oil reserves in the world...
This is only a sample (although slightly ironic) of multiple discussions that we carry with other human being every day. We seem unable to reach an uniform conclusion about multiple topics, and it doesn't make sense, as we are living a similar reality, so we should be able to agree...or shouldn't we?
There are a lot of different explanations on why this happens. Some explanations are sociological, that depend on our separate cultural backgrounds, where we process the same evidence with different mechanisms and priorities. Some linguistic, due to our inability to transmit our concepts in an appropriate fashion to another human, or if we are able to do so, then that human may be unable to input that information into his thought patterns in an appropriate fashion(yes, it is YOUR fault), and therefore he/she is not able to understand their interlocutor. Even emotional factors could affect this understanding, as those who have kids that have done something dumb/illegal/costly for you can attest!
But this is a blog about the thinking process in general. So in which aspect I consider our thinking patterns and processes affect our argumentation and foment the discordance between individuals and their capacity to analyze reality?
One concept that I was playing in my mind earlier with was the concept of levels of thinking. The best way I could define it is the depth of analysis that you have applied to a particular thought pathway. For example, if there is no toilet paper in your toilet, a first level thinking would be ...mmm, the last person that used the toilet finished it and didn't replenish it. If we tried to use a higher level of thought then we would consider other options, like there is no toilet paper at home, your young kids took it as a prank, the toilet paper actually is misplaced and it is behind you, etc. That is to say, you take a multi step approach to a thinking issue.
One of the ways that I thought to expose the problem with first level thinking is to establish its characteristics, and from them obtain the possible consequences from each of them.
First of all, first level thinking is common. It's the most frequent way that we appreciate reality. It may have to do with the way our brain is wired, as we are not able to maintain more than 5 or 6 different concepts at a time without losing track of them. So when we try to process our thoughts, we are unable to use more than 2 or 3 factors in the thought pathway (in a spontaneous form of thinking, as some forms of structured thinking will use other techniques or outside help to overcome this limitation). By itself, this factor makes us to use the first level of thinking with a preference that is structural in nature.
Second, the first level thinking is practical. Yes, it is very nice that you can think of multiple causes of the lack of toilet paper, but at the time of resolution of the problem, looking for another one in your house's reserve batch will solve this problem, most of the time. This characteristic of our main way of thinking could be due to a couple of factors that have to do with evolution. First of all, if exposed to a dangerous situation, you may not have the time to develop second level thinking about an issue (the typical "the tiger is going to eat you, run away, you dummy" example). Also it could be due to resources constraints, as we may have to decide between using our time for obtaining a second level thinking to obtain a better outcome, factor that is not for sure until you actually apply your second level of thinking, as you could be wrong, no matter the level of thinking that you reach, versus just obtaining a mediocre outcome with first level thinking and having more time (and resources!) to go to another problem.
A third characteristic would be linearity. The first level thinking tends to depend in a direct or inverse fashion to a X or Y characteristic. This characteristic is obviously not intrinsic to a first level thinking, as you can have reality based phenomena that are linear, so it wouldn't matter what level of thinking you are using, you are not going to obtain a different result if the nature of the experience you went through . What I meant for linearity as a characteristic is that first level thinking can't deviate from this pattern, by its intrinsic value of non complexity. It has trouble seeing how a reality based phenomena could be non linear, multi factorial or simply correlated but not causal to our "explanation".
The fourth characteristic is that first level thinking is usual. This is not the same as saying that it's common. The commonality has to do with factual happening, while the usual characteristic has to do with the tendency that we have for using it. That is, because it's common and practical, we "like" (even though it has nothing to do with preferences most of the time) to use that mode of thinking and we need to make an extra effort to stray away from it, even voluntarily. Again, this could be due to our internal "wiring", but that is only hypothetical, and not relevant to our discussion. Also another factor to take into account in the "usual"ness of the first level of thinking is that we tend to thread on previous thinking patterns that we have learned from somebody else, or patterns that we have gone through for a similar thought process, kind of recycling your thought pathways. This is obviously seen when you watch/read the news from different sources and you realize that the editorial content is very repetitive. This is going to happen for issues that are very straightforward, obviously, but a lot of complex issues are treated this way too. Interestingly the "best" editorialists usually distinguish themselves by actually going into a deeper level of thought.
The fifth characteristic is inflexibility. Due to its own nature of straightforwardness, thinking of the first level is not able to accept or be modified by other points of view. You are "right", so why should you change your thought process. The problem is not in the correctness, because the goal of refining your thought processes is to reach the truth(or as much as approximate to it we as human can do), but in the lack of adaptability. Some first level thinkers even coat this inflexibility with a cover of "righteousness", saying that if you modify your thought process by taking another pathway you are actually admitting that it was wrong, so by definition your conclusion has to be corrupted by this. This is one of the main "political" arguments that you can see used in our current day and age. If a candidate changes his position with respect to any issue, he or she is a flip-flopper...instead of being a mature adult that may have received better input and decided to change his/her opinion in respect of that issue. This has nothing to do with the political opportunists that change their opinion only due to polling results...that is one of the worst types of parasitism that you can find in a human, sadly.
So we have that the first level of thinking is common, practical, linear, usual, and inflexible. These characteristics do not sound that bad, right? Again, I want to make sure that I communicate clearly. First level thinking is not by definition wrong(or right by that matter). It is the correct level to analyze most of the situations that occur around us. But we should go through the list of characteristics above each time we move through a thought pathway, and realize that if one of those characteristics are limiting the scope of possible conclusions we may achieve, then we should be flexible enough to take those factors into account, and broaden our pathway.
Well, this post is already long enough, so it's time to think another thought.

Teach your child how to think

I've been meaning to comment about a book I read recently, it's an old book by Edward de Bono, called Teach your child how to think. Mr. de Bono is a fairly known "thinking" teacher, with several famous techniques (like the six hat reasoning system). I was able to get this book second-hand, so I gave it a try. As most books by de Bono, it's thin, and can be a quick read.
My value thinking at the end of the read is very ambiguous. I loved the book and I hated the book. I will try to express the pros and cons of the book in a more detailed fashion, that hopefully will be more helpful for any prospective reader. I will start with the cons.
First, you have to realize that the "kids" part of the title is a partial misnomer. It is not directed to the kids, but to the adult member of the family. He obviously gives a small introduction where he talks about how to use the book more effectively depending on the age of the child, and how to go through the examples with your child, but after this he "forgets" the focus on the child part, concentrating only on the tools and mechanisms of thinking, but in a decidedly adult pedagogical style. His examples on how to use the thinking tools are clear (most of the times), but their are not focused on children experience, so you are given the task to adapt this to your child. I don't think the loss of focus in children is detrimental, and he tells you very early that it's NOT for teaching very young children, instead he wants you to use his book when the child is able to construct abstract thinking processes (around 7 or 8 years or older). The advantage is that probably you as an adult will use and benefit from what he is postulating without feeling that the author is condescending to you, a problem that plagues a lot of the books that are directed to/made for children.
Second, this is a book to read with an open mind. If you have a thought process pattern already, you may get "mad" at the way de Bono exposes his ideas, mainly the organization of the book. He, in what I consider is a very interesting approach, starts describing the "tools" that he considers are necessary for developing your thought process, but does not give you any structure on how to apply each tool (although he gives you plenty of exercises to do with each tool), even suggesting that you can use them separately or in combination. If you are an adult, and you have acquired already a thought process pattern, you may find this shocking (i know I did), and a little bit irritating. But I would recommend you to keep on reading, as he will coalesce these tools in certain types of structure where they are more orderly placed, which permits you to get the "bigger" picture of his methodology.
Third, it is an uneven book. de Bono explains multiple thinking tools, but the detail that he offers for each one is very erratic, to the point that in some tools he actually forgets to give an accurate description of them!(the APC tool comes to mind) Most of his thinking tools are straightforward, but there is a lot of overlap between them. I don't consider redundancy a problem in thinking, as it tends to give you a more solid thought process, but his overlapping tools tend to use the same initial information and process them with almost the same approach, so it's repetitive instead of redundant. It gives you the feeling that certain of this tools were developed before he created others that are significantly more powerful, making the original worthless, but he never took them out of the book. This seems to be the case with his six hat thinking process. Obviously his most developed technique (he actually has written a book only about this), you can see that multiple of his smaller tools are simply partial aspects of this megatool. He explains that you may decide to use whichever tool you like the best, but due to the overlap, several of them have no enticing reason to use them, and gives you more mental clutter that obstruct adequate mental organization of the tools.
Fourth, Mr. de Bono has a very particular style of writing. If you have read other of his books, you may already know this, but he is a very forceful "seller" of the de Bono "concept". He will always mention his qualifications for writing a book on this topic, with all the projects that he has created or helped/counseled in. I understand perfectly why he would do this from the commercial standpoint, as he wants to demonstrate a good reputation, and also from the psychological perspective, as we tend to disagree less and accept more what somebody that is successful tells us. But after a while it gets somewhat heavy to read those detailed descriptions as they don't give you any benefit for your thinking process and they don't advance the concepts in the book
Fifth, there are some thinking errors in some parts of the book, that even if they don't detract from the general point, they invalidate some of his conclusions. His chapter of logic and perception is slightly unfair toward logic, as he is applying what he thinks logic "is" to domains of reality where it should not be applied, at least not in the form he is referring to, something that he does again in his chapter about Truth, logic and critical thinking. He also seems to be unaware that logic as a "thinking" discipline has more than one form or mechanism, and that he doesn't take in account some other subtheories of logic, like paraconsistent logic, that is designed to deal with inconsistencies (a fault that he attributes to "logic" as a whole). This is probable the point where I was disenchanted, as he seems to construct a straw man of logic, and afterwards he proceeds to fight against this misconception of logic. He also tends to correlate his success as a propagator of his ideas to the correctness of them, and this is obviously an erroneous thought pathway, that you can see repeated several times in the text.
Sixth, the book it's mostly expositional, he "tells" you which tools there are, how to use them, but he doesn't go very much on the underlying thought process mechanism that explain why you can/should use the tools that he is suggesting. This doesn't really affect my general appreciation of the book, as he is a very practical type of author, and in this case he may not want the explanations to interfere with the flow of the book.

What about the pros?
First, it's a short book. I don't say it in a derogatory fashion. It's short because he focuses on his main point in a very efficient way. Besides his self promotion tangents, he does not drift from the main topic. So it makes for a very dense book of ideas, a very refreshing change from the 1000+ pages that other thinking experts publish.
Second, it's a practical book. He suggest multiple exercises to use each one of his tools, and even if they may be overlapping, he is able to find examples where you can apply each tool separately. I think this is the strongest feature of the book, and where he demonstrates his genius. Multiple thinking books are better at explaining the origins of the thought processes, but fall flat on their faces when trying to make something directly useful to the reader. de Bono makes sure at all times that his readers will learn something, and gives straightforward directions on how to use his examples (or create new ones from his guidelines)
Third, it's a book that maintains its value. Due to the fact that he gives you the tools and not only rambles around (yes, like I tend to do...I'm thinking about how to fix that!), he is eminently re readable. And for a learning to think book, that is one of the main characteristics, as you can't learn it all at once.

You may see this book commentary and say that the book has more bad points than good ones, but in general I would say that the weak points are smaller in breadth and applicable to smaller portions of his general argument, while the good points are sufficient to carry the book to a very good level.
My final thought about the book: Read it...several times. For yourself and for your kids.
And now it's time to think another thought

Thought blindness

I haven't had as much time as usual to think, due to illness of a family member. Thankfully, that problem seems to have resolved, so I tried to take a thought pathway that I had started a couple of weeks ago but stayed underdeveloped due to the situation previously described.
The baseline where I started this thought pathway is based on the fact that I am partially color blind. The pigments that should absorb the red light wave and send the signal to my brain to interpret it as red color, are defective or in lower than normal amount in my eyes, so this makes me see red objects as brown or green, even though I know from other people descriptions that it's not the case.
So from there I started generalizing this idea to a bigger concept. What if there are people that are simply thought blind? This would not be a reflection of their lack of knowledge of a particular culture or their general grade of intelligence, but simply an effect of an abnormal wiring of their brains when it was formed.
If you look at the medical literature, there are some reports of phenomenon similar to this, the so called "Neglect". This usually happens after a stroke or a traumatic injury to the brain, causing the patient to lose some superior brain functions, and they are not able to notice a certain portion of reality, for example the left side of their bodies, or one of their legs. It is not that they are not able to "see" that part, it is only that the wiring of their brain is affected thus that they simply "ignore" that area. There are also focused defects like in reading (called alexia) or writing (agraphia).
The difference between this phenomena and my "thought blindness" concept is that usually the defects that are noticed are in big areas of functionality, and that they are not congenital, but acquired. I don't see any particular reason why the thought blindness causes should all be congenital, so that is not a problem with our thinking pathway, but the extension of the defect that we are able to detect can be a problem.
Let's think for a moment, what would happen if for example you are not able, by the wiring of your brain, to understand some particular concepts, for example, to be provocative, religion, or even more interesting, the lack of religious feeling. Think about it...how would you explain it to the person that has an structural deficit concerning that concept?
Obviously you may say that brains do not work like that, that there is not a religion center, or a belief center, because our brains are capable to absorb a much bigger amount of concepts that what you would expect from the physical capacity of it. I understand that point and after looking at the medical literature, I am sure that that counterargument has complete validity.
But I can change a little bit my approach, and postulate the hypothesis in a somewhat different fashion that still lets me discuss the same general topic. Let's see...
OK, I concede the point that probably there is not a specific "idea" center that people can "NOT" have, but what if they lack an intrinsic pathway/neuron/whatever you may call it that is necessary (but not sufficient, to avoid the "one place one idea error from before) for you to be able to process that concept? I am sure that a lot of different concepts, due to intrinsic brain plasticity, are able to be processed in multiple ways, but what if some of them (and I am sure that by statistical reasons there must be at least a couple) actually pass through this rate limiting area? An easier way of explaining this would be to say that in the city of my brain, that is comprised of multiple concept-islands linked by bridges, there are no specific "idea" buildings that can be bombarded to make my brain city lacking, but there is the possibility that if I destroy the bridge that helps the people to go from one island to the other, the products that are made in that island are not able to be exchanged with the rest of the islands,even though the rest of the city island is completely able to function . I don't really see a logical reason why this couldn't happen. I understand that the brain has innate redundant systems, but I am also sure that there are points that are immutable. If not, there would be no irreversible damage during strokes, and sadly, in most of them there is.
So if we accept this premise, then we would have a person that is not be able to think a particular concept, while being able to otherwise maintain really complex thought pathways that don't involve this limitation. The interesting thing with this situation is that just as somebody that has post stroke neglect, they CAN'T realize that there is a lack in their thought processes, simply because only with your brain you can realize this, and in this circumstance the brain itself is affected.
Could this be a factor that affects the difficulty that fundamentalists of any kind have in seeing the other "side" point of view? It would be completely unrealistic and reductionist to think that it's the only element of importance here, but it strikes me that it could be one of the important questions to answer, because if this actually happens, then some situations can't actually be discussed with the other "side", simply because they are physically unable to understand your point.
Also knowledge of this could help us to improve our tools for discussion in the cases of lack of conciliation between parties. If we are able to detect that there is some "thought blindness" in play, then with other thinking process' tools we can indicate to the person that there is something lacking, even if they don't perceive it, just as for post-stroke patient you do "imagining" training, where you tell them that even if they don't "have" (in their personal realities) a right side of the body, they should "imagine" that they have it, and behave like this "imaginary" side is real. You can pinpoint to consequences of their neglect that they can notice, like not being able to go through a particular space, to help them imagine that they actually have the "neglected" part. Can we invent thought process' tools for this purpose? I am sure we can, as there are thought pathway verification tools that use extrinsic tools (for example lists of thought process errors that you can check) that exist at the moment.
I estimate that this topic can be applied to multiple other purposes, from educational to business related, but for now I've only reached this portion of the thinking pathway. Probably I will explore in the future some more of the implications, but for now...
It's time to think another thought.