Cognition and Decisions
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“To find the ‘richest’ view [of the world], the one that seems truest to the world as a whole, in the sense that it resonates with our experience in the richest way, the imaginative exercise of inhabiting a number of points of view is required.”
Inside-versus-outside comparison error
We compare our intimate knowledge of our own weakness and vacillation with the faultless public image of great figures, and feel presumptuous. The great felt the same doubts but overrode them.
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.”
Survivorship bias: the tale of forgotten failures
Survivorship bias skews judgement when we study only visible winners and ignore the silent graveyard of failures who used the exact same traits or strategies.
Mental modelCognitive biases and thinking errorsMental models and decision quality2 more related links
“Reason gives each side time to plead; moreover, she herself demands adjournment, that she may have sufficient scope for the discovery of the truth; whereas anger is in a hurry: reason wishes to give a just decision; anger wishes its decision to be thought just. ... The sword of justice is ill-placed in the hands of an angry man.”
Fallacy of misplaced concreteness
Mistaking abstract concepts for concrete reality: abstracting away life, value and purpose to model billiard balls or rockets, then falsely concluding that concrete reality itself is senseless, valueless and purposeless.
Mental modelCognitive biases and thinking errorsMental models and decision quality2 more related links
“If anyone can refute me; show me I’m making a mistake or looking at things from the wrong perspective; I’ll gladly change. It’s the truth I’m after, and the truth never harmed anyone.”
“In short, the wise man looks to the purpose of all actions, not their consequences; beginnings are in our power but Fortune judges the outcome, and I do not grant her verdict upon me.”
“I think when you multi-task so much, you don’t have time to think about anything deeply. You’re giving the world an advantage you shouldn’t do. Practically everybody is drifting into that mistake.”
“The snake that cannot shed its skin perishes. So do the spirits who are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be a spirit.”
“Test it this way: you say, “Without using the new word which you have just learned, try to rephrase what you have just learned in your own language.” Without using the word “energy,” tell me what you know now about the dog’s motion.” You cannot. So you learned nothing about science.”
“We take other men’s knowledge and opinions upon trust; which is an idle and superficial learning. We must make them our own. We are just like a man who, needing fire, went to a neighbor’s house to fetch it, and finding a very good one there, sat down to warm himself without remembering to carry any back home. What good does it do us to have our belly full of meat if it is not digested, if it is not transformed into us, if it does not nourish and support us?”
“For, unless you perfectly understand the principle from which anyone acts, how should you know if he acts ill?”
“I must Create a System, or be enslav'd by another Mans”
“Without the hard little bits of marble which are called ‘facts’ or ‘data’ one cannot compose a mosaic; what matters, however, are not so much of the individual bits, but the successive patterns into which you arrange them, then break them up and rearrange them.”
The wind-up toy dog and mystic energy
A first-grade science book asks what makes a wind-up toy dog move and answers "energy makes it move"; a mystic formula no better than saying "movability makes it move." The real answer is that the wound-up spring tries to unwind and pushes the gears; taking the toy apart teaches science.
Anti-dogmatic perspectivism
Treat even your own best theories and philosophies as perspectives and interpretations rather than absolute dogmas, remaining sceptical towards your own conclusions.
Separate political reality from the ideal
Instead of judging politics by abstract philosophy or politicians' idealistic promises, observe how people actually act in the political realm, separating wishes about how things ought to work from how they do.