453 lines
22 KiB
Plaintext
453 lines
22 KiB
Plaintext
[1]cliophate.wtf [2]Start Here [3]Reading [4]About Me [5]Now
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How to think
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When I originally saw this tweet, I chuckled.
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[bsky-1200x]
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Then I realized: I do the same thing, and so do the people around me. That is,
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we outsource our thinking to a machine, which can’t think in the first place
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(though that fact is a whole separate piece I am working on).
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Since the rise of Generative AI, what I caught myself doing is using tools like
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ChatGPT or Claude to go through problems. Not as a help, but instead had it
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spit out an answer that I then (at times blindly) adopted as my own solution.
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And going by that post above, and the anecdotal evidence I have, I am not alone
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in this.
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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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This is not thinking. Again, the machine cannot think. It can only match
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patterns and emulate writing. But thanks to increasingly sophisticated models,
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the solution the machine gives us seems like the solution we were looking for.
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But if I am not the one thinking, and thus not the one solving the problem
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(because problem-solving is what thinking ultimately is), I have learned
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nothing. I have just taken another one's thoughts (and again, the machine
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cannot think) as my own. I see little value in this.
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This phenomenon is, however, not a recent problem, even though Generative AI
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has exacerbated it. Outsourcing our thinking to other things, or people, is
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something humanity has been doing forever.
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Before Generative AI, we outsourced our thinking to influencers and whatever
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the algorithmic timelines fed us. Before that, it was to politicians,
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celebrities, and other people in power. Before that, it was the churches. And
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before that, it was the shamans. (To be fair, people still do this.)
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But at least in these examples, the thinker we outsource to is human. We can,
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most often, deduce what their agenda is. But what is the agenda of a machine
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that has been trained by a group of people who probably don’t even understand
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how that machine works in the first place?
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I believe that in this age, at a time when we get inundated with information
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from all directions, the ability to think is the most important skill we have.
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I expect that when, and if, the AI revolution arrives, people who have the
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ability to think are the ones who will not be left behind. Thinkers will be the
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ones who will thrive in these uncertain times.
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And this is how to think:
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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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I see four parts that are necessary for thought. You need to cultivate all
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four, because one or two alone may not be enough to form your best thinking.
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These are:
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• Thinking in silence;
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• Thinking through inspiration;
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• Thinking by writing;
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• Thinking by not (actively) thinking.
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Thinking in silence
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AI, algorithmic timelines, and generally just the noise^[6]1 we live in, don’t
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give us the space to think. They hijack our attention and concentration.
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This is our fault. Whenever we have the slightest moment of silence—and we call
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that boredom—we try to fill the void with whatever we can find.
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But there is a reason you have your best thoughts under the shower, or as soon
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as your head hits the pillow. These might be the only moments you experience
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true silence and boredom.
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When we manage to turn off the outside world, we are able to listen to our
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inner voice. That is thinking. That voice that speaks to you, at times maybe
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roughly, though that is for another essay, is what thinking is.^[7]2
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By listening and talking to the inner voice, we can give it problems to solve.
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We can mentally go through the steps and let our minds untangle whatever we are
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currently working on. If we feed it with the correct pieces, and let it do its
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job without interruption, it’ll allow us to solve the puzzle.
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This is hard. Thinking is an active skill (though there is a passive element to
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that, more soon) that burns a lot of energy. The brain alone consumes, on
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average, around 400 calories per day. To give you an idea: 30 minutes of
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running burns the same amount. (So feed your brain the nutrients, exercise, and
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rest it needs.)
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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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I am a strong believer in cultivating silence to let our minds go wild and
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start forming thoughts. It is not easy, though, modern civilization likes to
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flood us with distractions. Therefore, I try to find moments throughout the day
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where I embrace silence. (And I am not talking about absolute silence like you
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have in outer space. You don’t need 0 decibels; rather, what you need is to not
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have inputs. White noise is completely fine and might even be beneficial to
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some. If I struggle with sounds, I listen to a mix of white noise and
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thunderstorms.)
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But embracing silence is hard for me. I struggle with this because I have the
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tendency to fill the silence with... something. Anything. Not necessarily
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because I’m afraid of the silence, but because boredom is at times painful.
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Boredom is just so... boring.
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I’m not used to it anymore, so I have to force myself to accept it. And only
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then can I sit in silence and let my mind work. And every time I give it the
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space it needs, I am surprised by what that squishy thing in my skull is
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capable of.
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Thinking through inspiration
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While the building block above shows how to create space for thinking, it’s
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inspiration, I believe, that sparks thought in the first place.
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Not every thought is worth something. I doubt this is a surprise to you, but if
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we’d follow every thought we’d ever have life would be pretty fucking weird.
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To succeed at thinking, we need to feed our minds the necessary material to
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refine what happens up there.
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This happens through a process I (and I probably stole it) call
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cross-pollination.
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Cross-pollination is when you take a whole bunch of Lego bricks from all kinds
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of different sources to build your own castle in your mind.
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You achieve this by consuming broadly.
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But not all consumption is equal.
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There is a reason everyone talks about [8]brain rot currently, because
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mindlessly scrolling through TikTok and watching people do whatever the
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algorithm gets them views, is not the type of consumption I am talking about.
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Rather, we’re talking about content (and it can still happen on TikTok, the
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medium is NOT the problem) that challenges you.
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For me, this content primarily exists as the written word. It is the reason [9]
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why I read as much as I do. But I also find it in blog posts like these, or
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newsletters, or at times even on text-based social media like Bluesky or
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Threads (though let me be real, this is the exception, most content on there is
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mediocre).
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If this resonated with you, there’s more.
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Subscribe to get future posts delivered to your inbox. No spam.
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And if you want to support my writing, [10]click here.
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You can find that content also in multimedia formats, be it podcasts, YouTube
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videos, or (good!) TikTok shorts. Or you find it as a little nugget in some
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random TV show or movie. Or while talking to other people, or observing nature.
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What is important here is that you consume actively. Not necessarily to learn
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every time you look at something, but by spending focused time with the media.
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And yes, for that, you need to put away your phone, turn off your gaming
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console, or whatever else you are currently doing. NO multitasking. We all know
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by now that [11]multitasking doesn’t exist. Sit with the material, consume it,
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and let it feed your thoughts with new Lego bricks.
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One very important thing, however, is this: don’t only consume things with
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which you agree or that you already believe. All this does is feed your idiocy
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(and we are all idiots) and enforce negative cycles.
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Consume stuff you hate. Consume what the enemy created, whoever that enemy is
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(and then ask yourself, why do you have enemies?). Consume things that are
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uncomfortable because they might show you truths you want to hide from. Consume
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broadly and widely, and outside of your comfort zone, because it gives you
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perspective and shows you things you may not have known.
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I am not saying you need to adopt these views. Not if you fundamentally
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disagree with them, and especially not if they are just plain wrong. Bigots are
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bigots (and I believe they are bigots because they do not consume what their
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“enemies” create). But this at least shows you what not to think about.
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This is crucial, too. This is anti-thinking, another part of having “good”
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thoughts. But how do you know what to anti-think if you don’t know what is out
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there?
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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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Thinking through writing
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Yes, I am biased. But I believe that writing is the other necessary skill to
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succeed in our current times.
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Because what writing allows is to sort and distil the thinking you do, break it
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down into pieces and recombine it with other stuff.
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As long as the thinking just stays in your mind, I’d argue that it is
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worthless. This is especially true for ideas. Everyone has ideas. The world
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certainly does not lack ideas.
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Ideas are not worth anything if they do not lead to future steps.
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The first step is to write it down. Because writing is the one other magic
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trick humans possess.
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And before you tell me that Generative AI is taking this from us: LLMs do not
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write.
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What they do might look like writing, it might feel like writing, but it is not
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writing. Instead, GenAI outputs text, syntactically flawless text, yes, but
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devoid of any substance. The machine just breaks down writing into a
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mathematical formula^[12]3, robbing writing of all that makes it magical. (And
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a lot of us lack the necessary taste to understand that this writing is simply
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not good. Grammatically correct ≠ good.)
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So you need to write yourself. And as the screenshot at the beginning of this
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essay ironically shows, even writing down your problem as an AI prompt
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clarifies your thought.
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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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There are two ways to solve problems through writing, and I alternate between
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the two of them: they are writing slowly, and writing fast.
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Writing slowly
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I’d argue that to write slowly you have to write by hand. Be it on a piece of
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paper, or like I do, on [13]one of these fancy e-ink devices.
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But through writing by hand, you are forced to slow down, simply because your
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hand cannot catch up to the speed of your thinking. And this allows you to
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“de-jumble” the mess in your head before you put it down on paper.
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This blog post was first brainstormed on the equivalent of two sheets of A4
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paper, and what came out was basically a completely finished post that just
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needed a bit of polishing (to transform bullet points into proper prose, for
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example).
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I write most of my blog posts this way. I also write my journal by hand every
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morning, and most of my notes are handwritten, too.
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Again, this is to make sense of what is in my head, by giving me the space (and
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the silence, there are no inputs when I do this) to think through things.
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(In theory, you could also use an old-school typewriter. Because if you type
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too fast on that thing, you jam the keys. This is a great analogy because if
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you write too fast by hand, you jam your brain.)
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Writing fast
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Another practice I follow is what I call the brain dump. This has to happen on
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a computer, either by typing if you are a fast typist or maybe by recording a
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voice note.
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The value of the brain dump is by “emptying” your mind. The goal is not to form
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perfectly finished nuggets of thought but instead to unload all that is in your
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mind, all that is taking up your mental bandwidth.
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Often, what comes out of a brain dump session is not truly valuable if looked
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at through a vacuum. It is important that you don’t filter and instead write
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everything down that comes up, unedited and raw.
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When you look at this brain dump, you’ll realize that most of it is trash. That
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is ok, that is the point of the exercise. You want to get the trash out of your
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head.
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But with a certain distance (I never read the brain dumps the day I wrote
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them), you may find certain specks of gold. Here and there, you see a nugget
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that, if you disassemble it, might lead to something. And then I’d suggest you
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take that nugget and go through it by writing by hand.
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Thinking by not (actively) thinking
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Because thinking is problem-solving, in theory, the result of thought is a
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solved problem.
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Sometimes you can’t solve the problem when you actively think about it. You
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just can’t find the solution, no matter how much time you spend on it.
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In these cases, stop. Take some distance. Let it rest, do something completely
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different, and ignore it for a few hours or days.
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You may have experienced this before. You struggled for hours to come up with a
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solution, kept failing, and ultimately gave up.
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But then, in the unlikeliest of situations, you had the epiphany you waited
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for. The complete solution to your problem suddenly came up in your mind as if
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planted there by some alien life form when you were not paying attention.
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This is thinking by not thinking. It is passive. It happens without you forcing
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it, in the subconscious, while you do other things. I don’t know why it
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happens. I don’t understand what processes run in our subconscious mind in the
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background, I only know that I’ve experienced this before.
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As a writer, the way I use it is to never hit publish on bigger pieces (like
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this one) the day I wrote them. I often let them sit and ripen in the back of
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my mind. When I sit down with them again, I often perceive things I hadn’t
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before.
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The same goes when I struggle to fix a problem at work. Giving myself the space
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to not think about it is apparently what I need to solve the toughest of
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problems.
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So sometimes, don’t think. Some people seem to be really good at this.
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Tools for Thinking
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I’m planning to expand this section into a separate post in the future, but
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here are a bunch of tools and tricks I rely on to help my thinking.
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While the above steps are the basis needed to think in the first place, the
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tools below are what help me have “better” thoughts.
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• Mental models: You may have heard of Pareto’s principle, aka the 80/20 rule
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, or Occam’s Razor, or Compounding. These are mental frameworks that might
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not always be true, but that allow you to see things in different lights.
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There are a lot of them. In theory, all that follows below could be
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considered a mental model.
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• First principles: Break your thoughts down to the most basic truth. Dig at
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it for as long as you can until you discover the one raw fact that must be
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true. Strip away assumptions. Build from there.
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• Socratic Questioning: Ask layered, open-ended questions to clarify, probe,
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explore and question.
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• 5 Whys: Ask why until you discover the root cause behind a problem. The
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first, second or even third level is often not the true reason a problem
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appeared.
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• Inversion: Do the opposite of what you were planning to do. Instead of
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asking how to succeed, ask yourself how to fail. Then avoid that.
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• Reverse-engineering: Start from a finished system. Deconstruct it to see
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how it was built, then replicate (and improve) it with your own toolset.
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• Feynman Technique: That’s what I am doing here. I want to learn how to
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think, so I teach it in simple terms to the reader. When I struggle to
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explain a part, I find gaps in my knowledge. I go back and improve.
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There are many more tools in my toolset, but these are the ones I (try to) rely
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on the most. I’ll expand this into a separate post down the line, so [14]
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subscribe to the newsletter or [15]RSS feed to get notified when it goes live!
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Thinking is the most crucial skill we need to develop amidst our current,
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uncertain times. It will help us make sense of the mess of the world, and
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especially of the mess in our minds.
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By becoming better thinkers, I’d argue we become better humans. And by becoming
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better humans, we’ll be able to make the world a better place.
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None of this is easy. It requires a vast amount of effort from us, not only to
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take the time to think or improve our thinking, but also to reject what
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interferes with it.
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It is probably why a lot of people will not do this. Instead, they might
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complain, shout at the clouds or simply give up. It is, after all, easier to
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feel defeatist than to struggle.
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Those of us who hone this skill (and thinking is ultimately a skill) will learn
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a superpower that brings us ahead of the majority.
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It’ll make us superhuman, and I strongly believe this.
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So, go and practice thinking.
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Some notes on AI: I bashed Generative AI, LLMs and algorithmic timelines a lot
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in this post.
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The reason is I strongly believe we should not be offloading the skills that
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make us human to machines.
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But I still use ChatGPT on a near-daily basis. The difference is that I (now)
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use it to complement my thinking. I use it for research (and then fact-check,
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because it still hallucinates a lot), I use it as a learning tool, or to see
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things from different angles by actively asking it to do so. It often fails,
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but sometimes it helps me.
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Generative AI is a tool we need to learn how to use. I keep comparing LLMs to a
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friend who has a photographic memory and remembers everything. But he is also
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just plain stupid. He makes shit up. He doesn’t know what he is talking about,
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but just parrots what he learned by heart. (And memorizing ≠ understanding.)
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||
Sometimes he parrots something really intelligent, but that is more a
|
||
coincidence than anything else. We just give this randomness more weight than
|
||
we should, as we find it “magical”.
|
||
|
||
And as for algorithmic timelines: they are mostly shit. Their only worth is if
|
||
you use them as a marketing tool.
|
||
|
||
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
|
||
|
||
1. This is not a new development, however. The Stoic philosopher Seneca, back
|
||
in 62-64 AD, already complained about how noisy Ancient Rome was back then
|
||
([16]On Quiet and Study). And he didn’t even have Instagram, TikTok or
|
||
ChatGPT. [17]↩
|
||
|
||
2. Some people do [18]not have an inner voice. I cannot imagine what that
|
||
would be like, as mine never shuts up. But I’d love to hear from you. [19]↩
|
||
|
||
3. The way LLMs “write” is by calculating what word is most likely to follow
|
||
the preceding one. But since it was trained on gazillions of data
|
||
(so-called tokens), it’s rather good at emulating the way humans write. But
|
||
two things: since we’ve just argued that writing is thinking, and thinking
|
||
is a human practice, we cannot call what the machine outputs as writing.
|
||
These machines don’t understand meaning, they excel in (statistical)
|
||
patterns. And second, the creators of these machines want us to believe
|
||
that there is more magic in that output than there is. If they can sell us
|
||
the idea that the machine has created something original by thinking, we’ll
|
||
have more faith in these tools and thus will throw money in their
|
||
direction. [20]And they need a shit ton of money. [21]↩
|
||
|
||
[22]Clarity
|
||
This is me
|
||
'Sup, I'm Kevin
|
||
[23] [24] [25] [26]
|
||
|
||
If this resonated with you, there’s more.
|
||
Subscribe to get future posts delivered to your inbox. No spam.
|
||
And if you want to support my writing, [27]click here.
|
||
|
||
[28]Newer Post [29]Archive [30]Older Post
|
||
|
||
References:
|
||
|
||
[1] https://cliophate.wtf/
|
||
[2] https://cliophate.wtf/start
|
||
[3] https://cliophate.wtf/reading
|
||
[4] https://cliophate.wtf/about
|
||
[5] https://cliophate.wtf/now
|
||
[6] https://cliophate.wtf/how-to-think#fn:1
|
||
[7] https://cliophate.wtf/how-to-think#fn:2
|
||
[8] https://www.calm.com/blog/brainrot
|
||
[9] https://cliophate.wtf/reading
|
||
[10] https://ko-fi.com/cliophate
|
||
[11] https://hbr.org/2010/12/you-cant-multi-task-so-stop-tr
|
||
[12] https://cliophate.wtf/how-to-think#fn:3
|
||
[13] https://overkill.wtf/supernote-manta-review/
|
||
[14] https://newslettter.cliophate.wtf/
|
||
[15] https://cliophate.wtf/
|
||
[16] https://www.stoics.com/seneca_epistles_book_1.html#L56
|
||
[17] https://cliophate.wtf/how-to-think#fnref1:1
|
||
[18] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09567976241243004
|
||
[19] https://cliophate.wtf/how-to-think#fnref1:2
|
||
[20] https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/sam-altman-seeks-trillions-of-dollars-to-reshape-business-of-chips-and-ai-89ab3db0
|
||
[21] https://cliophate.wtf/how-to-think#fnref1:3
|
||
[22] https://cliophate.wtf/archive/topic:clarity
|
||
[23] https://bsky.app/profile/cliophate.wtf
|
||
[24] https://threads.net/@cliophate
|
||
[25] https://overkill.social/@cliophate
|
||
[26] https://instagram.com/cliophate.wtf
|
||
[27] https://ko-fi.com/cliophate
|
||
[28] https://cliophate.wtf/taste-voice-genai
|
||
[29] https://cliophate.wtf/archive
|
||
[30] https://cliophate.wtf/redesign
|