#mentalmodels — Public Fediverse posts

Beyond physical tools, we build conceptual models to predict the environment. We constantly test these internal models and modify them based on our results to better understand the world around us. #MentalModels #LearningTheory

“For what man in the natural state or course of thinking did ever conceive it in his power to reduce the notions of all mankind exactly to the same length, and breadth, and height of his own? Yet this is the first humble and civil design of all innovators in the empire of reason.”*…

A “theory of everything” (a Grand Unified Theory on steriods)– a (still hypothetical) coherent theoretical framework of physics containing and explaining all physical principles– is the holy grail of physicists. Natalie Wolchover checks in on the most recent front-runner in the hunt…

Fifty-eight years after it first appeared, string theory remains the most popular candidate for the “theory of everything,” the unified mathematical framework for all matter and forces in the universe. This is much to the chagrin of its rather vocal critics. “String theory is not dead; it’s undead and now walks around like a zombie eating people’s brains,” the former physicist Sabine Hossenfelder said on her popular YouTube channel in 2024.

String theory is a “failure,” the mathematical physicist and blogger Peter Woit often says. His complaint is not that string theory is wrong — it’s that it’s “not even wrong,” as he titled a 2006 book. The theory says that, on scales of billionths of trillionths of trillionths of a centimeter, extra curled-up spatial dimensions reveal themselves and particles resolve into extended objects — strands and loops of energy — rather than points. But this alleged substructure is too small to detect, probably ever. The prediction is untestable.

A further problem is that uncountably many different configurations of dimensions and strings are permitted at those tiny scales; the theory can give rise to a limitless variety of universes. Amid this vast landscape of solutions, no one can hope to find a precise microscopic configuration that undergirds our particular macroscopic world.

These issues are profound indeed. Yet in my experience, the typical high-energy theorist in a prestigious university physics department still thinks string theory has a good chance of being correct, at least in part. The field has become siloed between those who deem it worth studying and those who don’t.

Recently, a new angle of attack has opened up. An approach called bootstrapping has allowed physicists to calculate that, under various starting assumptions about the universe, a key equation from string theory naturally follows. For some experts, these findings support the notion of “string uniqueness,” the idea that it is the only mathematically consistent quantum description of gravity and everything else.

Responding to one bootstrap paper on her YouTube channel, mere weeks after the “undead” comment, Hossenfelder said it was “string theorists do[ing] something sensible for once.” She added, “I’d say this paper strengthens the argument for string theory.”

Not everyone agrees, but the findings are reviving an important question. “This question of ‘Does string theory describe the world?’ has just been so taboo,” said Cliff Cheung, a physicist at the California Institute of Technology and an author of the paper discussed by Hossenfelder. Now, “people are actually thinking about it for the first time in decades.”

Getting wind of this work, I wanted to drill down on the logic and examine how the string hypothesis is faring these days…

And so she does: “Are Strings Still Our Best Hope for a Theory of Everything?” from @nattyover.bsky.social in @quantamagazine.bsky.social. Eminently worth reading in full.

Compare/contrast with: “Where Some See Strings, She Sees a Space-Time Made of Fractals.”

* Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub

###

As we grapple with Godel, we might spare a thought for Hermann Rorschach; he died on this date in 1922. A psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, his education in art helped to spur the development of a set of inkblots that were used experimentally to measure various unconscious parts of the subject’s personality. Rorschach knew the human tendency to project interpretations and feelings onto ambiguous stimuli and believed that the subjective responses of his subjects enabled him to distinguish among them on the basis of their perceptive abilities, intelligence, and emotional characteristics. His method has come to be known as the Rorschach test, iterations of which have continued to be used over the years to help identify personality, psychotic, and neurological disorders.

Perhaps his insight that we humans tend “to project interpretations and feelings onto ambiguous stimuli” can inform our understanding of physicists trying to construct mental/conceptual models of our reality, which they’ve been doing for a very long time, and of the limitations of that quest.

source

“For what man in the natural state or course of thinking did ever conceive it in his power to reduce the notions of all mankind exactly to the same length, and breadth, and height of his own? Yet this is the first humble and civil design of all innovators in the empire of reason.”*…

A “theory of everything” (a Grand Unified Theory on steriods)– a (still hypothetical) coherent theoretical framework of physics containing and explaining all physical principles– is the holy grail of physicists. Natalie Wolchover checks in on the most recent front-runner in the hunt…

Fifty-eight years after it first appeared, string theory remains the most popular candidate for the “theory of everything,” the unified mathematical framework for all matter and forces in the universe. This is much to the chagrin of its rather vocal critics. “String theory is not dead; it’s undead and now walks around like a zombie eating people’s brains,” the former physicist Sabine Hossenfelder said on her popular YouTube channel in 2024.

String theory is a “failure,” the mathematical physicist and blogger Peter Woit often says. His complaint is not that string theory is wrong — it’s that it’s “not even wrong,” as he titled a 2006 book. The theory says that, on scales of billionths of trillionths of trillionths of a centimeter, extra curled-up spatial dimensions reveal themselves and particles resolve into extended objects — strands and loops of energy — rather than points. But this alleged substructure is too small to detect, probably ever. The prediction is untestable.

A further problem is that uncountably many different configurations of dimensions and strings are permitted at those tiny scales; the theory can give rise to a limitless variety of universes. Amid this vast landscape of solutions, no one can hope to find a precise microscopic configuration that undergirds our particular macroscopic world.

These issues are profound indeed. Yet in my experience, the typical high-energy theorist in a prestigious university physics department still thinks string theory has a good chance of being correct, at least in part. The field has become siloed between those who deem it worth studying and those who don’t.

Recently, a new angle of attack has opened up. An approach called bootstrapping has allowed physicists to calculate that, under various starting assumptions about the universe, a key equation from string theory naturally follows. For some experts, these findings support the notion of “string uniqueness,” the idea that it is the only mathematically consistent quantum description of gravity and everything else.

Responding to one bootstrap paper on her YouTube channel, mere weeks after the “undead” comment, Hossenfelder said it was “string theorists do[ing] something sensible for once.” She added, “I’d say this paper strengthens the argument for string theory.”

Not everyone agrees, but the findings are reviving an important question. “This question of ‘Does string theory describe the world?’ has just been so taboo,” said Cliff Cheung, a physicist at the California Institute of Technology and an author of the paper discussed by Hossenfelder. Now, “people are actually thinking about it for the first time in decades.”

Getting wind of this work, I wanted to drill down on the logic and examine how the string hypothesis is faring these days…

And so she does: “Are Strings Still Our Best Hope for a Theory of Everything?” from @nattyover.bsky.social in @quantamagazine.bsky.social. Eminently worth reading in full.

Compare/contrast with: “Where Some See Strings, She Sees a Space-Time Made of Fractals.”

* Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub

###

As we grapple with Godel, we might spare a thought for Hermann Rorschach; he died on this date in 1922. A psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, his education in art helped to spur the development of a set of inkblots that were used experimentally to measure various unconscious parts of the subject’s personality. Rorschach knew the human tendency to project interpretations and feelings onto ambiguous stimuli and believed that the subjective responses of his subjects enabled him to distinguish among them on the basis of their perceptive abilities, intelligence, and emotional characteristics. His method has come to be known as the Rorschach test, iterations of which have continued to be used over the years to help identify personality, psychotic, and neurological disorders.

Perhaps his insight that we humans tend “to project interpretations and feelings onto ambiguous stimuli” can inform our understanding of physicists trying to construct mental/conceptual models of our reality, which they’ve been doing for a very long time, and of the limitations of that quest.

source

“For what man in the natural state or course of thinking did ever conceive it in his power to reduce the notions of all mankind exactly to the same length, and breadth, and height of his own? Yet this is the first humble and civil design of all innovators in the empire of reason.”*…

A “theory of everything” (a Grand Unified Theory on steriods)– a (still hypothetical) coherent theoretical framework of physics containing and explaining all physical principles– is the holy grail of physicists. Natalie Wolchover checks in on the most recent front-runner in the hunt…

Fifty-eight years after it first appeared, string theory remains the most popular candidate for the “theory of everything,” the unified mathematical framework for all matter and forces in the universe. This is much to the chagrin of its rather vocal critics. “String theory is not dead; it’s undead and now walks around like a zombie eating people’s brains,” the former physicist Sabine Hossenfelder said on her popular YouTube channel in 2024.

String theory is a “failure,” the mathematical physicist and blogger Peter Woit often says. His complaint is not that string theory is wrong — it’s that it’s “not even wrong,” as he titled a 2006 book. The theory says that, on scales of billionths of trillionths of trillionths of a centimeter, extra curled-up spatial dimensions reveal themselves and particles resolve into extended objects — strands and loops of energy — rather than points. But this alleged substructure is too small to detect, probably ever. The prediction is untestable.

A further problem is that uncountably many different configurations of dimensions and strings are permitted at those tiny scales; the theory can give rise to a limitless variety of universes. Amid this vast landscape of solutions, no one can hope to find a precise microscopic configuration that undergirds our particular macroscopic world.

These issues are profound indeed. Yet in my experience, the typical high-energy theorist in a prestigious university physics department still thinks string theory has a good chance of being correct, at least in part. The field has become siloed between those who deem it worth studying and those who don’t.

Recently, a new angle of attack has opened up. An approach called bootstrapping has allowed physicists to calculate that, under various starting assumptions about the universe, a key equation from string theory naturally follows. For some experts, these findings support the notion of “string uniqueness,” the idea that it is the only mathematically consistent quantum description of gravity and everything else.

Responding to one bootstrap paper on her YouTube channel, mere weeks after the “undead” comment, Hossenfelder said it was “string theorists do[ing] something sensible for once.” She added, “I’d say this paper strengthens the argument for string theory.”

Not everyone agrees, but the findings are reviving an important question. “This question of ‘Does string theory describe the world?’ has just been so taboo,” said Cliff Cheung, a physicist at the California Institute of Technology and an author of the paper discussed by Hossenfelder. Now, “people are actually thinking about it for the first time in decades.”

Getting wind of this work, I wanted to drill down on the logic and examine how the string hypothesis is faring these days…

And so she does: “Are Strings Still Our Best Hope for a Theory of Everything?” from @nattyover.bsky.social in @quantamagazine.bsky.social. Eminently worth reading in full.

Compare/contrast with: “Where Some See Strings, She Sees a Space-Time Made of Fractals.”

* Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub

###

As we grapple with Godel, we might spare a thought for Hermann Rorschach; he died on this date in 1922. A psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, his education in art helped to spur the development of a set of inkblots that were used experimentally to measure various unconscious parts of the subject’s personality. Rorschach knew the human tendency to project interpretations and feelings onto ambiguous stimuli and believed that the subjective responses of his subjects enabled him to distinguish among them on the basis of their perceptive abilities, intelligence, and emotional characteristics. His method has come to be known as the Rorschach test, iterations of which have continued to be used over the years to help identify personality, psychotic, and neurological disorders.

Perhaps his insight that we humans tend “to project interpretations and feelings onto ambiguous stimuli” can inform our understanding of physicists trying to construct mental/conceptual models of our reality, which they’ve been doing for a very long time, and of the limitations of that quest.

source

“For what man in the natural state or course of thinking did ever conceive it in his power to reduce the notions of all mankind exactly to the same length, and breadth, and height of his own? Yet this is the first humble and civil design of all innovators in the empire of reason.”*…

A “theory of everything” (a Grand Unified Theory on steriods)– a (still hypothetical) coherent theoretical framework of physics containing and explaining all physical principles– is the holy grail of physicists. Natalie Wolchover checks in on the most recent front-runner in the hunt…

Fifty-eight years after it first appeared, string theory remains the most popular candidate for the “theory of everything,” the unified mathematical framework for all matter and forces in the universe. This is much to the chagrin of its rather vocal critics. “String theory is not dead; it’s undead and now walks around like a zombie eating people’s brains,” the former physicist Sabine Hossenfelder said on her popular YouTube channel in 2024.

String theory is a “failure,” the mathematical physicist and blogger Peter Woit often says. His complaint is not that string theory is wrong — it’s that it’s “not even wrong,” as he titled a 2006 book. The theory says that, on scales of billionths of trillionths of trillionths of a centimeter, extra curled-up spatial dimensions reveal themselves and particles resolve into extended objects — strands and loops of energy — rather than points. But this alleged substructure is too small to detect, probably ever. The prediction is untestable.

A further problem is that uncountably many different configurations of dimensions and strings are permitted at those tiny scales; the theory can give rise to a limitless variety of universes. Amid this vast landscape of solutions, no one can hope to find a precise microscopic configuration that undergirds our particular macroscopic world.

These issues are profound indeed. Yet in my experience, the typical high-energy theorist in a prestigious university physics department still thinks string theory has a good chance of being correct, at least in part. The field has become siloed between those who deem it worth studying and those who don’t.

Recently, a new angle of attack has opened up. An approach called bootstrapping has allowed physicists to calculate that, under various starting assumptions about the universe, a key equation from string theory naturally follows. For some experts, these findings support the notion of “string uniqueness,” the idea that it is the only mathematically consistent quantum description of gravity and everything else.

Responding to one bootstrap paper on her YouTube channel, mere weeks after the “undead” comment, Hossenfelder said it was “string theorists do[ing] something sensible for once.” She added, “I’d say this paper strengthens the argument for string theory.”

Not everyone agrees, but the findings are reviving an important question. “This question of ‘Does string theory describe the world?’ has just been so taboo,” said Cliff Cheung, a physicist at the California Institute of Technology and an author of the paper discussed by Hossenfelder. Now, “people are actually thinking about it for the first time in decades.”

Getting wind of this work, I wanted to drill down on the logic and examine how the string hypothesis is faring these days…

And so she does: “Are Strings Still Our Best Hope for a Theory of Everything?” from @nattyover.bsky.social in @quantamagazine.bsky.social. Eminently worth reading in full.

Compare/contrast with: “Where Some See Strings, She Sees a Space-Time Made of Fractals.”

* Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub

###

As we grapple with Godel, we might spare a thought for Hermann Rorschach; he died on this date in 1922. A psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, his education in art helped to spur the development of a set of inkblots that were used experimentally to measure various unconscious parts of the subject’s personality. Rorschach knew the human tendency to project interpretations and feelings onto ambiguous stimuli and believed that the subjective responses of his subjects enabled him to distinguish among them on the basis of their perceptive abilities, intelligence, and emotional characteristics. His method has come to be known as the Rorschach test, iterations of which have continued to be used over the years to help identify personality, psychotic, and neurological disorders.

Perhaps his insight that we humans tend “to project interpretations and feelings onto ambiguous stimuli” can inform our understanding of physicists trying to construct mental/conceptual models of our reality, which they’ve been doing for a very long time, and of the limitations of that quest.

source

“For what man in the natural state or course of thinking did ever conceive it in his power to reduce the notions of all mankind exactly to the same length, and breadth, and height of his own? Yet this is the first humble and civil design of all innovators in the empire of reason.”*…

A “theory of everything” (a Grand Unified Theory on steriods)– a (still hypothetical) coherent theoretical framework of physics containing and explaining all physical principles– is the holy grail of physicists. Natalie Wolchover checks in on the most recent front-runner in the hunt…

Fifty-eight years after it first appeared, string theory remains the most popular candidate for the “theory of everything,” the unified mathematical framework for all matter and forces in the universe. This is much to the chagrin of its rather vocal critics. “String theory is not dead; it’s undead and now walks around like a zombie eating people’s brains,” the former physicist Sabine Hossenfelder said on her popular YouTube channel in 2024.

String theory is a “failure,” the mathematical physicist and blogger Peter Woit often says. His complaint is not that string theory is wrong — it’s that it’s “not even wrong,” as he titled a 2006 book. The theory says that, on scales of billionths of trillionths of trillionths of a centimeter, extra curled-up spatial dimensions reveal themselves and particles resolve into extended objects — strands and loops of energy — rather than points. But this alleged substructure is too small to detect, probably ever. The prediction is untestable.

A further problem is that uncountably many different configurations of dimensions and strings are permitted at those tiny scales; the theory can give rise to a limitless variety of universes. Amid this vast landscape of solutions, no one can hope to find a precise microscopic configuration that undergirds our particular macroscopic world.

These issues are profound indeed. Yet in my experience, the typical high-energy theorist in a prestigious university physics department still thinks string theory has a good chance of being correct, at least in part. The field has become siloed between those who deem it worth studying and those who don’t.

Recently, a new angle of attack has opened up. An approach called bootstrapping has allowed physicists to calculate that, under various starting assumptions about the universe, a key equation from string theory naturally follows. For some experts, these findings support the notion of “string uniqueness,” the idea that it is the only mathematically consistent quantum description of gravity and everything else.

Responding to one bootstrap paper on her YouTube channel, mere weeks after the “undead” comment, Hossenfelder said it was “string theorists do[ing] something sensible for once.” She added, “I’d say this paper strengthens the argument for string theory.”

Not everyone agrees, but the findings are reviving an important question. “This question of ‘Does string theory describe the world?’ has just been so taboo,” said Cliff Cheung, a physicist at the California Institute of Technology and an author of the paper discussed by Hossenfelder. Now, “people are actually thinking about it for the first time in decades.”

Getting wind of this work, I wanted to drill down on the logic and examine how the string hypothesis is faring these days…

And so she does: “Are Strings Still Our Best Hope for a Theory of Everything?” from @nattyover.bsky.social in @quantamagazine.bsky.social. Eminently worth reading in full.

Compare/contrast with: “Where Some See Strings, She Sees a Space-Time Made of Fractals.”

* Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub

###

As we grapple with Godel, we might spare a thought for Hermann Rorschach; he died on this date in 1922. A psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, his education in art helped to spur the development of a set of inkblots that were used experimentally to measure various unconscious parts of the subject’s personality. Rorschach knew the human tendency to project interpretations and feelings onto ambiguous stimuli and believed that the subjective responses of his subjects enabled him to distinguish among them on the basis of their perceptive abilities, intelligence, and emotional characteristics. His method has come to be known as the Rorschach test, iterations of which have continued to be used over the years to help identify personality, psychotic, and neurological disorders.

Perhaps his insight that we humans tend “to project interpretations and feelings onto ambiguous stimuli” can inform our understanding of physicists trying to construct mental/conceptual models of our reality, which they’ve been doing for a very long time, and of the limitations of that quest.

source

Was trust eroded due to ignoring second-order consequences?

Read more 👉 https://lttr.ai/Apjp6

#mentalmodels #ai #systemsthinking

Cognitive Debt: When Velocity Exceeds Comprehension

https://www.rockoder.com/beyondthecode/cognitive-debt-when-velocity-exceeds-comprehension/

#HackerNews #CognitiveDebt #VelocityExceedsComprehension #TechInsights #SoftwareDevelopment #MentalModels

Every yes hides a no.
Every decision has a cost you don’t see.

Opportunity cost isn’t about money -
It’s about what you give up to move forward.

Choose with intention.
Think in trade-offs. 🧠✨

#opportunitycost #decisionmaking #thinkbetter #mentalmodels #strategicthinking #deepthinking #mindset #matter #leadershipthinking #lifechoices #economics #life #criticalthinking #systems #think #mindset #creator

Think Better OS — An Operating System for the Mind

Think Better OS is not motivation.
It’s not advice.

It’s a system —
to think clearly, decide calmly,
and live deliberately in a noisy world.

#ThinkingTools
#MentalModels
#ClearThinking
#BetterDecisions
#CriticalThinking

PRODUCTHEAD: Product in highly dynamic markets

» Product-market fit is more elusive than ever in a dynamic market

» In deep-tech companies, it’s unrealistic to compete with your team on technical knowledge

» ‘Financial theatre’ occurs when the Board and product leadership aren’t communicating effectively

» There is room for both concrete and abstract thinking

#prodmgmt #board #communication #financial #mentalModels #operatingModel #productLeadership #productMarketFit

📖 Read more: https://imanageproducts.com/producthead-product-in-highly-dynamic-markets/

#MentalModels #CriticalThinking #DecisionMaking #CognitiveBias #FirstPrinciples #ProblemSolving #Psychology #Mindset #SelfImprovement #Reasoning (5/5)

"When a measure becomes a target it ceases to be a good measure"—Goodhart's Law. One of our favourite posts is now a podcast episode podcasts.apple.com/nz/podcast/n... #MentalModels #LifeHacks #Utopian #Moths #LehmanBrothers #Engagement #Ratings #Profits #GDP

Goodhart's Law ~ the problem w...

"When a measure becomes a target it ceases to be a good measure"—Goodhart's Law. One of our favourite posts is now a podcast episode podcasts.apple.com/nz/podcast/n... #MentalModels #LifeHacks #Utopian #Moths #LehmanBrothers #Engagement #Ratings #Profits #GDP

Goodhart's Law ~ the problem w...

"When a measure becomes a target it ceases to be a good measure"—Goodhart's Law. One of our favourite posts is now a podcast episode podcasts.apple.com/nz/podcast/n... #MentalModels #LifeHacks #Utopian #Moths #LehmanBrothers #Engagement #Ratings #Profits #GDP

Goodhart's Law ~ the problem w...

The Mind as Semi-Solid Smoke

This post continues the series on Socratic Thinking, turning the space-and-place lens inward to examine the mind itself. Human minds can be thought of as an imperfect place with the ability to create their own insta-places to navigate ambiguity. 

Exploration in any real or conceptual space needs navigational markers with sufficient meaning. Humans are biologically predisposed to seek out and use navigational markers. This tendency is rooted in our neural architecture, emerges early in life, and is shared with other animals, reflecting its deep evolutionary origins 1,2 .  Even the simplest of life performing chemotaxis uses the signal-field of food to navigate. 

When you’re microscopic, the territory is the map; at human scale, we externalise those cues as landmarks—then mirror the process inside our heads. Just as cells follow chemical gradients, our thoughts follow self-made landmarks, yet these landmarks are vaporous.

From the outside our mind is a single place, it is our identity. Probe closer and our identity is nebulous and dissolves the way a city dissolves into smaller and smaller places the closer you look. We use our identity to create the first stable place in the world and then use other places to navigate life. However, these places come from unreliable sources, our internal and external environments.  How do we know the places are even real, and do we have the knowledge to trust their reality? Well, we don’t. We can’t judge our mental landmarks false. Callard calls this normative self-blindness: the built-in refusal to saw off the branch we stand on.   

Normative self-blindness is a trick to gloss over details and keep moving. Insta-places are conjured from our experience and are treated as solid no matter how poorly they are tied down by actual knowledge. We can accept that a place was loosely formed in the past, an error, or is not yet well defined in the future, is unknown. However, in the moment, the places exist and we use them to see. 

Understanding and accepting that our minds work this way is a key tenet of Socratic Thinking. It makes adopting the posture of inquiry much easier. Socratic inquiry begins by admitting that everyone’s guiding landmarks may be made of semi-solid smoke.

1Chan, Edgar, Oliver Baumann, Mark A. Bellgrove, and Jason B. Mattingley. “From Objects to Landmarks: The Function of Visual Location Information in Spatial Navigation.” Frontiers in Psychology 3 (2012). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00304

2Freas, Cody A., and Ken Cheng. “The Basis of Navigation Across Species.” Annual Review of Psychology 73, no. 1 (January 4, 2022): 217–41. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-020821-111311.

#AgnesCallard #cognitiveBiases #cognitiveScience #criticalThinking #decisionMaking #epistemology #evolutionaryPsychology #humanPsychology #identity #introspection #mentalModels #metacognition #mindset #navigation #neuroscience #normativeSelfBlindness #personalDevelopment #philosophy #sensemaking #socraticThinking #spaceAndPlace

Thinking with places 

“A farmer has to cut down trees to create space for his farmstead and fields. Yet once the farm is established it becomes an ordered world of meaning—a place—and beyond it is the forest and space.” — Yi-Fu Tuan

Thinking itself is place-making: the act of converting undifferentiated possibility into navigable meaning.

A place comes into being the moment we interrupt undifferentiated space. Place-making is fundamentally an act of interruption. Space is thought of as possibility but is unavailable without the signposts of place. When a place is created we impose a way of looking, being, and acting on the space of choice. The place you pick to navigate your space defines the identity you will inhabit during your quest. Every tool is a micro-place: it frames what can be thought and forecloses alternative moves. They enforce the kind of thoughts that can be had, the type of exploration that can be done, and configures space in an opinionated way. 

Picking a tool commits us to a world view. Consider the space of ‘good TV shows’. Family, friends and culture have made the choice of what good means. When Netflix suggests shows it uses your watching history as a probe to create place so that every individual is always watching ‘good’ shows. The pure possibility space of the search bar is disrupted by the suggestions provided.

Like algorithmic curation, Socratic dialogue also interrupts space, it is interrogation as cartography. Socratic thinking is also an act of interruption and making concrete what was nebulous. It’s asking us to specify which show, if we claim to love TV. Socratic thinking (henceforth referred to as just thinking) starts by probing that which does not need questioning, the answers that are obvious the ones that everyone knows. This may seem foreign at first glance but we do this all the time, say we make a list of our favorite TV shows, someone always says you are missing this or that show and that this list is completely wrong. This kind of disagreement leads to the shared quest of answering the question, ‘What is it to be entertained?’. 

Thinking pursues knowledge through the act of stabilizing answers to such questions by creating places in those unexamined areas. Discussion allows us to map. There is usually no well defined answer for such questions, if there were, they would simply be problems that we could solve with a google search. The quest stops when the parties involved are satisfied that they have arrived at an answer. Thinking is the act of place-making by taking something that was ungraspable and tying it down with knowledge. Place is, after all, an “ordered world of meaning” and we can use these places to create home bases from which to explore.   

Even without other people simply engaging with the reality of the universe is sufficient for thought. Places are stable systems which provide a surface on which your thoughts and hypothesis can be tested. Even if there is no other person around and you’re simply engaged with looking at the world can uncover a new truth tied down by knowledge.  

Thinking is the process of updating beliefs based on the mini places that make up the space that you’re interrogating. Each place is a noisy pointer to the underlying truth, and each updating of belief allows you to get closer to the knowledge you seek.

#algorithmicCuration #cognitiveScience #criticalThinking #epistemology #mentalModels #philosophy #senseMaking #socraticMethod #spaceAndPlace #toolUse #worldview #yiFuTuan

The educator panic over AI is real, and rational.
I've been there myself. The difference is I moved past denial to a more pragmatic question: since AI regulation seems unlikely (with both camps refusing to engage), how do we actually work with these systems?

The "AI will kill critical thinking" crowd has a point, but they're missing context.
Critical reasoning wasn't exactly thriving before AI arrived: just look around. The real question isn't whether AI threatens thinking skills, but whether we can leverage it the same way we leverage other cognitive tools.

We don't hunt our own food or walk everywhere anymore.
We use supermarkets and cars. Most of us Google instead of visiting libraries. Each tool trade-off changed how we think and what skills matter. AI is the next step in this progression, if we're smart about it.

The key is learning to think with AI rather than being replaced by it.
That means understanding both its capabilities and our irreplaceable human advantages.

1/3

#AI #Education #FutureOfEducation #AIinEducation #LLM #ChatGPT #Claude #EdAI #CriticalThinking #CognitiveScience #Metacognition #HigherOrderThinking #Reasoning #Vygotsky #Hutchins #Sweller #LearningScience #EducationalPsychology #SocialLearning #TechforGood #EticalAI #AILiteracy #PromptEngineering #AISkills #DigitalLiteracy #FutureSkills #LRM #AIResearch #AILimitations #SystemsThinking #AIEvaluation #MentalModels #LifelongLearning #AIEthics #HumanCenteredAI #DigitalTransformation #AIRegulation #ResponsibleAI #Philosophy

AI isn't going anywhere. Time to get strategic:
Instead of mourning lost critical thinking skills, let's build on them through cognitive delegation—using AI as a thinking partner, not a replacement.

This isn't some Silicon Valley fantasy:
Three decades of cognitive research already mapped out how this works:

Cognitive Load Theory:
Our brains can only juggle so much at once. Let AI handle the grunt work while you focus on making meaningful connections.

Distributed Cognition:
Naval crews don't navigate with individual genius—they spread thinking across people, instruments, and procedures. AI becomes another crew member in your cognitive system.

Zone of Proximal Development
We learn best with expert guidance bridging what we can't quite do alone. AI can serve as that "more knowledgeable other" (though it's still early days).
The table below shows what this looks like in practice:

2/3

#AI #Education #FutureOfEducation #AIinEducation #LLM #ChatGPT #Claude #EdAI #CriticalThinking #CognitiveScience #Metacognition #HigherOrderThinking #Reasoning #Vygotsky #Hutchins #Sweller #LearningScience #EducationalPsychology #SocialLearning #TechforGood #EticalAI #AILiteracy #PromptEngineering #AISkills #DigitalLiteracy #FutureSkills #LRM #AIResearch #AILimitations #SystemsThinking #AIEvaluation #MentalModels #LifelongLearning #AIEthics #HumanCenteredAI #DigitalTransformation #AIRegulation #ResponsibleAI #Philosophy

Critical reasoning vs Cognitive Delegation

Old School Focus:

Building internal cognitive capabilities and managing cognitive load independently.

Cognitive Delegation Focus:

Orchestrating distributed cognitive systems while maintaining quality control over AI-augmented processes.

We can still go for a jog or go hunt our own deer, but for reaching the stars we, the Apes do what Apes do best: Use tools to build on our cognitive abilities. AI is a tool.

3/3

#AI #Education #FutureOfEducation #AIinEducation #LLM #ChatGPT #Claude #EdAI #CriticalThinking #CognitiveScience #Metacognition #HigherOrderThinking #Reasoning #Vygotsky #Hutchins #Sweller #LearningScience #EducationalPsychology #SocialLearning #TechforGood #EticalAI #AILiteracy #PromptEngineering #AISkills #DigitalLiteracy #FutureSkills #LRM #AIResearch #AILimitations #SystemsThinking #AIEvaluation #MentalModels #LifelongLearning #AIEthics #HumanCenteredAI #DigitalTransformation #AIRegulation #ResponsibleAI #Philosophy

Your mind is like a mirror—it reflects whatever is placed before it. But when you cling to fixed ideas or memories, it's like taking a photograph and mistaking it for reality.

#Zen #Mindfulness #Nonduality #LetGo #MentalModels #ConceptualThinking #MirrorMind #DharmaTalk #Awareness #ClearMind #WhoAreYou #Meditation #SpiritualAwakening #Koan

https://youtube.com/shorts/APVE6LBqWRw

In need of a holiday read? why not join milu - seen here pondering whether he's capable of #causalinference - in learning about mental models and legal reasoning! brought to you by our PI, David Lagnado, with descending bass lines on top 🐾 if you are interested in #decisionmaking #causalreasoning #mentalmodels and #legalreassoning this book is for you!

In need of a holiday read? why not join milu - seen here pondering whether he's capable of #causalinference - in learning about mental models and legal reasoning! brought to you by our PI, David Lagnado, with descending bass lines on top 🐾 if you are interested in #decisionmaking #causalreasoning #mentalmodels and #legalreassoning this book is for you!

In need of a holiday read? why not join milu - seen here pondering whether he's capable of #causalinference - in learning about mental models and legal reasoning! brought to you by our PI, David Lagnado, with descending bass lines on top 🐾 if you are interested in #decisionmaking #causalreasoning #mentalmodels and #legalreassoning this book is for you!

In need of a holiday read? why not join milu - seen here pondering whether he's capable of #causalinference - in learning about mental models and legal reasoning! brought to you by our PI, David Lagnado, with descending bass lines on top 🐾 if you are interested in #decisionmaking #causalreasoning #mentalmodels and #legalreassoning this book is for you!

In this post, I talk about #visualthinking techniques that can be drawn from #designthinking, #dataanalytics, #systemthinking, #gamestorming, and #lean startup to help #individuals, #groups, and teams facilitate #decisionmaking.

https://www.designative.info/2021/04/16/strategy-facilitation-and-visual-thinking/

#BusinessDecisions #Collaboration #ClusteringAnalysis #Creativity #CriticalThinking #DataVisualization #DesignDecisions #DesignSkills #DesignStrategy #EdwardDeBono #LateralThinking
#MentalModels #SixThinkingHats #UX #UserResearch #Workshops