Re:Thinking

Beating your biggest thinking problem:

1. The mind is a pattern making system.
2. While patterned thinking it's absolutely essential most of the time, it can also become your number one thinking problem.
3. Some people's minds are naturally more flexible than others', but everybody can improve their mental flexibility with practice.
4. Not all problems can be solved simply by accumulating more facts. Sometimes that just makes matters worse. What is often needed is a new view, or a new approach to the problem.
5. Nothing is perfect. Nothing is sacred. Every assumption can and should be questioned periodically.

How to get new ideas:

1. New ideas can't be forced; they must flow freely.
2. The greatest killer of a new idea is a negative attitude. "It won't work." "It can't be done."
3. Even if an idea seems utterly impossible it should not be rejected out of hand. It may stimulate other ideas that can lead to a solution.
4. With practice you can improve your ability to come up with new and creative ideas.

How to understand other people:

1. Everybody, including yourself, has only his own experience to think with.
2. You do not see what I see. We all tend to see, hear, and remember what we want to see, hear, and remember. Our view of the world is highly selective.

How to profit from being wrong (if you can't be wrong, you can't be right):

1. Mental defenses
1. Shifting the ground "subject/motive shift." When two people are arguing, one person shifts the point of the argument to something probably very irrelevant that doesn't relate to the argument. Not sticking to the point at hand.
2. You'll never believe me.
3. Changing the rules. Something happens that doesn't go along with what you said shouldn't happen, but it does so you change the rules to fit in your idea or theory.
4. Exception and rules. "It's the exception that proves the rule."
5. You can't prove a negative.
2. Don't be afraid to be wrong.

9 thinking traps (and how to avoid them):

1. The over-generalization trap. For example: "All Irishmen are drunkards." A generalization is only a tool or device. Don't trust generation as if they were hard facts.
2. The untrue truism.
1. Homely old aphorisms
2. Flatout prejudice
3. Revolving door reasoning.
• "Why do you think UFOs are real?"
• "Because the evidence for them is so good.'
• "Why is this good evidence?"
• "Most people believe that UFOs are real."
4. The two sides of every question trap.
5. The "And you're one too" excuse. You drive into the city and park your car illegally. It's just for a minute; you say. Half hour later you come out--and there it is, a big fat parking ticket under the windshield wiper. "What the hell is this;" you think. "Why are they giving me a parking ticket with all those violent criminals running around!"
6. The false analogy trap.
7. The cause and effect trap.
8. The world's foremost authority.
9. The false extrapolation snare. If this happens, then that will surely happen; and that's it!
   

How not to get snowed:

1. Eight common fallacies.
1. An appeal to personal prejudices and has nothing whatever to do with the question under discussing.
2. An appeal to mass emotions."Band-wagon effect."
3. An appeal to pity.
4. An appeal to force. If the other fellow is elected there will be anarchy and blood will run in the streets.
5. An appeal to money.
6. An appeal to prestige.
7. An appeal to ignorance. The politicician who tosses a whole mass of facts and figures at his audience, information he knows they cannot understand or evaluate, is making this sort of an appeal.
8. To catch the crowd, is a general term for any of the fallacies already mentioned and for any other dishonest or misleading arguments.
2. Consider the source
3. Fear of numbers.
4. Before you meekly accept conclusions drawn from any set of figures, here are five questions to ask yourself.
1. Who says so?
2. How does he know?
3. What's missing?
4. Did somebody change the subject--that is, shift the base or the scale for the statistics?

The ABCs of arguing:

1. 14 tips for winning arguments.
1. Stay calm, or at least appear so even if you don't feel that way. If you look as if you are in control it makes everything you say appear more rational, even if it's not.
2. While uncontrolled anger is usually harmful to a case, a well-directed show of anger can be effective.
3. Be sure of your facts when you are specific, particularly if you suspect that your opponent knows something about the subject. Being caught in even a trivial error of fact, one that does not affect the main thrust of your argument, can be very damaging, for it makes it appear that you don't know what you're talking about.
4. If you can't spot an error in your opponent's facts and if they appear to be damaging, ask him to cite his sources. Most of the time people don't remember where they got their information, and if they do you can always try to discredit the source.
5. If you feel an argument is slipping away from you, ask your opponent to "define your terms," then attack the definitions.
6. Use the all-or-nothing technique--extend your opponent's argument to the "logical extreme," even if it isn't logical. Every point has an absurd, not a logical, extreme.
7. Always claim your opponent has misstated your case, whether he has done so or not, because it gives you a chance to complain that your opponent has misunderstood what you were saying and is stupid, or has deliberately twisting your words and is dishonest.
8. If you are trapped in a misstatement, insist that your words have been taken out of context, or that your opponent is ignoring the "spirit" or "principal thrust" of what you have said.
9. If you are accused of inconsistency, deny it. If you really have been inconsistent and have been caught at it, it may be possible to reinterpret your previous statements to bring them in line with what you have just said.
10. Search around for some side issue on which you feel particularly strong and try to divert the argument in that direction.
11. Damning the alternative is another useful technique. If you have offered a proposition, don't let your opponent simply attack you, make him offer an alternative. If he can't, claim that you have won the argument by default. If he does offer an alternative, attack it.
12. If your position seems very weak, you can always try to justify it by insisting that it is necessary because of the errors or the evil deeds of the opposition.
13. And there is always the flat-out personal attack.
14. If you are convinced that you are a firm winner in the argument, be gracious.
2. Things you can do when you see your argument going down to defeat.
1. Never admit that you were wrong.
2. Declare yourself a winner by definition.
3. Go for a tie and declare that you and your opponent, who is a nice fellow, are really in basic agreement.
4. Declare that the question is not yet settled and more investigation (or thought or time) is needed.
3. If you wish to improve your skills in arguing, try this little exercise suggested by Nicholas Calpadi. Choose a controversial subject about which you hold a strong opinion. Now try to construct an argument against the position that you hold. Don't cheat. Make the argument against your own opinion as good as it can possibly be.
4. Next time an argument presents itself, run through these basic points.
1. I'm not going to change anybody's mind, and I'm probably not going to learn anything.
2. Can I walk away from this one?
3. If I win, what will I win, and what do I stand to lose?
4. If I lose, what do I lose, and what do I stand to gain?
5. Do I know what we are really arguing about?

Five steps to stop fooling yourself:

1. Understand that, like all human beings you have a strong tendency to defend yourself and to believe that you are right even when you are wrong. Then you won't have to justify your justifications.
2. Understand that just because you have done someting that is stupid and/or immoral that does not necessarily mean you are completely stupid and immoral. Then you won't have to justify everything you do.
3. Build a good self-image. That will make it more difficult for you to do things you consider wrong, and will also allow you to tolerate your errors.
4. Recognize that what's done is done. Do your thinking beforehand and you won't have to do so much justifying afterward.
5. Recognize that, like everyone else, you make mistakes, and that it is necessary and useful to admit that you do.

How to avoid word trouble:

1. Remember about the word is not the thing.
2. The big abstract question may feel important, but you will never be able to "think through" the answers, so don't waste your time trying.
3. The more precise your vocabulary is, the more precise you're thinking is likely to be.
4. All words have two levels of meaning, the denotative or dictionary definition and the connotative or subjective association. When you speak to others be sure you are getting across the right meaning at both levels.
5. Writing a problem down will help you clarify your thinking about it, because it forces you to examine your ideas more objectively.
6. Don't expect others to read your mind. If you want to be understood, say what you mean, as forcibly as clearly as possible.

How to give your mind a break:

1. The four basic elements for meditation.
1. The quiet environment.
2. A mental device. All techniques involving some constant stimulus upon which attention could be fixed. The popular meditative techniques of the 1970s use a mantra--a simple word that was silently repeated over and over again to fix the attention.
3. A passive attitude. To ignore distracting thoughts and not to worry about them.
4. A comfortable position.
2. How to do it.
1. Find a quiet place where you are not likely to be disturbed for 20 minutes or so. Absolute quiet is not essential many people who took up meditation found that they could do it while they were commuting on a train.
2. Sit down in a comfortable position and close your eyes.
3. Relax, or at least relax as much as you are able to. Try the technique of first relaxing the muscles of your feet and then moving upward.
4. Breathe through your nose, easily and naturally. Every time you breathe out silently repeat the word "one." That is to be your mental device, your mantra. Breathe in, breathe out "one." Breathe in, breathe out "one."
5. Do this for 10 to 20 minutes, twice-a day if possible. You can open your eyes to check on the time, but don't worry too much about it. Don't set an alarm of any sort--that will just provoke anxiety as you wait for it to go off. After the meditation period is finished continue to sit quietly for a few minutes without meditating.
6. While you are sitting and repeating "one" don't worry about achieving anything.
3. Two notes of caution.
1. Not to try the system, or any other meditative technique, for two hours after eating.
2. There are a small number of people who are in a state of extreme high anxiety and tension, for whom the process does not work, and indeed may make things worse.

5 Rules for Two Brains:

1. Don't scorn those "illogical" flashes of inspiration. Recognize them as a full partner in your brain activity.
2. Don't rationalize inspirations, trying to make them into something they are not. That merely distorts them.
3. Remember that while inspiration may be a good starting point, it is usually incomplete. For an inspiration to grow into a good workable idea a lot of hard work may have to follow.
4. Remember also that the inspiration is the product of human brain activity--it is not a divine revelation. Your inspirations can be wrong, just like your logical constructions.
5. While it is only proper to respect other people's inspirations, feelings, tastes, and other illogical conclusions, there is no reason to accept them uncritically.