Fake thinking and real thinking
8 comments
·January 30, 2025roenxi
noduerme
I don't see any conflict between your prescription and breaking step 2 down into as many microtasks and unit tests as necessary, which seems to be the thrust of the essay.
roenxi
Carlsmith is breaking reasoning up into thinking that feels "Real" and "fake". This distinction is fundamentally flawed; good thinking has no consistent feeling. All ends of the spectrum are powerful for getting to the truth as long as someone is intellectually honest. You can wring a lot of complex and accurate thought out of sloppy intuition and heuristics backed by a little formal proof afterwards.
If I use a heuristic (rote v new in the essay) that is perfectly real as long as the heuristic is accurate. The mind can only think in heuristics, philosophically. We can challenge why any particular heuristic is wrong but reality is too infinite for a finite mass to comprehend without them. Or "no bullshit", which - in a philosophical essay - is self-defeating to identify as anything less than critical.
I'm saying that while thinking about thinking is great fun, the distinction he is drawing looks to me like it is on the verge of morphing into a framework for smart people to rationalise their biases. Complex spectrum around thought usually are. If you argue politics a lot then you see that sort of construct regularly; people have these beautiful mental prisons they built for themselves to prove their opponents are all communists/nazis/aliens/reptiles.
On that subject I must be the only person I know who understands when those labels are appropriate. I don't get why it is so hard for everyone else. The communists are anyone I'm arguing with.
zaphirplane
But really does that preclude the Illuminati existing and ruling the world. Denying their existence and reach is a bias don’t you think
ggm
I tend to think it doesn't but it makes people feel better.
I see a lot of this when AskHistorians on reddit goes into the Jesus problem. People construct amazing tiers of belief around the veracity of the written word, and make comparisons to "did Caesar exist" questions. I don't think they actually advance the story beyond belief anchored views, but they certainly seem to feel better.
(AskHistorians now routinely has to fall back on "the historical Jesus" to clarify statements to personhood, not godhood, but the fundamentals around existence proof from textual analysis remain. It's the same with Buddha. Mohammed has less of a problem in the Hadith, although I may be applying a subjective bias there. Archeology of the middle east is littered with strong assertions about finds which are probably NOT "the original well cover, off the well of Jacob")
About my own beliefs, I try to be clear that I think my axioms are centered in belief, and its flawed. But the problem is I wind up being far to easy to convince that flawed conclusions have been drawn. After all, I continue to believe in the fundamental goodness of people, all evidence to the contrary not withstanding.
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jojohack
"Was it love or was it the idea of being in love?" - "One Slip", Pink Floyd
satisfice
I see no reason to accept the premise that “fake thinking” can exist. Occam’s razor suggests a simpler interpretation: telling lies.
It would be like saying Tic Tac Toe is not a real game, but chess IS real. Charades is fake, but Darts is real. They are merely different games, requiring different models and operations.
“Rote thinking” is real thinking, applied to simple pattern matching situation.
The concern of the author can be addressed by focusing on the difference between pretense and authenticity. Am I lying to myself? Am I clothing myself in a patina of reason that I intentionally do not complete or repair, because the story soothes me? If so, that’s not necessarily bad or wrong— unless I wish to do my best thinking.
In the main, unless someone has a remarkably clear mind, I wouldn't trust them to internally assess the state of their own thinking in these terms (hollow v. solid; map v. world, etc). This is how bias and cognitive short circuits slip in. "I'm thinking solidly, so it seems safe to believe that the Illuminati control what futures!". Changing a mind typically feels very unsettling in all the ways that make people think they are mis-thinking, and the abstract can be uncomfortable in every way imaginable. It is a self-reflecting lump of meat, don't expect your mind to behave in any particular way one day to the next. It is only just holding it together with the help of the long-suffering skull.
A more succinct check:
1) Can I state a formal (ie, logical) argument? Y/N.
2) Have I checked the assumptions of that argument as best I can for objectivity? Include a steel-man check. Y/N.
3) Have I had a hot argument with someone intelligent who disagrees with my assumptions? Y/N.
Three Ys on that sale and that is as close as someone can get to whether they have really been thinking about something or not. Step 2 is the hard part.