The One-Inch Frame Two friends argue heatedly about whether a hot dog is a sandwich. One insists it is—bread on both sides, filling in the middle. The other insists it isn't—ask any deli. After twenty minutes, neither has moved an inch. How to Disagree About Categories In March 2008, Paul Graham published "How to Disagree," … Continue reading Frame-Switching: The Hidden Pattern in Pointless Arguments
Tag: logic
Filter Failure & Critical Ignoring
"As important as the ability to think critically continues to be, we argue that it is insufficient to borrow the tools developed for offline environments and apply them to the digital world. When the world comes to people filtered through digital devices, there is no longer a need to decide what information to seek. Instead, … Continue reading Filter Failure & Critical Ignoring
We Are All Confident Idiots
"An ignorant mind is precisely not a spotless, empty vessel, but one that’s filled with the clutter of irrelevant or misleading life experiences, theories, facts, intuitions, strategies, algorithms, heuristics, metaphors, and hunches that regrettably have the look and feel of useful and accurate knowledge. This clutter is an unfortunate by-product of one of our greatest … Continue reading We Are All Confident Idiots
How to Read Big Books
"...it is a principal task of a successful modern university to teach people how to read [big, difficult, flawed, incredibly insightful, genius books]. Indeed, it might be said that one of the few key competencies we here at the university have to teach—our counterpart or the medieval triad of rhetoric, logic, grammar and then quadriad … Continue reading How to Read Big Books
Cognitive Bias Cheat Sheet
Four problems that biases help us address:Problem 1: Too much information.Problem 2: Not enough meaning.Problem 3: Need to act fast.Problem 4: What should we remember?-Buster Benson, "Cognitive bias cheat sheet." Medium.com. September 1, 2016. Recommend reading this in its entirety, but at minimum, it is worth a click through and scroll to the bottom to … Continue reading Cognitive Bias Cheat Sheet
The Resulting Fallacy Is Ruining Your Decisions – Issue 55: Trust – Nautilus
"In life, it’s usually even more complicated because in most real decisions we haven’t examined the coin. We don’t know if it is a fair coin, if it has two sides with a heads and tails on it and is weighted properly. That’s the hidden information problem. We can’t see everything. We haven’t experienced everything. … Continue reading The Resulting Fallacy Is Ruining Your Decisions – Issue 55: Trust – Nautilus
Simpson’s Paradox
"Simpson's paradox (or Simpson's reversal, Yule–Simpson effect, amalgamation paradox, or reversal paradox), is a phenomenon in probability and statistics, in which a trend appears in several different groups of data but disappears or reverses when these groups are combined. —s.v. Simpson's Paradox, Wikipedia. An example using arithmetic from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: 1/5 < … Continue reading Simpson’s Paradox
The Minto Pyramid Principle for Writing
Barbara Minto's "The Minto Pyramid Principle" is a how-to guide for writing concise reports in a management consulting firm that has been around for years. I wrote a one sheet summary of her book over a decade ago that I still sometimes find to be a useful aid for writing. While it might be overkill … Continue reading The Minto Pyramid Principle for Writing
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