Status Updates From Intuition Pumps and Other T...

The fairer the criticism seems, the harder to bear in some cases. It is worth reminding yourself that a heroic attempt to find a defensible interpretation of an author, if it comes empty, can be more devastating than an angry hatchet job. I recommend it.

... reductio ad absurdum- literally, reduction (of the argument) to absurdity. You take the assertion or conjecture at issue and see if you can pry any contradictions (or just preposterous implications) out of it. If you can, that proposition has to be discarded or sent back to the shop for retooling.

Meta-advice: don't take any advice too seriously!

The chief trick to making a good mistake is not to hide them- especially not from yourself. Instead of turning away in denial when you make a mistake, you should become a good connoisseur of your own mistakes, turning them over in your mind as if they were works of art, which in a way they are.

The level of mutual understanding achieved by this international system is invaluable, but there is a price to be paid: some of the thinking that has been done apparently requires informal metaphor-mongering and imagination-tweaking, assaulting the barricades of closed mind with every trick in the book...

No matter how smart you are, you’re smarter if you take the easy ways when they are available.

Diving into computers now. Interesting, but relatively easy ideas so far. Am excited to see where he takes the topic.

Diving into computers now. Interesting, but relatively easy ideas so far. Am excited to see where he takes the topic.

Useful analysis of sleights of hand in reasoning, different linguistic tools and patterns of thinking. Sits in an interesting space between behavioral psychology or heuristics and bias theory and self help? Interesting, to say the least.