Daniel Dennett's seven tools for thinking

[dipsydoodle]

We have all heard the forlorn refrain: "Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time!" This phrase has come to stand for the rueful reflection of an idiot, a sign of stupidity, but in fact we should appreciate it as a pillar of wisdom. Any being, any agent, who can truly say: "Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time!" is standing on the threshold of brilliance. We human beings pride ourselves on our intelligence, and one of its hallmarks is that we can remember our previous thinking and reflect on it – on how it seemed, on why it was tempting in the first place and then about what went wrong.

I know of no evidence to suggest that any other species on the planet can actually think this thought. If they could, they would be almost as smart as we are. So when you make a mistake, you should learn to take a deep breath, grit your teeth and then examine your own recollections of the mistake as ruthlessly and as dispassionately as you can manage. It's not easy. The natural human reaction to making a mistake is embarrassment and anger (we are never angrier than when we are angry at ourselves) and you have to work hard to overcome these emotional reactions.

Try to acquire the weird practice of savouring your mistakes, delighting in uncovering the strange quirks that led you astray. Then, once you have sucked out all the goodness to be gained from having made them, you can cheerfully set them behind you and go on to the next big opportunity. But that is not enough: you should actively seek out opportunities just so you can then recover from them.

In science, you make your mistakes in public. You show them off so that everybody can learn from them. This way, you get the benefit of everybody else's experience, and not just your own idiosyncratic path through the space of mistakes. (Physicist Wolfgang Pauli famously expressed his contempt for the work of a colleague as "not even wrong". A clear falsehood shared with critics is better than vague mush.)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/may/19/daniel-dennett-intuition-pumps-thinking-extract

[Cirque du So-What]

1. Worthwhile read

I liked this in particular: 'Often the word "surely" is as good as a blinking light locating a weak point in the argument.'

[bemildred]

2. Yeah, and "virtually", they never put that in by accident, and it always means "not actually". nt

[Cirque du So-What]

3. Too often, 'virtually' is made synonymous with 'close enough, dude!'

I use 'virtually' often myself, but I make sure it means 'almost entirely' and not something weaselly.

[bemildred]

4. I do like Ms Atwood.

And she also includes, in an appendix, her letter to a school district board in San Antonio after it banned her novel "The Handmaid's Tale" (a decision since reversed) for its strong sexual content. "I would like to thank those who have dedicated themselves so energetically to the banning of my novel," she begins. "It's encouraging to know that the written word is still taken so seriously."

But anyway, "virtually" is a perfectly good word, so long as it is not used to dismiss the exceptions that require it. It is the advertising and public relations businesses that have reduced it to meaningless mush. And it has also been co-opted by the computer business to mean explicitly "not real", or "simulated", which begins to be amusing.