This got me recalling tutorials at university. (One-on-ones with a professor)
Sometimes I would reach this strange state where I could be asked something by the professor, and I would say something based on what I had read, and the prof would say "yes that's right".
But I knew that I didn't understand it. Somehow I was producing the right answer, but there was a dissatisfaction that was hard to explain. Whether it was math or economics, it sort of felt like I was regurgitating or just mechanically solving equations, without any feel for what was actually being done.
The opposite also happened, especially in math. Thinking that I understand something, but then getting stumped when an obviously related question proved impossible.
However the first case is the weirder case, because the latter is simply exposing that you actually don't know something via external input, whereas the former gives you external validation that you really shouldn't have.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I find essays written in this style to be overwrought in a way that makes them impossible to challenge (setting aside AI summarization). Is this not, in and of itself, a form of fake thinking?
For example, some section of this essay introduces the following:
> Did evolution want to build this kind of truth engine? Well, maybe it’s complicated.
It later begins to conclude with:
> But regardless of the actual evolutionary and psychological story, here, I think my point about the abstract form of a truth engine still stands.
Why bother introducing the evopsych hypothesis if we're not actually going to stand behind it or use it in a meaningful way?
I don't even mean this particularly as a takedown, the dimensions listed are kind of interesting at least. But I find a particular sort of irony in having written so many words and having engaged in so much thought just to return to not thinking about something at all.
The difference here might be the rather huge gap between putting together a solid "blog post" and a solid "paper" on a subject. I agree these "types" of essays are difficult to challenge and given the sheer length of this post, it is also not accessible to _discuss_. I understand the desire to write about a topic extensively and how intimidating it might be to do so in a "scientific" way, this seems to be the middle ground. Maybe it's a seed for the author, or someone else, to develop further.
Thinking about thinking is unnecessary. Thinking is same as worrying about something. When you do thinking, you are neither eating, nor sleeping or doing any physical work. Your body is at rest but your mind is not. No animal does too much thinking than what is necessary to interpret the inputs given by it's senses and correlate them to any self-driven actions needed. When people see you as lost in some thought, the first instinct they get is a negative feeling. They think you are worried about something or something wrong happened. There are no positive feelings you can get when you see your loved ones in deep thought.
Humans developed thinking in order to gain more complex correlations to help them interpret their sensual inputs, such as correlating that plants need water. But this has gone too far due to availability of free time for humans. Lot of unnecessary thinking, called philosophy and science, happened.
Human society always hated thinkers. Thinking was called witchcraft and banished. Thinking makes a person get detached from people and surroundings around them. You stopped processing input from your senses. You stopped interacting with world outside. Instead, you got busy interacting with your inside. People get scared and do not trust you anymore. They don't know what your thoughts are and how you are going to respond. Your thinking makes you an alien.
More importantly, thinking means you might not obey the commands from the community or group. Community requires simple thinking workers who think and act in expected ways, making it possible to have a strong community. Imagine some bees in a swarm do not follow the swarm movement, or ants in a line or fish in a school, birds in a flock. Community was always the real creature, not the individual humans. In many communities, individual persons do not have a name that is too distinct from family name. Family does the thinking, not individual people.
Sounds very fascist. I suppose it fits with the times.... very bad times ahead not unlikely.... Hopefully the price will be fewer than a billion dead bodies....
Sometimes I would reach this strange state where I could be asked something by the professor, and I would say something based on what I had read, and the prof would say "yes that's right".
But I knew that I didn't understand it. Somehow I was producing the right answer, but there was a dissatisfaction that was hard to explain. Whether it was math or economics, it sort of felt like I was regurgitating or just mechanically solving equations, without any feel for what was actually being done.
The opposite also happened, especially in math. Thinking that I understand something, but then getting stumped when an obviously related question proved impossible.
However the first case is the weirder case, because the latter is simply exposing that you actually don't know something via external input, whereas the former gives you external validation that you really shouldn't have.
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