My explain like I am five notes to my parts trying to evaluate a clarity of thinking
Intro
This is my working document to think through how to more effectively evaluate clarity of thinking. This resource is especially helpful in low contexts, when one has a little exposure on other person thinking, but some points are universalisable to when one have a lot of context about the person. This may also be applicable to concepts. It would be absolutely fantastic to be better at spotting great ideas in flawed thinkers and choppy ideas in thinkers one holds highly.
You will find to Impact and Overrated ratings through the text. The overrated is an optional one β I will only add it if the dynamic is overrated. But overrated for whom? What is the audience I have in mind? I think here quite broadly, somebody who Philip Tetlock, intellectually curious New York Times reader. Impact I see as a universal measure that influences clarity of thinking. The article is sorted from the strongest impact to the least strong. Think about low impact ones as when seeing it give it a low confidence. Often I find the dynamics from the bottom of the list are actually pretty decisive. That is when some weak signals add up together. And I think some of them can be spotted in many of your favorite thinkers.
Knowledge
Impact: 10/10 πͺπͺπͺπͺπͺπͺπͺπͺ
Overated: 2/3 π€¬π€¬
What is it?
I see wisdom as amount of knowledge subtracted by amount of bias. I think most people underestimate how much knowledge is corrupted though. I think this amount of knowledge is therefore often a blindspot for evaluating how valuable is the knowledge the person is sharing.
I agree that having a strong grasp of the established facts, consensus science is crucial for developing genuine expertise on most topics. Experts need to have an extensive base of factual knowledge before they can engage in meaningful analysis, draw insightful connections, and contribute original ideas.
This write up focuses mostly, on the reverse, on problems with knowledge. There may be a way to focus more on the positive aspects of knowledge, but I find it more fruitful, easier on focusing on the negative.
Counter-arguments
Impact 10/10 πͺπͺπͺπͺπͺπͺπͺπͺπͺπͺ
What is it?
Having a solid grasp on all body of knowledge that is Antithesis to oneβs theory is essential to truth seeking. That is an ability, interest to extensively engage with alternative explanations, all counter arguments, contradictory evidence.
Also one want to engage with antithesis because naturally this body of knowledge is much larger than the positive explanation one is thinking about. The βtrueβ explanation one is just one path of explaining something in comparison with a lot larger area of all other answers.
Truth is the most accurate position / the most useful explanation out of gazillion others. There is a large probability that one is wrong yet by default we tend to believe what we have been already thinking is correct.
Itβs critical for a thinker to be able to explain the best version of counter-arguments and assign varying probabilities on different counter-arguments and then treating their own thesis not as truth but as the most probable answer.
Itβs crucaial to extensively engage with disproving own beliefs because we are largely driven by My-side bias family of biases, especially: Confirmation bias, Hindsight bias, Typical mind fallacy, Expert trap π¨.