Thinking outside of the box has long been held up in our popular culture as the epitome of critical thought — the ability to see beyond arbitrary lines to the truth, those flashes of genius we can follow in posterity but would never be able to forge ourselves. To me,...
Epistemic Status: Speculative, a theory that works well for the experiences I've had. I'm interested in how it overlays onto other people's experiences. When I come across a lesson or a theory about the world that I've run into before, particularly after a long period of time, I often experience...
Thinking outside of the box has long been held up in our popular culture as the epitome of critical thought — the ability to see beyond arbitrary lines to the truth, those flashes of genius we can follow in posterity but would never be able to forge ourselves. To me, this is kindred with meta-thinking, when you take a thought or idea about the world and remove the specificities to come up with a more generalized form of that thought or idea.
Perhaps I’m designing a door and I know that the initial friction between the door and the floor will make it harder... (read 600 more words →)
Epistemic Status: Speculative, a theory that works well for the experiences I've had. I'm interested in how it overlays onto other people's experiences.
When I come across a lesson or a theory about the world that I've run into before, particularly after a long period of time, I often experience a feeling of increased understanding; that THIS time I've grasped the concept and its relevance.
For example, there's a quote attributed to Plato (although apparently not his words) that goes "The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself". Recently I've been noticing a lot of issues around self-discipline in myself and so have been quite conscious of things along this axis. It feels... (read 997 more words →)