What would mental posture be? Here are some of my thoughts on what it may be in general:
1) Best posture for what? Different tasks may require different postures. Rationality or mental arts may be too broad. The best posture for specific practice X may be different than for specific practice Y.
2) Although we don’t understand the human body nearly as well as I’d like, we still understand things like physical posture better than we understand thoughts and consciousness. So we may not yet have the vocabulary for the equivalents of “thoracic kyphosis” or “tight hamstrings”.
2) You might be getting into philosophy here. In my engineering education, I was taught a specific philosophical approach to the world. It goes something like “The world is more complicated than we understand. Nevertheless, we can do useful things by using models of reality that are oversimplified and we can simplify them further with assumptions. It is important to keep track of which assumptions we make, and the conditions under which the model will work, or not work. Every model has limits and situations where it will not work. Being explicitly aware that we are using a model, what assumptions we are making, and when it works is important. When we don’t know the answers to those questions, empirical testing can help. It’s important to keep track of all this, because when we apply the wrong model to a situation, people can die.”
This is not a universally held approach to the world. There are people walking around living their lives who view the world through a philosophical lens closer to Plato’s Forms, or something else that is also vastly different from the above.
I think that the “remember that it is a model, and that another model might be more useful, and that it is based on these assumptions, and that the model will fail in some circumstances” is an extremely useful approach to the world, and I have applied it to other areas of my life with good results.
3) Become more comfortable with uncertainty, in general, (Pema Chodron’s advice to “lean into the sharp points” comes to mind here. I recommend her book “When Things Fall Apart” for a Buddhist look at some of these issues.)
Also, more specifically, extend the time in the part of the process where you are looking for the next model to make sense of the situation. That can end up with spending a lot of time not knowing the answer. It usually ends up with a better model of the situation.
The working model to make sense of a situation is called a “cheap trick” by Venkatesh Rao. Rao has a model called the Double Freytag Triangle in his book Tempo that describes an ongoing process of looking for ways to make sense of the world, exploiting them until they break, then looking for the next one that has to take into account more data. (Quick description at the glossary to Venkat’s blog here, though he makes up a lot of terminology, so it’s not a great explanation for someone who hasn’t read the book: http://www.tempobook.com/glossary/#double-freytag-triangle Link to book here: http://www.tempobook.com )
4) Another guide to good mental posture may be to aim for the opposite of the cognitive biases that human factors research has shown trip people up in emergency situations. For example the narrowing of focus to just a few things can lead to counterproductive actions in an emergency.
5) Thinking of the models as tools in a tool box, to be deployed when appropriate, not as part of your identity. It’s similar to what Paul Graham said in this essay where he gives the advice to “keep your identity small” http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html
6) Physical and mental realms are not separate. In order to have mental clarity, it helps to have had enough sleep, nutritious food, good air quality, few interruptions, etc. Most of those help with physical posture too, though physical posture is something different than getting enough sleep for example. But they are things that make a difference. Perhaps the idea relevant for mental posture is to have an awareness of your physical state and how that is affecting your thoughts. “I’m not thinking straight right now because of my physical condition therefore I should not make a major decision right now” or rules of thumb like that seem like they are useful.
To sum up, I think a good mental posture might be something like:
become comfortable with uncertainty
discover and remember the limits and assumptions of your models
use models like a tool box
keep your identity small
be aware of what you are focusing on, and change your focus from time to time
be aware of your physical state and what it is doing to the quality of your thoughts
But I also think that we haven’t sufficiently defined what we are talking about with the words “mental posture” for me to have a good idea whether what I just said was nonsense or applicable at all.
Now, to apply it to the example you mentioned about feeling dutiful about considering the opposite. Perhaps if you were thinking about the situation as being uncertain and then figuring out which of several models to apply to the situation, you would not have already committed to a particular model that you would feel grumpy about considering the opposite of. The approach to “consider the opposite” might be something more along the lines of “What assumptions does this model use? If those assumptions were different, how would the outputs of the model change?” and “This model works in such and such conditions. Do those conditions hold or not? What would information would the model give under the opposite conditions? Would that information be reliable, or would we have to choose a different model to cover that possibility?” And, “Is there a different model available that would better fit the data that I have encountered so far?” And “I am focussing on these things in my model, but what if I included different variables?” Also, choosing a different model would hopefully not feel like attacking one’s identity, or doing remedial work to validate an obvious conclusion, but rather like a more pleasant sort of choice.
I’m not sure what you mean by “childish orientation to truth-seeking” but I think this approach does involve truth seeking. It is sort of along the lines of “which approximation, though not completely true, is close enough to being true to be useful in this situation?” but also “Under which conditions does this method of approximation diverge a lot from reality?” It does require thinking of none of the models as completely true.
What would mental posture be? Here are some of my thoughts on what it may be in general:
1) Best posture for what? Different tasks may require different postures. Rationality or mental arts may be too broad. The best posture for specific practice X may be different than for specific practice Y.
2) Although we don’t understand the human body nearly as well as I’d like, we still understand things like physical posture better than we understand thoughts and consciousness. So we may not yet have the vocabulary for the equivalents of “thoracic kyphosis” or “tight hamstrings”.
2) You might be getting into philosophy here. In my engineering education, I was taught a specific philosophical approach to the world. It goes something like “The world is more complicated than we understand. Nevertheless, we can do useful things by using models of reality that are oversimplified and we can simplify them further with assumptions. It is important to keep track of which assumptions we make, and the conditions under which the model will work, or not work. Every model has limits and situations where it will not work. Being explicitly aware that we are using a model, what assumptions we are making, and when it works is important. When we don’t know the answers to those questions, empirical testing can help. It’s important to keep track of all this, because when we apply the wrong model to a situation, people can die.”
This is not a universally held approach to the world. There are people walking around living their lives who view the world through a philosophical lens closer to Plato’s Forms, or something else that is also vastly different from the above.
I think that the “remember that it is a model, and that another model might be more useful, and that it is based on these assumptions, and that the model will fail in some circumstances” is an extremely useful approach to the world, and I have applied it to other areas of my life with good results.
3) Become more comfortable with uncertainty, in general, (Pema Chodron’s advice to “lean into the sharp points” comes to mind here. I recommend her book “When Things Fall Apart” for a Buddhist look at some of these issues.)
Also, more specifically, extend the time in the part of the process where you are looking for the next model to make sense of the situation. That can end up with spending a lot of time not knowing the answer. It usually ends up with a better model of the situation.
The working model to make sense of a situation is called a “cheap trick” by Venkatesh Rao. Rao has a model called the Double Freytag Triangle in his book Tempo that describes an ongoing process of looking for ways to make sense of the world, exploiting them until they break, then looking for the next one that has to take into account more data. (Quick description at the glossary to Venkat’s blog here, though he makes up a lot of terminology, so it’s not a great explanation for someone who hasn’t read the book: http://www.tempobook.com/glossary/#double-freytag-triangle Link to book here: http://www.tempobook.com )
4) Another guide to good mental posture may be to aim for the opposite of the cognitive biases that human factors research has shown trip people up in emergency situations. For example the narrowing of focus to just a few things can lead to counterproductive actions in an emergency.
5) Thinking of the models as tools in a tool box, to be deployed when appropriate, not as part of your identity. It’s similar to what Paul Graham said in this essay where he gives the advice to “keep your identity small” http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html
6) Physical and mental realms are not separate. In order to have mental clarity, it helps to have had enough sleep, nutritious food, good air quality, few interruptions, etc. Most of those help with physical posture too, though physical posture is something different than getting enough sleep for example. But they are things that make a difference. Perhaps the idea relevant for mental posture is to have an awareness of your physical state and how that is affecting your thoughts. “I’m not thinking straight right now because of my physical condition therefore I should not make a major decision right now” or rules of thumb like that seem like they are useful.
To sum up, I think a good mental posture might be something like:
become comfortable with uncertainty
discover and remember the limits and assumptions of your models
use models like a tool box
keep your identity small
be aware of what you are focusing on, and change your focus from time to time
be aware of your physical state and what it is doing to the quality of your thoughts
But I also think that we haven’t sufficiently defined what we are talking about with the words “mental posture” for me to have a good idea whether what I just said was nonsense or applicable at all.
Now, to apply it to the example you mentioned about feeling dutiful about considering the opposite. Perhaps if you were thinking about the situation as being uncertain and then figuring out which of several models to apply to the situation, you would not have already committed to a particular model that you would feel grumpy about considering the opposite of. The approach to “consider the opposite” might be something more along the lines of “What assumptions does this model use? If those assumptions were different, how would the outputs of the model change?” and “This model works in such and such conditions. Do those conditions hold or not? What would information would the model give under the opposite conditions? Would that information be reliable, or would we have to choose a different model to cover that possibility?” And, “Is there a different model available that would better fit the data that I have encountered so far?” And “I am focussing on these things in my model, but what if I included different variables?” Also, choosing a different model would hopefully not feel like attacking one’s identity, or doing remedial work to validate an obvious conclusion, but rather like a more pleasant sort of choice.
I’m not sure what you mean by “childish orientation to truth-seeking” but I think this approach does involve truth seeking. It is sort of along the lines of “which approximation, though not completely true, is close enough to being true to be useful in this situation?” but also “Under which conditions does this method of approximation diverge a lot from reality?” It does require thinking of none of the models as completely true.