Interesting that “pondering” is a cognitive skill that needs exercised. The term derives from a latin term for “weight”. Perhaps this can be thought of as something analogous to barbells or dumbells for epistemological strength-training.
Pondering means thinking about something in a way that makes it “heavy” or difficult for the mind to process (just as heavy objects are difficult to lift). Like the metaphorical “burden of proof,” it references mental difficulty of processing ideas to physical difficulty in lifting objects. The way this happens involves increasing the complexity of your mental instantiation of an idea, thereby bringing more cognitive algorithms to bear on it.
The strength-training metaphor only works if it can be contrasted with endurance-training. Otherwise it would just be a generic kind of training. Strength training involves shorter bursts of focused effort followed by a recovery period. These koans are short and intended for 5-15-minutes of focused thought, so they are probably more on that end of the spectrum than lengthier articles that describe complex concepts.
Epistemological endurance training (assuming there is such a thing) would be where you use longer periods of time thinking about a problem that has a fair degree of mental effort required but not overwhelming. That would analogize to running, biking, and so forth where rather than doing the hardest thing you can do, you are doing something rather hard for a longer time.
Ooops I miscommunicated. I think the surface analogy isn’t the most interesting part of this.
I was more interested in what ideas you had for training epistemological ability. The burst vs endurance thing could be interesting if it could be detailed in on its own terms (ie. inside view instead of analogizing).
I’ve been thinking a lot about rationality training recently, so anything that looks like a possible excercise really catches my attention.
So it must have been “pondering as a rationality skill” which got your attention. Sorry for misinterpreting. :)
For me it’s not hard to ponder. I do that naturally. But I don’t always ponder exactly what I’m told to ponder, even when I have every reason to think the person who told me to ponder something knows what they’re talking about and this is something that if I ponder it I will benefit from the resulting enlightenment. It’s like there is something in the nature of pondering that is perverse and rebellious (at least for the way my mind works, some of the time).
Perhaps a good exercise would be to deliberately ponder specific things that you aren’t (yet) naturally curious about. Maybe set a timer and commit to only focus on that particular topic until the timer goes off. I wonder what an optimal time length would be? Also, what kinds of topics could/should be used for the exercise?
“Pondering exercise” maybe?
Interesting that “pondering” is a cognitive skill that needs exercised. The term derives from a latin term for “weight”. Perhaps this can be thought of as something analogous to barbells or dumbells for epistemological strength-training.
I like the way you think. Care to elaborate?
Pondering means thinking about something in a way that makes it “heavy” or difficult for the mind to process (just as heavy objects are difficult to lift). Like the metaphorical “burden of proof,” it references mental difficulty of processing ideas to physical difficulty in lifting objects. The way this happens involves increasing the complexity of your mental instantiation of an idea, thereby bringing more cognitive algorithms to bear on it.
The strength-training metaphor only works if it can be contrasted with endurance-training. Otherwise it would just be a generic kind of training. Strength training involves shorter bursts of focused effort followed by a recovery period. These koans are short and intended for 5-15-minutes of focused thought, so they are probably more on that end of the spectrum than lengthier articles that describe complex concepts.
Epistemological endurance training (assuming there is such a thing) would be where you use longer periods of time thinking about a problem that has a fair degree of mental effort required but not overwhelming. That would analogize to running, biking, and so forth where rather than doing the hardest thing you can do, you are doing something rather hard for a longer time.
Ooops I miscommunicated. I think the surface analogy isn’t the most interesting part of this.
I was more interested in what ideas you had for training epistemological ability. The burst vs endurance thing could be interesting if it could be detailed in on its own terms (ie. inside view instead of analogizing).
I’ve been thinking a lot about rationality training recently, so anything that looks like a possible excercise really catches my attention.
So it must have been “pondering as a rationality skill” which got your attention. Sorry for misinterpreting. :)
For me it’s not hard to ponder. I do that naturally. But I don’t always ponder exactly what I’m told to ponder, even when I have every reason to think the person who told me to ponder something knows what they’re talking about and this is something that if I ponder it I will benefit from the resulting enlightenment. It’s like there is something in the nature of pondering that is perverse and rebellious (at least for the way my mind works, some of the time).
Perhaps a good exercise would be to deliberately ponder specific things that you aren’t (yet) naturally curious about. Maybe set a timer and commit to only focus on that particular topic until the timer goes off. I wonder what an optimal time length would be? Also, what kinds of topics could/should be used for the exercise?