The skill to practice is to spot that you just tried to think very quickly, and to check if this is a decision which you would like to think about more. The technique you would like to train is that instant of noticing
Hm. My first thought was: “Yes. This. Very much this.” But after thinking about it some more, I’m not so sure.
I was playing racquetball yesterday, and something really stuck with me. I was complaining to the guys about how my body isn’t the same as it was when I was younger. There’s various aches and pains and old man stuff (I’m 31). For example, I went to the gym two days before to do some very light cardio on the stair machine, and 10 minutes into it I had this weird pain in my knees. But it was in this weird spot on the inside of my knees. Same for each knee. And I’ve never had it before. And two days later playing racquetball, I feel totally fine.
Anyway, this guy interrupted me and said “Y’know what it is? Wheat.”
“Wheat?” some other guy responded. Yeah. The first guy explained that his doctor told him something about how white people process wheat in some way that leads to knee pain, and that when he stopped eating wheat his knee problems went away.
This obviously seems very dubious. There’s a lot wrong with his thinking. But I went with the objection of “why this inner location of my knees?”. It’s not general knee pain. It’s pain in a very specific area. Why would wheat cause pain in that specific area?
It wouldn’t. Was what we all realized. But why would the first guy be so confident that he knew the cause of my knee problems to begin with? I dunno. Lots of reasons. But—and here’s my point—imagine that this wasn’t the case. Imagine that the guy was a perfect Bayesian who always updates his beliefs the appropriate amount in response to pieces of evidence.
Well, then he would just be uncertain about the cause of my knee pain, and if he wanted to reach a higher level of certainty, Thinking By The Clock kinda follows naturally from that. More generally, if you 1) aren’t that confident and 2) want to be more confident, then perhaps there’s no need for the Thinking By The Clock skill.
Actually, let me backpedal a bit. None of us are anything close to the sort of perfect Bayesian I asked you to imagine. In reality, like the guy at racquetball, we’re all prone to, mistakenly jumping to conclusions. I think the Thinking By The Clock skill helps to guard against this. Like, if you notice 1) that a thing is important and 2) you didn’t spend the amount of time that seems like it should correspond with the level of importance (ie. buying a house after 30 minutes of research), hopefully those two things would trigger a “let me set a timer and really think about this”.
Hm. My first thought was: “Yes. This. Very much this.” But after thinking about it some more, I’m not so sure.
I was playing racquetball yesterday, and something really stuck with me. I was complaining to the guys about how my body isn’t the same as it was when I was younger. There’s various aches and pains and old man stuff (I’m 31). For example, I went to the gym two days before to do some very light cardio on the stair machine, and 10 minutes into it I had this weird pain in my knees. But it was in this weird spot on the inside of my knees. Same for each knee. And I’ve never had it before. And two days later playing racquetball, I feel totally fine.
Anyway, this guy interrupted me and said “Y’know what it is? Wheat.”
“Wheat?” some other guy responded. Yeah. The first guy explained that his doctor told him something about how white people process wheat in some way that leads to knee pain, and that when he stopped eating wheat his knee problems went away.
This obviously seems very dubious. There’s a lot wrong with his thinking. But I went with the objection of “why this inner location of my knees?”. It’s not general knee pain. It’s pain in a very specific area. Why would wheat cause pain in that specific area?
It wouldn’t. Was what we all realized. But why would the first guy be so confident that he knew the cause of my knee problems to begin with? I dunno. Lots of reasons. But—and here’s my point—imagine that this wasn’t the case. Imagine that the guy was a perfect Bayesian who always updates his beliefs the appropriate amount in response to pieces of evidence.
Well, then he would just be uncertain about the cause of my knee pain, and if he wanted to reach a higher level of certainty, Thinking By The Clock kinda follows naturally from that. More generally, if you 1) aren’t that confident and 2) want to be more confident, then perhaps there’s no need for the Thinking By The Clock skill.
Actually, let me backpedal a bit. None of us are anything close to the sort of perfect Bayesian I asked you to imagine. In reality, like the guy at racquetball, we’re all prone to, mistakenly jumping to conclusions. I think the Thinking By The Clock skill helps to guard against this. Like, if you notice 1) that a thing is important and 2) you didn’t spend the amount of time that seems like it should correspond with the level of importance (ie. buying a house after 30 minutes of research), hopefully those two things would trigger a “let me set a timer and really think about this”.