Mentitation[1] can be informed by the psychological literature, as well as introspection. Because people’s inner experiences are diverse and not directly obervable, I expect it to be difficult to explain or teach this subject. However, mentitation has allowed me to reap large gains in my ability to understand and remember new information. Reading STEM textbooks has become vastly more interesting and has lead to better test results.
Figuring out a useful way to do mentitation has taken me years, with lots of false starts along the way. That process involved figuring out what my goals ought to be, playing around with different techniques in isolation and together, and developing a vocabulary to describe them. It reminds me a little of the attempts actors have made to develop acting technique, such as the ability to summon an emotion or sense-memory to inform the part.
There are many acting techniques and teaching methods, and which are taught depends heavily on the background of the teacher and the logistics of the classroom. When I took theater classes in high school, they were mostly structured around improv games and putting on short plays or musicals. There wasn’t much psychological content. My guess is that, in the absence of these techniques, actors are selected more than trained. Talent is crucial. If only we knew to what extent the inner psychological abilities of a great actor are teachable!
I suspect that mentitation is more teachable than the more psychological aspects of acting technique, for a few reasons.
Acting success depends not only on psychology, but also on physique. The ability to profit from mentitation is far less dependent on physical ability.
The abiltiy of mentitation to yield tangible benefits is very amenable to quantification. For example, I imagine that one of its key functions would be to enhance a student’s ability to be successful in school. Improved exam grades would be a valid metric of success. It is harder to evaluate the contribution of an actor’s training to their acting ability in a rigorous and quantitative manner, though it probably can be done.
Both actor training and mentitation can offer immediate introspective feedback to the trainee. For example, when I employ mentitation to enhance my textbook reading, the improvement in my inner experience is immediate and visceral, like putting salt on bland food. When it works, it argues for itself.
Mentitation is mostly useful for tasks that are individualistic and can be broken down into concrete steps. By contrast, the experience of acting depends heavily on the specific people and circumstances, and is in large part about shaping your interactions with others.
Helping people enjoy and be successful in STEM is potentially profitable, good for the trainee, and good for the world.
Being more teachable than acting technique might be a pretty low bar. Having worked as a teacher for 10 years, though, I think it’s right to be skeptical about the utility of teaching in general, at least as it’s typically practiced in the world’s school systems. Mentitation is more to help a motivated student teach themselves more effectively, and I think that’s a more promising route than trying to improve teachers.
I think there are numerous opportunities to use technology to improve information delivery and create opportunities for deliberate practice. However, I think we put a lot of effort into this already, and that many people are blocked by the familiar experience of just “not getting it” or “hating it” when they try to study STEM topics. These are the most profound wonders of the universe, and the most coherent, provable, evidence-based forms of knowledge we have!
Simultaneously, most people receive little to no training in how to directly use and control their own cognitive processes, except perhaps in the context of therapy. Instead, they are forced through an increasingly challenging series of intellectual hurdles from a young age, until at some point they either find their niche or stop studying. We don’t really train our scientists. We demand that our scientists train themselves, and use classes and coursework to organize their efforts and to apply selection pressure to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Meanwhile, humans generally demonstrate only a limited ability to systematize their own efforts toward a defined goal. It shouldn’t be surprising, among the many other demands of life, and in the absence of meaningful incentives to do so, that culture hasn’t produced a deep and thorough metis for the use of the mind and body to greatest effect in the study of STEM topics. That neglect suggests to me that mentitation really is an orchard full of low-hanging fruit.
My tentative term for practicing the use of one’s basic mental faculties, particularly for intellectual and analytical purposes. This might include the ability to visualize, the ability to slow the pace of thought and operate in system 2, choosing what you are thinking about, and other abilities.
Can mentitation be taught?
Mentitation[1] can be informed by the psychological literature, as well as introspection. Because people’s inner experiences are diverse and not directly obervable, I expect it to be difficult to explain or teach this subject. However, mentitation has allowed me to reap large gains in my ability to understand and remember new information. Reading STEM textbooks has become vastly more interesting and has lead to better test results.
Figuring out a useful way to do mentitation has taken me years, with lots of false starts along the way. That process involved figuring out what my goals ought to be, playing around with different techniques in isolation and together, and developing a vocabulary to describe them. It reminds me a little of the attempts actors have made to develop acting technique, such as the ability to summon an emotion or sense-memory to inform the part.
There are many acting techniques and teaching methods, and which are taught depends heavily on the background of the teacher and the logistics of the classroom. When I took theater classes in high school, they were mostly structured around improv games and putting on short plays or musicals. There wasn’t much psychological content. My guess is that, in the absence of these techniques, actors are selected more than trained. Talent is crucial. If only we knew to what extent the inner psychological abilities of a great actor are teachable!
I suspect that mentitation is more teachable than the more psychological aspects of acting technique, for a few reasons.
Acting success depends not only on psychology, but also on physique. The ability to profit from mentitation is far less dependent on physical ability.
The abiltiy of mentitation to yield tangible benefits is very amenable to quantification. For example, I imagine that one of its key functions would be to enhance a student’s ability to be successful in school. Improved exam grades would be a valid metric of success. It is harder to evaluate the contribution of an actor’s training to their acting ability in a rigorous and quantitative manner, though it probably can be done.
Both actor training and mentitation can offer immediate introspective feedback to the trainee. For example, when I employ mentitation to enhance my textbook reading, the improvement in my inner experience is immediate and visceral, like putting salt on bland food. When it works, it argues for itself.
Mentitation is mostly useful for tasks that are individualistic and can be broken down into concrete steps. By contrast, the experience of acting depends heavily on the specific people and circumstances, and is in large part about shaping your interactions with others.
Helping people enjoy and be successful in STEM is potentially profitable, good for the trainee, and good for the world.
Being more teachable than acting technique might be a pretty low bar. Having worked as a teacher for 10 years, though, I think it’s right to be skeptical about the utility of teaching in general, at least as it’s typically practiced in the world’s school systems. Mentitation is more to help a motivated student teach themselves more effectively, and I think that’s a more promising route than trying to improve teachers.
I think there are numerous opportunities to use technology to improve information delivery and create opportunities for deliberate practice. However, I think we put a lot of effort into this already, and that many people are blocked by the familiar experience of just “not getting it” or “hating it” when they try to study STEM topics. These are the most profound wonders of the universe, and the most coherent, provable, evidence-based forms of knowledge we have!
Simultaneously, most people receive little to no training in how to directly use and control their own cognitive processes, except perhaps in the context of therapy. Instead, they are forced through an increasingly challenging series of intellectual hurdles from a young age, until at some point they either find their niche or stop studying. We don’t really train our scientists. We demand that our scientists train themselves, and use classes and coursework to organize their efforts and to apply selection pressure to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Meanwhile, humans generally demonstrate only a limited ability to systematize their own efforts toward a defined goal. It shouldn’t be surprising, among the many other demands of life, and in the absence of meaningful incentives to do so, that culture hasn’t produced a deep and thorough metis for the use of the mind and body to greatest effect in the study of STEM topics. That neglect suggests to me that mentitation really is an orchard full of low-hanging fruit.
My tentative term for practicing the use of one’s basic mental faculties, particularly for intellectual and analytical purposes. This might include the ability to visualize, the ability to slow the pace of thought and operate in system 2, choosing what you are thinking about, and other abilities.