change your mindset for a better life (aka be a better thinker)
this is a guide to a system of thinking that will help prevent you from poor judgement, impairment from unconscious biases, and unknown ignorance.
• why you should want to be a better thinker
first off, it is natural not to recognize your own biases! that’s why they are called unconscious biases. learning to grow from your current mindset requires you to be open-minded and you to not be afraid to be challenged. learn to be okay with being wrong, and learn to challenge ideas that have been taught to you that you never challenged before.
hopefully you desire to seek truth rather than to live your life in ignorance. you are more empathetic when you begin to look at topics from multiple perspectives rather than just your own perspective (which has a scope of life that has been narrowed by your own biases and heuristics.) multiple perspectives allows us to see the world closer to its true reality.
• why be empathetic? why does it matter?
being empathetic makes you a better person, and it allows you to tackle problems with the right mindset, to do good for the right reasons, and to honestly live your life to the fullest with happiness and meaning. (i am so much happier now that i have a more empathetic mindset)
• now to the real shtuff yay
• bayes theorem: a breakdown (with notes from my class)
bayes theorem (when used non-mathematically) is a basic rule telling us how much to revise our probabilities given new facts and evidence. our knowledge is not perfectly reliable (obviously), but our beliefs are not all equally unreliable either. bayesian thinking can also be seen as a way to achieve scout mindset as seen in this TED talk. scout mindset allows us to look at things objectively, to see the whole picture rather than through a scope that has been narrowed by our biases. it is intended to increase metacognition by recognizing one’s own unconscious biases. now onward!
• vocabulary (in order of the thinking process)
priors –– the biases and all other factors that impact our thoughts on a subject, before learning more about that subject.
credence –– after identifying our priors, we must ask ourselves how probable our beliefs are, and we must assign a credence (percentage of our level of confidence) that shows just how much we actually believe our priors to be true and how willing we are to defend them.
motivated reasoning –– now we must ask ourselves what led to our priors in the first place. do we have any sort of motivated reasoning for why we wish for our priors to be true? what led us to believe such a thing? was it impacted by where we grew up or by someone that we know? recognize your biases and how they affect your thinking. they impair your thinking beyond what you believe.
steel manning –– being able to articulate your “motivated reasoning” allows us to “steel man” or pressure test whether the evidence we have for a certain belief is truly valid or logical. steel manning our own beliefs means questioning our own beliefs and purposefully looking at our beliefs from an opposing perspective.
final step: update your thinking! has your thinking changed now that you’ve examined your biases, looked at evidence, and looked at opposing viewpoints? maybe your viewpoint has been solidified with more evidence to support it. maybe your viewpoint has completely flipped and you’re living a better life because of it (see “I grew up in the Westboro Baptist Church. Here's why I left | Megan Phelps-Roper” (good lesson & story yay))
