Think Again (book)

✒️ Note-Making

🔗Connect

⬆️Topic:: Rethinking ⬆️Topic:: Communication (MOC)

💡Clarify

🔈 Summary of main ideas

1. Be a researcher - treat your knowledge like a scientist. You can be wrong, but you are always exploring new theories and tries to validate your beliefs. Have humility about your knowledge, enjoy being wrong and don't get too attached to what you believe.
2. Persuasion is communication - You can't force your opinions on the other side. Rather, try to understand, pay attention, use mirroring and labeling to signal that you understand.
3. Cultures of learning - Communicate that you are open for feedback, create psychological safety, avoid binary and group thinking and promote critical thinking and skepticism.

🗒️Relate

⛓ by following this method, what will happen? What is the goal of this book?

🔍Critique

✅ relevant research, metaphors or examples that helps to convey the argument

❌ the logical jumps, holes or simply cases where it is wrong...

🧱 Implementations and limitations of it are...

🗨️Review

💭 my opinions on the book, the writers style...

1. I like the amount of drawings of mental models, really help to make the message stick
2. the book is just lengthy enough
3. the messages are to the point, relevant, and connect with other sources

however the book is a bit all over the place, and there isn't a clear connection between the different parts.

🖼️Outline

📒 Notes

Introduction

we tend to stick to our first initial thought, thus falling to the First instinct fallacy 2bc. Thinking again is not as thinking slower or more, it's reexamine all out default assumptions and habits and start frash from a different point of view.

Prologue

• in a turbulent world, there’s another set of cognitive skills that might matter more: the ability to rethink and unlearn.
• it’s not so much changing your answer that improves your score as considering whether you should change it.
• cognitive laziness. Some psychologists point out that we’re mental misers: we often prefer the ease of hanging on to old views over the difficulty of grappling with new ones. Yet there are also deeper forces behind our resistance to rethinking. Questioning ourselves makes the world more unpredictable. It requires us to admit that the facts may have changed, that what was once right may now be wrong. Reconsidering something we believe deeply can threaten our identities, making it feel as if we’re losing a part of ourselves.
• Our ways of thinking become habits that can weigh us down, and we don’t bother to question them until it’s too late.
• A hallmark of wisdom is knowing when it’s time to abandon some of your most treasured tools—and some of the most cherished parts of your identity.

Part 1. Expand Horizons

Chapter 1 - a preacher/prosecutor/politician/scientist Thinking

4 modes of thinking:

1. Preachers - stand your ground for what you believe in.
2. Prosecutors - critique others for their faults
3. Politicians - gather support for your ideas.
4. Scientist - research your beliefs and hypothesis with evidence based thinking scientific method

We usually stick to the first three, unwilling to switch to other view points or even recognizing their merits. Those we succeeded have more scientific way of thinking.

We have to be careful because Conformation Bias and desirability bias will turn out intelligence against us, making us proficient in finding reasons why we are right Rationalization. But thinking like a scientist is search why we are wrong. It's being actively open to other points of view. Being open is what allows us to grow, to recognize how much we still don't know. Beginner's Mind

A Preacher, a Prosecutor, a Politician, and a Scientist Walk into Your Mind

• adapting to a changing environment isn’t something a company does—it’s something people do in the multitude of decisions they make every day.
• Rethinking is a skill set, but it’s also a mindset. We already have many of the mental tools we need. We just have to remember to get them out of the shed and remove the rust.
• The risk is that we become so wrapped up in preaching that we’re right, prosecuting others who are wrong, and politicking for support that we don’t bother to rethink our own views.
• Mental horsepower doesn’t guarantee mental dexterity.
• two biases that drive this pattern. One is confirmation bias: seeing what we expect to see. The other is desirability bias: seeing what we want to see. These biases don’t just prevent us from applying our intelligence. They can actually contort our intelligence into a weapon against the truth.
• Thinking like a scientist involves more than just reacting with an open mind. It means being actively open-minded. It requires searching for reasons why we might be wrong—not for reasons why we must be right—and revising our views based on what we learn.
• As we question our current understanding, we become curious about what information we’re missing. That search leads us to new discoveries, which in turn maintain our humility by reinforcing how much we still have to learn. If knowledge is power, knowing what we don’t know is wisdom.
• when people are resistant to change, it helps to reinforce what will stay the same. Visions for change are more compelling when they include visions of continuity. Although our strategy might evolve, our identity will endure.

Chapter 2 - Armchair Quarterback Vs Imposter Syndrome

We are unaware of our knowledge/capabilities, which can often lead us to Dunning-kruger effect (thinking we know something when we don't) or Imposter Syndrome (thinking we don't know something when we do). How do find the middle ground/how to get self awareness?

The sweet spot of confidence is just enough to be sure you can reach your goals while having enough humility to question the tools and knowledge you have. confident humility

Confident humility is gained through practice, of Lifelong Learning while also actively working on your goals. Not sitting and waiting, and not action without reflection.

The Armchair Quarterback and the Impostor Finding the Sweet Spot of Confidence

• In theory, confidence and competence go hand in hand. In practice, they often diverge.
• A bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing. In too many domains of our lives, we never gain enough expertise to question our opinions or discover what we don’t know.
• “Arrogance is ignorance plus conviction,” blogger Tim Urban explains. “While humility is a permeable filter that absorbs life experience and converts it into knowledge and wisdom,
• You can be confident in your ability to achieve a goal in the future while maintaining the humility to question whether you have the right tools in the present. That’s the sweet spot of confidence.
• Confident humility doesn’t just open our minds to rethinking—it improves the quality of our rethinking.
• confidence is just as often the result of progress as the cause of it. We don’t have to wait for our confidence to rise to achieve challenging goals. We can build it through achieving challenging goals.
• Great thinkers don’t harbor doubts because they’re impostors. They maintain doubts because they know we’re all partially blind and they’re committed to improving their sight.

Chapter 3 - the Joy of Being Wrong

We need to enjoy being wrong, not fear it. It is our chance to learn and improve. The easiest way to enjoy being wrong is:

1. Detach your present self from past self - that way you feel less as the owner of past beliefs, which makes it easier to critique and mark as false Cognitive Distancing
2. detach your beliefs from who you are - your identity is what you value, not what you believe in. If these are detached, that means that changing your beliefs is not as a major change as changing yourself completely, only adjust the ways you implement/pov to realize your values.

As long as our identity is connected to our beliefs, our ego will make us defend them even long after we are aware that they are wrong.

The Joy of Being Wrong The Thrill of Not Believing Everything You Think

• Unlike our height or raw intelligence, we have full control over what we believe is true. We choose our views, and we can choose to rethink them any time we want.
• “Being wrong is the only way I feel sure I’ve learned anything.”
• To unlock the joy of being wrong, we need to detach. I’ve learned that two kinds of detachment are especially useful: detaching your present from your past and detaching your opinions from your identity.
• When you feel as if your life is changing direction, and you’re in the process of shifting who you are, it’s easier to walk away from foolish beliefs you once held.
• Who you are should be a question of what you value, not what you believe.
• If being wrong repeatedly leads us to the right answer, the experience of being wrong itself can become joyful.
• the more frequently we make fun of ourselves, the happier we tend to be. Instead of beating ourselves up about our mistakes, we can turn some of our past misconceptions into sources of present amusement.
• Every time you encounter new information, you have a choice. You can attach your opinions to your identity and stand your ground in the stubbornness of preaching and prosecuting. Or you can operate more like a scientist, defining yourself as a person committed to the pursuit of truth—even if it means proving yourself wrong. The faster you are to recognize when you’re wrong, the faster you can move toward getting it right.

Chapter 4 - the Psychology of Constructive Conflict

Conflict is not necessarily a bad thing. It can help you see new points of view, encourage creativity and improve cooperation, as long as you handle them with respect and dignity. Harmony is not a repeat of the same voice, it's the combination of several different voices. variety brings conflict but also growth. Pluralism

The Good Fight Club The Psychology of Constructive Conflict

• “The absence of conflict is not harmony, it’s apathy.”
• Task conflict can be constructive when it brings diversity of thought, preventing us from getting trapped in overconfidence cycles.
• Harmony is the pleasing arrangement of different tones, voices, or instruments, not the combination of identical sounds.
• We learn more from people who challenge our thought process than those who affirm our conclusions.

Part 2. Think Again (intrapersonal thinking)

Chapter 5 - Dances with Foes

Negotiation Debate is more like dance than battle. It takes cooperation Negotiation is an act of connection.

1. Listen to the other side and look for common ground win win situations Active Listening
2. one strong argument is better than few weak ones Addition by subtraction
3. ask questions
4. let the other side have a choice in the final outcome
5. be calm and emphatic Mirroring Labeling

Dances with Foes How to Win Debates and Influence People

• A good debate is not a war. It’s not even a tug-of-war, where you can drag your opponent to your side if you pull hard enough on the rope. It’s more like a dance that hasn’t been choreographed, negotiated with a partner who has a different set of steps in mind.
• the person most likely to persuade you to change your mind is you. You get to pick the reasons you find most compelling, and you come away with a real sense of ownership over them.
• Having a conversation about the conversation shifts attention away from the substance of the disagreement and toward the process for having a dialogue.
• Communicating it with some uncertainty signals confident humility, invites curiosity, and leads to a more nuanced discussion. Expressing some doubts is an act of receptiveness.

Chapter 6 - Diminishing Prejudice

to reduce someone's prejudice, don't try to actively change their mind. rather try and show them how arbitrary their prejudice is. usually meeting people from the other group helps a lot.

Bad Blood on the Diamond Diminishing Prejudice by Destabilizing Stereotypes

• The stronger your attitudes become, the less likely you are to rethink them.
• people can feel animosity toward other groups even when the boundaries between them are trivial.
• When we meet group members who defy a stereotype, our first instinct isn’t to see them as exemplars and rethink the stereotype. It’s to see them as exceptions and cling to our existing beliefs.
• many of our beliefs are cultural truisms: widely shared, but rarely questioned. If we take a closer look at them, we often discover that they rest on shaky foundations.

Chapter 7 - Listening Helps Change Minds

you cant convince someone to change his mind, and surly not with facts. usually its just makes his conviction stronger. rather, you should be a listener, a mirror to his perception and believe his desire to do good (and perhaps to change). help him find his own motivation and show why its best for him by his standard's. no judgment. give them a choice. • ask open ended questions Open ended questions • engage in active listening • affirm his desire and ability to change Validation.

Vaccine Whisperers and Mild-Mannered Interrogators How the Right Kind of Listening Motivates People to Change

• Refuting a point of view produces antibodies against future influence attempts. We become more certain of our opinions and less curious about alternative views.
• The central premise is that we can rarely motivate someone else to change. We’re better off helping them find their own motivation to change.
• The goal isn’t to tell people what to do; it’s to help them break out of overconfidence cycles and see new possibilities. Our role is to hold up a mirror so they can see themselves more clearly, and then empower them to examine their beliefs and behaviors.
• When people ignore advice, it isn’t always because they disagree with it. Sometimes they’re resisting the sense of pressure and the feeling that someone else is controlling their decision.
• the beauty of motivational interviewing is that it generates more openness in both directions. Listening can encourage others to reconsider their stance toward us, but it also gives us information that can lead us to question our own views about them.
• Motivational interviewing requires a genuine desire to help people reach their goals.
• Listening well is more than a matter of talking less. It’s a set of skills in asking and responding. It starts with showing more interest in other people’s interests rather than trying to judge their status or prove our own.

Part 3 Communities of Lifelong Learning

Chapter 8 - Depolarizing Discussions

bridging political and social divides comes not just from presenting both sides of the argument, but also presenting the Complexity. not a black and white issue where one side is obviously right, but rather a lot of shades of gray. Binary Thinking

Emotions are not the block for changing your mind. What blocks it is if you only focus on emotions that promotes separateness and suspicion. Don't just be angry, or apathic, by also curious , empathic, etc...

Charged Conversations Depolarizing Our Divided Discussions

• people are actually more inclined to think again if we present these topics through the many lenses of a prism.
• complexity doesn’t always make for good sound bites, but it does seed great conversations.
• people are more likely to promote diversity and inclusion when the message is more nuanced
• the scientist’s veil of ignorance is to ask whether we’d accept the results of a study based on the methods involved, without knowing what the conclusion will be.
• What stands in the way of rethinking isn’t the expression of emotion; it’s a restricted range of emotion.
• Charged conversations cry out for nuance. When we’re preaching, prosecuting, or politicking, the complexity of reality can seem like an inconvenient truth. In scientist mode, it can be an invigorating truth—it means there are new opportunities for understanding and for progress.

Chapter 9 - Teaching Skepticism

teach kids to think like fact checkers:

1. question and interrogate information instead of just consuming it. Skepticism
2. ignore rank and popularity as proxy for reliability
3. sender (of info) != source

lectures should only be fun, but also engaging, encourage discussions. otherwise, you get the awestruck effect 2bc - charismatic quotes get scrutinized less.

spend less time lecturing in class, and more discussions Deliberation, critique and group work sessions. let the classmates express their opinions on the main subject/other peoples work using the Feedback best practices.

Rewriting the Textbook Teaching Students to Question Knowledge

• there’s a huge difference between learning about other people’s false beliefs and actually learning to unbelieve things ourselves.
• teach kids to think like fact-checkers: the guidelines include (1) “interrogate information instead of simply consuming it,” (2) “reject rank and popularity as a proxy for reliability,” and (3) “understand that the sender of information is often not its source.”
• when a speaker delivers an inspiring message, the audience scrutinizes the material less carefully and forgets more of the content—even while claiming to remember more of it.
• We should be persuaded by the substance of an argument, not the shiny package in which it’s wrapped.
• Whomever we’re educating, we can express more humility, exude more curiosity, and introduce the children in our lives to the infectious joy of discovery.

Chapter 10 - Learning Culture at Work

Learning cultures are based on Psychological safety, the sense that workers can freely express doubts, questions, feedback and admit their errors without harmful results or damage to reputation.

The way to do that is by example, management has to show that it is truly open to feedback, to admit that they also make mistakes... Role Models

It takes confident humility to admit that we are a work in progress. It shows that we are focused more on improving ourselves than proving ourselves. Growth Mindset

Test the processes that has lead to the result. "How do they know it's true", what are the limitations/disadvantages. post-mortem

That’s Not the Way We’ve Always Done It Building Cultures of Learning at Work

• Rethinking is more likely to happen in a learning culture, where growth is the core value and rethinking cycles are routine.
• It’s fostering a climate of respect, trust, and openness in which people can raise concerns and suggestions without fear of reprisal. It’s the foundation of a learning culture.
• How do you know? It’s a question we need to ask more often, both of ourselves and of others.
• It takes confident humility to admit that we’re a work in progress. It shows that we care more about improving ourselves than proving ourselves.
• It isn’t until a high-stakes decision goes horribly wrong that people pause to reexamine their practices.
• Even if the outcome of a decision is positive, it doesn’t necessarily qualify as a success. If the process was shallow, you were lucky. If the decision process was deep, you can count it as an improvement: you’ve discovered a better practice. If the outcome is negative, it’s a failure only if the decision process was shallow. If the result was negative but you evaluated the decision thoroughly, you’ve run a smart experiment.

Chapter 11 - Reconsidering Life Plans

Sometimes we get locked by our own choices. Our past beliefs on who we wanted to be. We get overcommitted to it, treating our past decisions as a Sunk Cost, or path dependency, an unseparated part of our identity, this all blocks our ability to change and be happy. We should do a checkup once in a while about our values and beliefs about what we do, to discard old notions and allow ourselves to change our identity and life plans. Periodical Review

Misconceptions about wellbeing:

1. We are focused too much on evaluating our happiness than experiencing it
2. happiness is more of a steady flow of positive emotions than moments of peak happiness Happiness is contentment
3. happiness is the by product of meaning, usually found in contributing to others Giving
4. happiness is a result of what we do job crafting not where we are

Conclusion

• There’s a fine line between heroic persistence and foolish stubbornness. Sometimes the best kind of grit is gritting our teeth and turning around.
• when we’re searching for happiness, we get too busy evaluating life to actually experience it.
• we spend too much time striving for peak happiness, overlooking the fact that happiness depends more on the frequency of positive emotions than their intensity.
• when we hunt for happiness, we overemphasize pleasure at the expense of purpose. This theory is consistent with data suggesting that meaning is healthier than happiness,
• It’s our actions—not our surroundings—that bring us meaning and belonging.
• There isn’t one definition of success or one track to happiness.
• We don’t have to stay tethered to old images of where we want to go or who we want to be. The simplest way to start rethinking our options is to question what we do daily.
• the difference between reflection and rumination is whether you’re still learning. If you’re pondering a familiar problem without gaining fresh insights, it’s time to seek new information or reach out to your challenge network.
• Bold, persistent experimentation might be our best tool for rethinking.