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What's so great about making mistakes?

Mar 15, 2017 | Category: Featured

To err is human.Alexander Pope Making mistakes is an inevitable part of life. We're all wrong about something at some point. Equally obviously, contending with failure, learning to drag ourselves up b...

#failure #Daniel Dennett #mistakes

Seven tools for thinking #7: Beware of 'deepities'

Jun 11, 2016 | Category: Featured

This is the last of my posts on Daniel Dennett's tools for thinking outlined in Intuition Pumps. You can read the others here.Everyone wants to find meaning in their actions and the events which surro...

#Daniel Dennett #7 tools for thinking #Deepak Chopra #The Barnum effect

Seven tools for thinking #6 Don’t waste time on rubbish

Jun 09, 2016 | Category: Featured

Argue with idiots, and you become an idiot.Paul Graham Science fiction writer and critic, Ted Sturgeon coined what's become known as Sturgeon's Law: "Ninety percent of everything is crap." This is som...

#Daniel Dennett #Sturgeon's Law

Seven tools for thinking #5 Occam's razor

Jun 08, 2016 | Category: Featured

All things being equal, the simplest solution is usually the best one. William of Ockham You've probably heard the old adage that if you hear the pounding of hooves echoing through the Wiltshire cou...

#Daniel Dennett #Albert Einstein #Occam's razor

Seven tools for thinking #4: Answering rhetorical questions

Jun 07, 2016 | Category: Featured

Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question. E. E. Cummings Everyone likes a rhetorical question, don't they? Do they? Think about it. Try answering it. Do you think everyone real...

#Daniel Dennett

Seven tools for thinking #3: The "surely" klaxon

Jun 06, 2016 | Category: Featured

Rumack: Can you fly this plane and land it? Striker: Surely you can't be serious? Rumack: I am serious. And don't call me Shirley. Airplane, 1980 It's natural to want to build consensus. We're all gui...

#Daniel Dennett #bullshit

Seven tools for thinking #2: The principle of charity

Jun 05, 2016 | Category: Featured

Ah! What a divine religion might be found if charity were really made the principle of it instead of faith! - Percy Bysshe Shelley A few weeks ago I wrote about the philosopher, Daniel Dennett's recom...

#Daniel Dennett #Anatol Rapoport #principle of charity

Seven tools for thinking #1: Use your mistakes

May 22, 2016 | Category: Featured

"The chief trick to making good mistakes is not to hide them - especially not from yourself." - Daniel Dennett. I've been rereading the philosopher, Daniel Dennett's wonderfully erudite manual for mak...

#Daniel Dennett #folk psychology #mistakes

A defence of the fixed mindset

Jan 23, 2015 | Category: learning

The growth mindset has been so universally heralded as 'a good thing' that it's in danger of becoming one of those memes we think with rather than about. A number of commentators have been critical of...

#Carol Dweck #Growth mindset #Daniel Dennett #fixed mindset #plasticity #Star Wars