Metacognitive Strategies to Promote an Adaptive Mindset

[Ego]

Everyday learning often starts with a surprise. Something unexpected happens and we use that surprise to change our understanding. But our innate confirmation bias might block this learning by ignoring the surprise or reinterpreting it to conform with out current beliefs.

Winston Sieck of Global Cognition (and colleagues) came up with five metacognitive strategies for developing elaborate, nuanced explanations of puzzling situations:

http://www.globalcognition.org/head-sma ... trategies/

Notice the anomaly: Monitor what’s going on around you enough to realize something odd has happened.

Inquire as to causes: Pause for a moment and ask, “Why did that occur?” Try to come up with questions that get to the heart of the matter.

Reflect on what you do know: Sift through your knowledge base for a general idea that might be relevant. Use this to suggest directions for further exploration.

Consider alternative explanations: We tend to get fixated on one way of thinking, leading to overconfidence in our current concept. Try to think of unlikely possibilities to get different ideas.

Suspend judgment: Reflect on whether you really have enough evidence to support your conclusion. Be willing to admit (at least to yourself) that you don’t necessarily know at the moment.

[jacob]

What I find stupefying is that such critical thinking is only adopted by a minority of people and that despite operating from such a mindset it is really hard to empathize/predict people who do not.

A great of scientific discoveries start with: "Hey, that's weird ... I wonder what" whereas the normal reaction would be "Huh? Whatever?" or similar.

[Dragline]

Yes, things that conflict with our pre-existing views are usually ignored or reinterpreted unless some additional mental effort is made. And often I see very intelligent people ignoring the obvious implications of the event for hidden, secret (or invented) meanings that just happen to reflect or support their worldviews.

In Kahneman terms, you (or Winston Sieck) are recommending System 2 thinking in a System 1 world.

Critical thinking is toooo haaaaaaaaarrrrd!

[workathome]

This may be a symptom of processor throughput limitations. Or specialization? Like if I put all my processing power into understanding TPS reports and their accounting implications, maybe it's hard to think about why going to war with country X isn't in my best interest.

[JamesR]

Even when people talk about critical thinking (the implication being they have it), it's still rare for them to have the habit of questioning everything, generating elegant outside of the box solutions, etc.

[Ego]

Judgement is toughest for me. I want things resolved and have to consciously avoid filling in the gaps.

[JamesR]

That's true, suspension of judgment is critical. Another way of saying that is: being able to handle ambiguity.

[jacob]

One of the biggest dangers of system 2 which Dragline alludes to is the perniciousness of model-fitting which I suppose could be seen as an extension of curve-fitting which again is an extension of confirmation bias.

With confirmation bias, only data points that are close to existing data points are considered.
With curve-fitting, only data points that are close are included. Outliers are deliberately excluded or ignored or, worse, not found.
It's the not-found problem that's the worst for model-fitting. Suppose you're building up an elaborate theory/model for explaining a phenomenon. You have some early success and this becomes your first model-point. You now start confirming/curving based on that initial model.

This means that entire theories become local in model space. Economics being local to math equations is a good example. It's hard for economics to consider ideas that aren't captured with an equation.

In order to avoid model-fitting one has to start anew. This is called paradigm shifts. It's believed that such shift are so hard that they have to be accomplished by the old guard dying out and being replaced by new fresh minds.

[Dragline]

In order to avoid model-fitting one has to start anew. This is called paradigm shifts. It's believed that such shift are so hard that they have to be accomplished by the old guard dying out and being replaced by new fresh minds.

I think that's very much the case. There is a famous quote about it from an early quantum physicist (Bohr? Heisenberg?).