IMO, it has to involve—amongst other things! -- personal practice of the sort I describe in the following.
If you want to avoid falling into mental ‘traps’ (not to make assumptions, not to fall victim to biases, etc), then you have to be able to spot when you are about to, or just have, commited one.
You need a highly-refined “bullshit detector”. And it is crucial that you can use it automatically. When you’re in the midst of thinking about something you can’t just sit back and consciously reason about your own thinking in order to spot every mistake. You have to be really good at automatically spotting them.
If it needs to be automatic then it has to come from practice. So I say get as much practice as you can: anywhere and anyhow.
Always have it as a consicous priority to want to avoid falling into any mental traps. Always consider how what you’re thinking could possibly be wrong. The same for anything you hear anyone else say. And in particular, for anything that you read. I always have a pencil with me when I’m reading things and whenever I think I’ve found someone falling into some sort of mental trap I try to note the details of it.
(This is about having a pretty constant critical attitude but it doesn’t mean being a jerk who has a negative outlook on life, or who needlessly attack others’ views in public, or who shows off by pointing out mistakes, etc.)
Over time, you’ll build up a more substantial toolkit, and those capabilities will become more automatic.
IMO, it has to involve—amongst other things! -- personal practice of the sort I describe in the following.
If you want to avoid falling into mental ‘traps’ (not to make assumptions, not to fall victim to biases, etc), then you have to be able to spot when you are about to, or just have, commited one.
You need a highly-refined “bullshit detector”. And it is crucial that you can use it automatically. When you’re in the midst of thinking about something you can’t just sit back and consciously reason about your own thinking in order to spot every mistake. You have to be really good at automatically spotting them.
If it needs to be automatic then it has to come from practice. So I say get as much practice as you can: anywhere and anyhow.
Always have it as a consicous priority to want to avoid falling into any mental traps. Always consider how what you’re thinking could possibly be wrong. The same for anything you hear anyone else say. And in particular, for anything that you read. I always have a pencil with me when I’m reading things and whenever I think I’ve found someone falling into some sort of mental trap I try to note the details of it.
(This is about having a pretty constant critical attitude but it doesn’t mean being a jerk who has a negative outlook on life, or who needlessly attack others’ views in public, or who shows off by pointing out mistakes, etc.)
Over time, you’ll build up a more substantial toolkit, and those capabilities will become more automatic.