I think the division into problems and exercises usually seen in mathematics texts would be useful: A task is considered an exercise if it’s routine application of previous material, it’s a problem if it requires some kind of insight or originality. So far most of the Koans have seemed more like problems than like exercises, but depending on content both may be useful. I might be slightly biased towards this as I greatly enjoy mathematics texts and am used to that style.
“Problem” suggests something different in philosophy than in math. A philosophy “problem” is a seeming dilemma, e.g. Gettier, Newcomb’s, or Trolley. So I’d suggest “exercise” here.
“Exercise” dominates “kōan” in that both have the sense of something to stop and think about and try to solve, but ① “exercise” avoids the misconstrual of Zen practice (the purpose of a Zen kōan is not to come up with a solution, nor to set up for an explanation), ② the Orientalism (the dubiosity of saying something in Japanese to make it sound 20% cooler), and ③ the distraction of having to explain what a kōan is to those who don’t know the word.
EDIT: The claim that a purpose of a Zen kōan is not to come up with a solution appears to be a matter of disagreement, so discount ①. I think ② and ③ stand, though.
However, in Zen practice, a kōan is not meaningless, and not a riddle or a puzzle. Teachers do expect students to present an appropriate response when asked about a kōan.
According to the history of the word given there, it originally meant accounts of legal decisions (and literally, a magistrate’s bench). In Chinese Buddhism it came to refer to snippets of dialogue between masters. From there it mutated to the contemplation of mysterious sayings, and eventually to what looks very like an exercise in guessing the teacher’s password, with authorised answers that were specifically taught and had to be given to acquire promotion in the Japanese monastery system. (I have this book, which is subtitled “281 Zen Koans with Answers”.)
The modern meaning of “koan” dealt with in the section “Koan-practice” describes what looks very like Eliezer’s intention in using the word here: a problem that cannot be answered by merely applying known rules to new examples, but requires new thoughts and ideas: a problem that begins by seeming impossible: a problem that cannot be solved without in the process learning something that one has not been taught.
Perhaps there is, somewhere, a better word, but I think “koan” will be hard to beat.
So… the main thing I want to convey over and above “exercise” is that rather than there being a straightforward task-to-solve, you’re supposed to ponder the statement and say, “What do I think of this?”
A word other than “koan” which conveys this intent-to-ponder would indeed be appreciated.
The only trouble I see is that “koan” makes it totally okay to think about it for a while without finding the answer, while “puzzle” might cause people to propose solutions.
Given that most people seem likely to look at the koan and think “yeah, I could solve that if I thought about it for a while” and then move on without actually thinking about it, anything that actually gets people to think about it seems like a good thing.
The goal is to apply those algorithms we call “rationality” towards solving the koan, one of which involves withholding even just mentally formulating solutions as much as possible, and instead just thinking about the elements and properties of the problem properly without subjecting oneself to hack heuristics.
The word puzzle is, for most people, loaded with a trained impulse to shoot the first solution-sounding thing that pops to mind so that you can see whether you get a hedon / tribal status coin for a good answer or not.
However, the trained behavior of most people when facing a puzzle is to look at it for a few seconds and then throw the first good-sounding solution you can think of.
Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Either they’ll get a right answer despite throwing the first possible solution at it, or they’ll widely miss the mark, in which case they might actually realize that they’ve learned something by the time that the right answer is demonstrated.
You have a point. My (subconscious) priors on that end are skewed towards “Never, ever throw out solutions before you’ve laid things out properly” because of lots and lots of little personal experiences with complete failure modes due to stopping with the first solution I found.
The word “pabulum” (from Latin for “fodder”) was once used in English to mean “food for thought”. However, it (or “pablum”) is now more likely to denote insipid fare. We could reclaim the original meaning—in which case these statements-to-be-pondered are “pabula”.
Interesting that “pondering” is a cognitive skill that needs exercised. The term derives from a latin term for “weight”. Perhaps this can be thought of as something analogous to barbells or dumbells for epistemological strength-training.
Pondering means thinking about something in a way that makes it “heavy” or difficult for the mind to process (just as heavy objects are difficult to lift). Like the metaphorical “burden of proof,” it references mental difficulty of processing ideas to physical difficulty in lifting objects. The way this happens involves increasing the complexity of your mental instantiation of an idea, thereby bringing more cognitive algorithms to bear on it.
The strength-training metaphor only works if it can be contrasted with endurance-training. Otherwise it would just be a generic kind of training. Strength training involves shorter bursts of focused effort followed by a recovery period. These koans are short and intended for 5-15-minutes of focused thought, so they are probably more on that end of the spectrum than lengthier articles that describe complex concepts.
Epistemological endurance training (assuming there is such a thing) would be where you use longer periods of time thinking about a problem that has a fair degree of mental effort required but not overwhelming. That would analogize to running, biking, and so forth where rather than doing the hardest thing you can do, you are doing something rather hard for a longer time.
Ooops I miscommunicated. I think the surface analogy isn’t the most interesting part of this.
I was more interested in what ideas you had for training epistemological ability. The burst vs endurance thing could be interesting if it could be detailed in on its own terms (ie. inside view instead of analogizing).
I’ve been thinking a lot about rationality training recently, so anything that looks like a possible excercise really catches my attention.
So it must have been “pondering as a rationality skill” which got your attention. Sorry for misinterpreting. :)
For me it’s not hard to ponder. I do that naturally. But I don’t always ponder exactly what I’m told to ponder, even when I have every reason to think the person who told me to ponder something knows what they’re talking about and this is something that if I ponder it I will benefit from the resulting enlightenment. It’s like there is something in the nature of pondering that is perverse and rebellious (at least for the way my mind works, some of the time).
Perhaps a good exercise would be to deliberately ponder specific things that you aren’t (yet) naturally curious about. Maybe set a timer and commit to only focus on that particular topic until the timer goes off. I wonder what an optimal time length would be? Also, what kinds of topics could/should be used for the exercise?
I think the division into problems and exercises usually seen in mathematics texts would be useful: A task is considered an exercise if it’s routine application of previous material, it’s a problem if it requires some kind of insight or originality. So far most of the Koans have seemed more like problems than like exercises, but depending on content both may be useful. I might be slightly biased towards this as I greatly enjoy mathematics texts and am used to that style.
“Problem” suggests something different in philosophy than in math. A philosophy “problem” is a seeming dilemma, e.g. Gettier, Newcomb’s, or Trolley. So I’d suggest “exercise” here.
“Exercise” dominates “kōan” in that both have the sense of something to stop and think about and try to solve, but ① “exercise” avoids the misconstrual of Zen practice (the purpose of a Zen kōan is not to come up with a solution, nor to set up for an explanation), ② the Orientalism (the dubiosity of saying something in Japanese to make it sound 20% cooler), and ③ the distraction of having to explain what a kōan is to those who don’t know the word.
EDIT: The claim that a purpose of a Zen kōan is not to come up with a solution appears to be a matter of disagreement, so discount ①. I think ② and ③ stand, though.
The account in the Wikipedia article says differently:
According to the history of the word given there, it originally meant accounts of legal decisions (and literally, a magistrate’s bench). In Chinese Buddhism it came to refer to snippets of dialogue between masters. From there it mutated to the contemplation of mysterious sayings, and eventually to what looks very like an exercise in guessing the teacher’s password, with authorised answers that were specifically taught and had to be given to acquire promotion in the Japanese monastery system. (I have this book, which is subtitled “281 Zen Koans with Answers”.)
The modern meaning of “koan” dealt with in the section “Koan-practice” describes what looks very like Eliezer’s intention in using the word here: a problem that cannot be answered by merely applying known rules to new examples, but requires new thoughts and ideas: a problem that begins by seeming impossible: a problem that cannot be solved without in the process learning something that one has not been taught.
Perhaps there is, somewhere, a better word, but I think “koan” will be hard to beat.
So… the main thing I want to convey over and above “exercise” is that rather than there being a straightforward task-to-solve, you’re supposed to ponder the statement and say, “What do I think of this?”
A word other than “koan” which conveys this intent-to-ponder would indeed be appreciated.
What about “riddle” or “puzzle”?
The only trouble I see is that “koan” makes it totally okay to think about it for a while without finding the answer, while “puzzle” might cause people to propose solutions.
Given that most people seem likely to look at the koan and think “yeah, I could solve that if I thought about it for a while” and then move on without actually thinking about it, anything that actually gets people to think about it seems like a good thing.
The only trouble is if people then have to unthink things, which humans are notoriously bad at :P
People have already been proposing solutions to the “koans”, and I don’t understand why that’s a bad thing.
The goal is to apply those algorithms we call “rationality” towards solving the koan, one of which involves withholding even just mentally formulating solutions as much as possible, and instead just thinking about the elements and properties of the problem properly without subjecting oneself to hack heuristics.
The word puzzle is, for most people, loaded with a trained impulse to shoot the first solution-sounding thing that pops to mind so that you can see whether you get a hedon / tribal status coin for a good answer or not.
Alright. I see where you’re coming from, though I doubt that “puzzle” and “koan” have as many deep connotations as you claim.
Maybe the right thing to do is to actually write something to the effect of “Here is how you should be approaching these puzzles/koans”?
“Puzzle” is good because it suggests that there is a solution, whereas some “problems” don’t have solutions, because they are simply confused.
However, the trained behavior of most people when facing a puzzle is to look at it for a few seconds and then throw the first good-sounding solution you can think of.
Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Either they’ll get a right answer despite throwing the first possible solution at it, or they’ll widely miss the mark, in which case they might actually realize that they’ve learned something by the time that the right answer is demonstrated.
You have a point. My (subconscious) priors on that end are skewed towards “Never, ever throw out solutions before you’ve laid things out properly” because of lots and lots of little personal experiences with complete failure modes due to stopping with the first solution I found.
I don’t think “noodle” is taken, yet.
Hm. I like the direction this points. Any similar suggestions?
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Your suggestion has been… accepted!
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You could use “udon” instead of “noodle” to make it sound foreign and mysterious ;)
The word “pabulum” (from Latin for “fodder”) was once used in English to mean “food for thought”. However, it (or “pablum”) is now more likely to denote insipid fare. We could reclaim the original meaning—in which case these statements-to-be-pondered are “pabula”.
Consider adding “straightforward” exercises for the lesser mortals, and mark the harder ones, (koans?) with stars, like the standard textbooks do.
“Pondering exercise” maybe?
Interesting that “pondering” is a cognitive skill that needs exercised. The term derives from a latin term for “weight”. Perhaps this can be thought of as something analogous to barbells or dumbells for epistemological strength-training.
I like the way you think. Care to elaborate?
Pondering means thinking about something in a way that makes it “heavy” or difficult for the mind to process (just as heavy objects are difficult to lift). Like the metaphorical “burden of proof,” it references mental difficulty of processing ideas to physical difficulty in lifting objects. The way this happens involves increasing the complexity of your mental instantiation of an idea, thereby bringing more cognitive algorithms to bear on it.
The strength-training metaphor only works if it can be contrasted with endurance-training. Otherwise it would just be a generic kind of training. Strength training involves shorter bursts of focused effort followed by a recovery period. These koans are short and intended for 5-15-minutes of focused thought, so they are probably more on that end of the spectrum than lengthier articles that describe complex concepts.
Epistemological endurance training (assuming there is such a thing) would be where you use longer periods of time thinking about a problem that has a fair degree of mental effort required but not overwhelming. That would analogize to running, biking, and so forth where rather than doing the hardest thing you can do, you are doing something rather hard for a longer time.
Ooops I miscommunicated. I think the surface analogy isn’t the most interesting part of this.
I was more interested in what ideas you had for training epistemological ability. The burst vs endurance thing could be interesting if it could be detailed in on its own terms (ie. inside view instead of analogizing).
I’ve been thinking a lot about rationality training recently, so anything that looks like a possible excercise really catches my attention.
So it must have been “pondering as a rationality skill” which got your attention. Sorry for misinterpreting. :)
For me it’s not hard to ponder. I do that naturally. But I don’t always ponder exactly what I’m told to ponder, even when I have every reason to think the person who told me to ponder something knows what they’re talking about and this is something that if I ponder it I will benefit from the resulting enlightenment. It’s like there is something in the nature of pondering that is perverse and rebellious (at least for the way my mind works, some of the time).
Perhaps a good exercise would be to deliberately ponder specific things that you aren’t (yet) naturally curious about. Maybe set a timer and commit to only focus on that particular topic until the timer goes off. I wonder what an optimal time length would be? Also, what kinds of topics could/should be used for the exercise?