I feel like items on your current list have <10% of the responsibility for what I’d consider software updates in humans, and that it sorta fails to address almost all the ordinary stuff that goes on when individual humans are learning stuff (from others or independently) or when “humanity is improving its thinking”. But that makes me think that maybe I’m missing what you’re going for with this list?[1] Continuing with the (possibly different) question I have in mind anyway, here’s a list that imo points toward a decent chunk of what is missing from your list, with a focus on the case of independent and somewhat thoughtful learning/[thinking-improving] (as opposed to the case of copying from others, and as opposed to the case of fairly non-thoughtful thinking-improving)[2]:
a mathematician coming up with a good mathematical concept and developing a sense of how to use it (and ditto for a mathematical system/formalism)[3]
seeing a need to talk about something and coining a word for it
a philosopher trying to clarify/re-engineer a concept, eg by seeing which more precise definition could accord with the concept having some desired “inferential role”
noticing and resolving tensions in one’s views
discovering/inventing/developing the scientific method; inventing/developing p-values; improving peer review
discussing what kinds of evidence could help with some particular scientific question
asking oneself “was that a reasonable inference?”, “what auxiliary construction would help with this mathematical problem?”, “which techniques could work here?”, “what is the main idea of this proof?”, “is this a good way to model the situation?”, “can I explain that clearly?”, “what caused me to be confused about that?”, “why did I spend so long pursuing this bad idea?”, “how could I have figured that out faster?”, “which question are we asking, more precisely?”, “why are we interested in this question?”, “what is this analogous to?”, “what should I read to understand this better?”, “who would have good thoughts on this?”
I will note that when I say <10%, this is wrt a measure that cares a lot about understanding how it is that one improves at doing difficult thinking (like, math/philosophy/science/tech research), and I could maybe see your list covering >10% if one cared relatively more about software updates affecting one’s emotional/social life or whatever, but I’d need to think more about that.
I feel like items on your current list have <10% of the responsibility for what I’d consider software updates in humans, and that it sorta fails to address almost all the ordinary stuff that goes on when individual humans are learning stuff (from others or independently) or when “humanity is improving its thinking”. But that makes me think that maybe I’m missing what you’re going for with this list?[1] Continuing with the (possibly different) question I have in mind anyway, here’s a list that imo points toward a decent chunk of what is missing from your list, with a focus on the case of independent and somewhat thoughtful learning/[thinking-improving] (as opposed to the case of copying from others, and as opposed to the case of fairly non-thoughtful thinking-improving)[2]:
a mathematician coming up with a good mathematical concept and developing a sense of how to use it (and ditto for a mathematical system/formalism)[3]
seeing a need to talk about something and coining a word for it
a philosopher trying to clarify/re-engineer a concept, eg by seeing which more precise definition could accord with the concept having some desired “inferential role”
noticing and resolving tensions in one’s views
discovering/inventing/developing the scientific method; inventing/developing p-values; improving peer review
discussing what kinds of evidence could help with some particular scientific question
inventing writing; inventing textbooks
the varied thought that is upstream of a professional poker player thinking the way they do when playing poker
asking oneself “was that a reasonable inference?”, “what auxiliary construction would help with this mathematical problem?”, “which techniques could work here?”, “what is the main idea of this proof?”, “is this a good way to model the situation?”, “can I explain that clearly?”, “what caused me to be confused about that?”, “why did I spend so long pursuing this bad idea?”, “how could I have figured that out faster?”, “which question are we asking, more precisely?”, “why are we interested in this question?”, “what is this analogous to?”, “what should I read to understand this better?”, “who would have good thoughts on this?”
I will note that when I say <10%, this is wrt a measure that cares a lot about understanding how it is that one improves at doing difficult thinking (like, math/philosophy/science/tech research), and I could maybe see your list covering >10% if one cared relatively more about software updates affecting one’s emotional/social life or whatever, but I’d need to think more about that.
it has such a focus in large part because such a list was easy for me to provide — the list is copied from here with light edits
two sorta-examples: humanity starting to think probabilistically, humanity starting to think in terms of infinitesimals