Tools for Better Thinking

* Good definitions of what is or is not a strategy

* How to identify whether you have an actual strategy or just some empty words or a repetition of the objective

* A lot of examples of different strategies, bad strategies, and non-strategies

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11721966-good-strategy-b...

Of course, I don't know of any book that teaches systems theory "as a technology" -- it's something I've learned by reading a lot of books on different things and picking up the threads they have in common.

Systems theory relies, really, on a complete map of the causal network of a situation. We're not at a point where we can give a step-by-step instruction for inferring the causal network behind situations. We have some ideas on how to statistically do this in a limited fashion (see Judea Perl) but the general problem is still one of creativity, intuition, fact-checking, Bayesian probability, and so on. You get good at it by doing it a lot in various situations and reflecting on your performance -- the way you get good at most mental skills.

I may have ended up answering a different question to the one you asked, but these were my thoughts.

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I guess with all my rambling I'm trying to say that ultimately, "better thinking" boils down to "a more complete understanding of situations" and the best way to get there in my experience has been the scientific method, democracy (in the true sense of the word), and curiosity. These are very complex technologies that are not easy to teach.

* The Thinker's Toolkit: 14 Powerful Techniques for Problem Solving by Morgan Jones.

* Mindware: Tools for Smart Thinking by Richard Nisbett.

  > Does anybody know of something similar, but written in a more elaborate book-like fashion?

I sync it to my phone with AnkiDroid: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ichi2.anki

I occasionally review the actual facts as flashcards. But having the notes already in flashcard format has been my secret weapon for seeming intelligent for years.

The Incose handbook for systems engineering: https://www.incose.org/products-and-publications/se-handbook

(You might be able to find an older version for free)

Disclaimer: I've been participating in a Systems Engineering master program @ university a while back which was based on both Haberfellner (and is finally available in English also) and Incose.

Here’s an updated version, maybe? https://coda.io/@dave-mastronardi/gamestorming-a-toolkit-for...

Even though someone explains you where you can you a tool, they just share some instences of the endless possibilities

For example, a stick can be used to make a fire, to support a structure, to throw and hunt, to have hun with your dog, and for many other things

It is all about understanding what the tool is, what its fundamentals are

Once you know the basics, you can see the situations where the tools can be used that no one has ever imagined to used them in that way

P.S. Not affiliated to them in any way, Just a subscriber.

https://github.com/zsviczian/obsidian-excalidraw-plugin

Now there's also ExcaliBrain which builds on Obsidian's graph view:

https://github.com/zsviczian/excalibrain

I think making "cave man drawings" (diagrams, lists, etc.), as I call them, when trying to think through some things is a clever way of starting out.

Things like the Ishikawa diagram on Untools are really new worldviews. I bought Edward Tufte's data visualization books back at the turn of the century, and his objection to powerpoint reduced to how the form of a visualization conveys an underlying logic of ideas by virtue of the dimensions it displays and the number of them that were strictly meaningful ("ink to data ratio"). Viz that only displayed one data variable but added a bunch of "chartjunk," like effects and weird shapes, was not informative but essentially just bizarre totalitarian propaganda.

Some of these mental models and decision support tools are multi-variate systems for evaluating pretty much anything, which makes them almost the basis for alternate ideologies about how to evaluate a dynamic or criticize an idea. Sometimes I suspect what we think of as genius is really just a privately developed ideology based on a few evaluation principles like the ones linked on this thread.

> Adjointness is only a part of the story. One often sees equations of the following form inverse(x) = adjoint(x)/norm(x). Once you have adjoint and norm, you magically get inverse.

That said, I am often spectacularly ignorant and easily seduced by simple views of complex things, but if there were name for this form or axiom, like Nemecek's axiom or something, I hope it sticks.

I couldn't make heads or tails out of that or the first linked page.

It's a great format; I wish most non-fiction followed it.

Unless I'm trying to do something stylistic, I pretty much always try to structure my writing this way. Especially technical writing.