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Comment by robobro | Hacker News Reader

I would argue that my degrees in philosophy were granted to me while I was learning to think and judge well at university.

It's funny that the paper author goes only into multitasking / concentration after wondering why people struggle to think critically. Sure, distracted thinking is generally not good thinking, but slowing down in and of itself won't improve your judgment skills. It's kind of a bummer that after the author says "there's a problem with critical thinking!" -- he moves on and doesn't talk about ways to actually develop critical thinking besides, you know, this 4 minute essay that just says "slow down the decision making process." I would have hoped he would have talked about different ways to analyze or prioritize problems, or discussed game theory or maybe gone into wicked problems[1].

Oh well

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem

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Ironic isn’t it? The author complains about people not thinking enough but his articles don’t seem well thought out either. It’s full of reductionism and oversimplications.

Slowing down, concentrating, and having lots of time are definitely helpful for thinking but he implies that it is sufficient for thinking and that everyone has that luxury.

What about people operating under duress like in wars or pandemics? Can epidemiologists slow down while a pandemic spreads exponentially? Can soldiers slow down while they’re being shot at?

I’m pretty sure those people would like to have the space to make better decisions but more often then not, they don’t. Those are very wicked problems.

You would have included eating to your list. You sure are taking it out of context. He didnt imply you think before you do everything.

Even as Engineers we know that some of the problems we come up against in the course of a project could have been foreseen and tackled if only we spent some time to deeply understand the project.

Now you're taking my point out of context.

I countered with the implication that there may be more important factors than just time for those acting in time-constrained situations to make "good" decisions and that he was oversimplifying, not that we always think before we do everything.

AFAIK, most people don't eat their meals under duress. I could be wrong though.

> Can soldiers slow down while they’re being shot at?

What's there to think, either shoot back or run. OTOH planning war strategy is thinking.

> Can epidemiologists slow down while a pandemic spreads exponentially?

They have to if they have to invent the medicine. I think you are confused b/w hardwork and thinking.

All those essays and fancy problem solving techniques and hacks are good. But they were also invented by people that sat down to think.

I don't know for you but I know that when I slow down and tell myself to relax, start poking at the problem from different angles things go well. I dont know how it happens. The brian reaches a point you even continue solving the problem while sleeping. There might be hacks for that but with the right intention and time it mostly happens for me.

In other words, would you agree that people that make right decision fastest are the smartest? What I mean is that making a good decision while taking a lot of time is much easier than making the right decision without spending much time.

In real life we often have to make suboptimal decisions merely because we cannot spend much time on each one.

Only in very simple solution spaces. In general the solution spaces are pretty big and taking a while to mull it over is worth while. Especially for novel problems. If the problem is similar to something you thought about previously or have already encountered them of course it can be responded to. Even the smartest chess grandmaster will play better with more time. And for hiring, I always prefer people that have a great answer in a day or so than an ok answer immediately which they are happy about.

Interesting. I find most people index too heavily on the other direction. There are diminishing returns on thinking at some point for to the inherent imprecision of making decisions in this world. You can make the best decision and things can still go wrong. Or you can have misunderstood the problem. Or you could be solving the wrong problem.

For most ill defined problems, it's best to accept you may be wrong, but make the best quick decision you can, and be willing to reevaluate.

I worked at a place where design was expected to take a free weeks for a new server project that would take say three months. From what I saw we produced software that was easy to maintain and easy to add new features too. But we rarely had to rip out and redo old features or old libraries. People were much more Likely to come up with the right layering of software to solve the problem, including the problem of high velocity changing produce specs. We also figured out the right place to put in some DSL templating engine or easy to edit configuration. Working there for years and watching the system scale over many orders of magnitude user traffic and feature growth left me with an appreciation for deep, clear thought, in the face of uncertainty.

>would you agree that people that make right decision fastest are the smartest?

they are the smartest in that decision space, probably due to training in it and have made a lot of similar decisions in the past.

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