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-- If you question your own intentions and observations, you can avoid making big mistakes. This is the big fallacy of questioning your every thought and inten

-- If you question your own intentions and observations, you can avoid making big mistakes. This is the big fallacy of questioning your every thought and intention. If only I could just monitor every thought, every motive, question my every step, then I could do it perfectly -- I would avoid the big mistakes. Wrong. You might have perfectly reasoned every thought, justified every intention, and still fail simply because you didn't have all the information. I like to compare this to Gödel's first incompleteness theorem. No matter how much we examine our thoughts, we're still applying the same brain to them. You might hope to catch some of the problems by applying second, third and fourth thoughts to your first thoughts, but there's bound to be a flaw you can't work around, "an arithmetical statement that is true, but not provable in theory" ;)

ahoyhere 17y ago
The "You" that is doing the analyzing can obviously learn and grow... otherwise, what's the point of doing anything? And, if you read the original article, you'll see it's not about "catching problems" at all.
- CodeMage 17y ago
  See, that kind of hostile attitude is what usually turns people away from any advice you might offer. Your assumption that I haven't read the article -- because my wording of my interpretation of it differs from what you expect -- is unwarranted. The article itself was rather interesting and I certainly didn't mean to imply that metacognition is useless. From my point of view, not engaging in any metacognition ever will eventually lead to what I call problems, among which are unwarranted assumptions and failure to consider alternatives. Those are "problems" that I like to "catch" and correct in my own thinking. However, I do believe that one has to draw a line somewhere; otherwise, one risks indulging in what another commenter named "mental masturbation". As for personal growth, I believe there will always be limits to our thinking that cannot be (directly) surpassed by more thinking ;)
  - ahoyhere 17y ago
    I didn't intend to sound hostile. I think we're talking past each other here :) Also, I agree with you 100% on mental masturbation. (I also blog occasionally @ http://www.justfuckingship.com/ http://www.justfuckingship.com/). But I am tired of every freakin web app looking, acting, and being essentially the same. We also define problems differently. I think it's a bigger issue that all web app are basically the same, than if a given individual sits and thinks too hard and never does anything. But that's because I have barely any problems with executing any more... because I've worked on it. Have you heard of the categorization of failures? Failure Level 1 - Doing the right thing, but doing it badly. Failure Level 2 - Doing the wrong thing, whether you do it well or badly. I mostly like to poke people about Level 2. No blog/article/motivational speaker/whatever can do everything so I pick my battles :)

ahoyhere 17y ago

The "You" that is doing the analyzing can obviously learn and grow... otherwise, what's the point of doing anything? And, if you read the original article, you'll see it's not about "catching problems" at all.

CodeMage 17y ago
See, that kind of hostile attitude is what usually turns people away from any advice you might offer. Your assumption that I haven't read the article -- because my wording of my interpretation of it differs from what you expect -- is unwarranted. The article itself was rather interesting and I certainly didn't mean to imply that metacognition is useless. From my point of view, not engaging in any metacognition ever will eventually lead to what I call problems, among which are unwarranted assumptions and failure to consider alternatives. Those are "problems" that I like to "catch" and correct in my own thinking. However, I do believe that one has to draw a line somewhere; otherwise, one risks indulging in what another commenter named "mental masturbation". As for personal growth, I believe there will always be limits to our thinking that cannot be (directly) surpassed by more thinking ;)
- ahoyhere 17y ago
  I didn't intend to sound hostile. I think we're talking past each other here :) Also, I agree with you 100% on mental masturbation. (I also blog occasionally @ http://www.justfuckingship.com/ http://www.justfuckingship.com/). But I am tired of every freakin web app looking, acting, and being essentially the same. We also define problems differently. I think it's a bigger issue that all web app are basically the same, than if a given individual sits and thinks too hard and never does anything. But that's because I have barely any problems with executing any more... because I've worked on it. Have you heard of the categorization of failures? Failure Level 1 - Doing the right thing, but doing it badly. Failure Level 2 - Doing the wrong thing, whether you do it well or badly. I mostly like to poke people about Level 2. No blog/article/motivational speaker/whatever can do everything so I pick my battles :)