「TEA TIME」# 1

taking a break and thinking

〈Uninterrupted Thinking, Productive Thinking〉

I do this.

You do what? Every day. I sit and think. I find time for it.

Great! Great. What for?

WERTHEIMER, 1959, is a great book on this important subject.

So why is uninterrupted thinking useful? Productive thinking before doing is separating the accidental from the essential. If an individual does not productively think, what happens when they get a problem similar to one they just solved? They make almost the same number of errors. (That is how you tell who is guessing and who understands what they are doing!) Somebody who took the time for uninterrupted thinking would solve it smoothly by insight. Making few errors.

The underlying reason why uninterrupted thinking separates the essential from the accidental is found in NEWELL, 1990. Repeated chunking. CHAITIN, 2003, has recently identified this with compression and therefore understanding. It allows you to see the whole problem at once in your mind. This makes clear what is relevant — and what is not. Then one knows what to do to get what is desired.

Not only that.

Even for mere relaxation. HAMLYN, 1983 observes that over time, by thinking, he often learns to love art that he once loathed.

I often look at a painting for a few minutes just thinking. Why? I'm trying to live with it. When this is done often interest appears where before there was mere incomprehension.

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(Image: tibra; macro 100:1. — Nature up close.)

Nature is mostly order arising from disorder. That we can directly see. And then what? Then we think about it. Some things are relevant. Others are not. The relevant ones are those which organize the others. So order from disorder.

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REFERENCES

David HAMLYN, 1983, Perception, Learning and the Self, London, Routledge Paul (HAM83)

Gregory CHAITIN, 2003, From Philosophy to Program Size, Tallinn, University of Technology Institute of Cybernetics (CHA03)

Allen NEWELL, 1990, Unified Theories of Cognition, Cambridge, Harvard University Press (NEW90)

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