The Thinker Thinks… About The Thinker
Thinking About Thinking by Balaji Prasad
“Alas, the frailty is to blame, not we For such as we are made of, such we be.” - William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Also, it is not sufficient for our purposes to just integrate the new data with the existing gray-matter patterns inside us; we find it necessary to beat it into different abstract shapes and patterns to allow our limited cognitive capacities to make “sense” of it. Clearly some dexterity with data analysis is something that we all can benefit from. But that is not the end of the road. Data for its own sake is useless. We are interested in data in the first place because we feel the need to make our lives better in some way. This often involves solving problems.
“Problem solving and data analysis” is one of the math topics that is tested on the SAT. It is something Everyone is a problem solver that high schoolers have to deal with whether they Human beings are endless generators of problems. We are take the SAT, ACT or even school tests. always looking to optimize things so that our desires and fears are addressed. We are reluctant to let the universe spin on its own path. Everyone should study for the SAT! “Hey, what about me!?” we constantly clamor, as we seek to have I am being a little facetious, of course. But not the universe spin a little more this way in our favor rather than that entirely. If you go beyond the literality of the way, which could be a random and undesirable direction from our exhortation, problem-solving and data analysis is very human standpoint. what all of us do every moment of our lives. We take So, as we look for opportunities to intervene productively in the in lots of data about the world we live in, and about machinations of an otherwise uncaring universe, we frame the things that constantly happen around us. problems that guide us in our life-enhancing endeavors. Framing We don’t take in the data as it is. We filter it, problems correctly is obviously important. Perhaps, even more prioritize it and jiggle it around inside our heads to important is whether a problem should be framed at all. Our fears make it somehow fit with whatever already exists and desires can drive us to go wrong with both of these aspects of inside. We analyze the data, interpret it and problems: naming and framing. transform it during our “data processing” phase of continued on page 76 our knowledge cycle. Saathee.com
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July 2021
