Thinking About Thinking

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

“Problem solving and data analysis” is one of the math topics that is tested on the SAT. It is something that high schoolers have to deal with whether they take the SAT, ACT or even school tests.

Everyone should study for the SAT!

I am being a little facetious, of course. But not entirely. If you go beyond the literality of the exhortation, problem-solving and data analysis is what all of us do every moment of our lives. We take in lots of data about the world we live in, and about the things that constantly happen around us.

We don’t take in the data as it is. We filter it, prioritize it and jiggle it around inside our heads to make it somehow fit with whatever already exists inside. We analyze the data, interpret it and transform it during our “data processing” phase of our knowledge cycle.

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. Everyone is a problem solver

Human beings are endless generators of problems. We are 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. “Hey, what about me!?” we constantly clamor, as we seek to have the universe spin a little more this way in our favor rather than that way, which could be a random and undesirable direction from our very human standpoint.

So, as we look for opportunities to intervene productively in the machinations of an otherwise uncaring universe, we frame problems that guide us in our life-enhancing endeavors. Framing problems correctly is obviously important. Perhaps, even more important is whether a problem should be framed at all. Our fears and desires can drive us to go wrong with both of these aspects of problems: naming and framing.