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Tips for Better Thinking (Aaron Swartz's Raw Thought)

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Go to the library and you’ll find whole bookcases full of books on how to write better. But look for a book on how to think better and you’ll be busy for a while. (The only major book I could find — Crimes Against Logic — was a dreadful little series of basic logical fallacies dressed up in political polemic.) It can’t be that writing is more important than thinking. While I’ve met many people who can’t exactly write, it seems that just about everyone has to think — even writers. Nor do I think it’s that the task is really harder. We know very little about the internal process of writing, so writing guides consist mostly of good and bad examples, along with some general rules. Surely one could do the same for thought. Perhaps the answer is that there isn’t such a thing as good thinking. But the case for it seems even stronger than the case for good writing. Good thinking is that which better helps us approximate reality — avoiding fallacies, missteps of judgment, faulty assumptions, mi

Tips for Better Thinking (Aaron Swartz's Raw Thought) Raw Thought by Aaron Swartz Tips for Better Thinking Go to the library and you’ll find whole bookcases full of books on how to write better. But look for a book on how to think better and you’ll be busy for a while. (The only major book I could find — Crimes Against Logic — was a dreadful little series of basic logical fallacies dressed up in political polemic.) It can’t be that writing is more important than thinking. While I’ve met many people who can’t exactly write, it seems that just about ever

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