Reading = thinking?
What is the purpose of reading? To kill time and have fun? Or to get more information and knowledge? Or is reading for other purposes? Charles Munger, one of the smartest people in the world, once answered this question.
Charles Munger believes that the purpose of reading is not to absorb information or knowledge, but to make better decisions.
Reading can make people acquire information and knowledge, but it is of little value to the collection and memory of knowledge and information itself. Only when knowledge and information can help decision-making and change behavior can its value be highlighted. However, better decision-making can be achieved not only through reading itself, but also through thinking. As Marvin Minsky, the father of artificial intelligence, once said, "The most important step of thinking development is not only to acquire new knowledge, but also to acquire new management methods to use existing knowledge." An excellent thinking mode is an operating system that efficiently manages and uses knowledge.
Thinking hard is a book about thinking models. The core of Think Well originates from the multiple thinking mode mentioned by Charles Munger many times in his speech. However, Charles Munger did not elaborate the pluralistic thinking mode in detail, and generally only mentioned mastering the core principles of key disciplines and applying them across disciplines. Reading the book Thinking Hard may provide new ideas for how to establish and use multiple thinking modes.
Good decision = quality decision basis (quality information)+quality thinking model (quality information processing system)
Therefore, to make a good decision, we must first have a good decision-making foundation, that is, to obtain high-quality information, and then we must have an excellent thinking mode, that is, to establish a high-quality information processing system, both of which are indispensable.
What is a good decision-making basis? Now stop and think about your past decision-making process. Perhaps for most people, the most commonly used decision-making basis is personal experience, that is, experience summed up from personal work, study and life. But in Charles Munger's view, personal experience is not a good basis for decision-making, because personal experience has only been verified by a few people, and the scope of verification is very small, so it is difficult to prove that it is effective in a wider range.
The basis of high-quality decision-making should be more widely verified effective information, such as the core principles in important disciplines. These principles have been verified by a large number of experiments, practices and data, so the core principles of key disciplines should be better decision-making basis than personal experience.
The problem to be solved in the book Think Well is what is an excellent thinking mode and how to establish such a thinking mode.
The author of Think Well believes that a good thinking mode is a system that almost all smart people can master and use, and it is more efficient than the thinking system used by most people, such as multiple thinking modes. The so-called multiple thinking mode is a compound thinking framework that can improve the understanding of things. The name "multiple thinking mode" comes from Charles Munger's speech.
The core of pluralistic thinking mode includes: (1) essential thinking: trying to analyze the essential problems behind specific problems; (2) Cross-domain thinking: using the principles and solutions of other rapidly developing fields to solve specific problems in this field, thus reducing the dimensions of specific problems.
The main reasons why the multi-thinking mode can reduce the dimension and solve the specific problems in this field efficiently by using the principles of other fields are as follows:
Although modern human society has developed countless disciplines, including basic disciplines, business disciplines, human history, technical sciences and so on. However, it is undeniable that the underlying problems (essential problems) to be solved by different disciplines are similar. Just because the starting point and research methods are different, the developed disciplines are different. Therefore, if we face a specific problem in field A, if we can analyze the underlying essential problem of this specific problem, then it is possible to find a solution to the essential problem in field B. ..
Because the development degree of different disciplines is different, it is fast and slow, so if we can analyze the essential problems behind the specific problems that are difficult to solve in field A, we may find that similar essential problems have been solved in field B, but if the solutions in field B can be transferred to field A for application, then we can realize the dimensionality reduction attack on the specific problems in field A. ?
The schematic diagram of this idea is as follows:
Iterate the game industry by using Hollywood experience
The book "Think hard" gives an example of the game industry referring to the solutions of Hollywood film industry. The market valuation of domestic game companies is not high, one of the reasons is that investors think it is difficult to continuously develop interesting and high-quality game content. So investors are not optimistic about the long-term development of game companies. The solution of game practitioners is to refer to the experience of Pixar, a Hollywood film production company. Because both games and movies are solving the problem of how to constantly create beautiful experiences for people. Both industries are facing the same difficulties, how to continuously create high-quality content. The game industry in China has only developed for 30 years, but the Hollywood film industry has developed for more than 100 years, forming a systematic methodology to create a pleasant experience. The experience of Hollywood can be transferred to the game industry for iterative application to achieve iterative attacks on specific problems in the game field.
From the above analysis, if we want to establish and apply the multiple thinking model, we may face two difficulties: (1) How to summarize the essential problems behind specific problems; (2) How to master the learning principles of a large number of subjects. Overcoming these two difficulties is very important for establishing a multi-thinking model.
First of all, it needs to be clear that the essence of approaching and exploring problems is thinking ability rather than talent. Because the essence of closeness is ability, which can be improved through continuous training in an appropriate way. "Thinking hard" provides two ways to improve the ability to summarize essential problems:
When facing a specific problem, we should first use critical thinking to question the problem itself, the premise of the problem and the root of the problem, so as to explore the essence of the problem. Think hard takes a military action of Julius Caesar as an example. In 49 BC, when Julius Caesar was fighting against 90,000 enemy troops, the weather suddenly changed, which should have been the dry season of continuous heavy rain in the Mediterranean. Days of heavy rain caused the river to swell, leaving Julius Caesar's army stranded on an island in the river, without food and facing the enemy.
Faced with this problem, Julius Caesar first thought about the root of the problem and came to the conclusion that the root of being trapped lies in the distribution of rivers. So Julius Caesar ordered his soldiers to secretly dig a river upstream to divert it. The diverted river trapped 90 thousand enemy troops. Julius Caesar not only solved the problem of being trapped, but also turned the enemy around. It can be seen that when faced with a problem, we should not rush to find a specific solution, but think about the premise and root of the problem, which will help us get close to the essence of the problem and make better decisions.
The book Thinking Hard mentions four logical levels of thinking from low to high. If we try to analyze a specific problem with a higher level of thinking logic, we will get closer to the essence of the problem. The four logical levels of thinking from low to high are experience and skills, methods and processes, discipline principles and philosophical perspectives. The author of "Bitter Thinking" takes bargaining in the wholesale market as an example, which is also bargaining. If we analyze it at different levels of thinking logic, the conclusions are naturally different. According to experience and skill analysis, it may be useful to directly reduce the price by 90% in a specific wholesale market, but it is difficult to apply it outside the wholesale market. However, from the perspective of methods and processes, this behavior of directly cutting off 90% of the price can be summarized as a "lion's mouth" strategy in the negotiation, in order to win the negotiation advantage with tough conditions at the beginning of the negotiation. The scope of application of this strategy is not just bargaining in the wholesale market. If we think with the discipline principle of the upper level, bargaining strategy can be summarized as psychological anchoring effect. Obviously, the application scope of anchoring effect is not limited to the negotiation field, but can be applied to the whole business field. Finally, if the anchoring effect is raised to the highest philosophical perspective, it can be summarized as finding human weaknesses to gain game advantages, and its application scope is extremely wide. This example just shows that if we think about specific problems and solutions with higher-level thinking logic, it will be more conducive for us to get close to the essence of the problem.
Mastering the important principles of different disciplines is the fuel for the operation of multi-thinking mode. How to master the principles of different disciplines and fields is a difficulty and challenge, but in the process of accumulating the principles of different fields, it can provide more thinking angles, which is helpful to think about specific problems from different angles and then explore the essential problems. To improve the ability to master different subjects, the following methods may be helpful:
As mentioned above, one of the purposes of reading is to serve thinking. Specific to the construction of pluralistic thinking mode, reading is one of the means to master a lot of knowledge and information. In order to achieve this reading goal, we can adopt the theme reading method more, and arrange different books in the same field to concentrate on reading at the same time. The advantages of thematic reading are: (1) improving reading efficiency. Different books in the same field have the same theme, so after reading one or two books, reading efficiency will be higher and higher because you have a general understanding of the problem framework in this field. It is helpful for readers to master knowledge in a certain field in a short time. (2) Seeing different authors' different views on the same issue will help deepen the understanding of this field. Different authors in the same field may have different interpretations of the problems in this field, and their views may support each other or contradict each other. Subject reading can see different viewpoints, avoid bias, and help deepen our understanding of this field.
As far as obtaining the information needed to establish a multi-thinking model is concerned, the efficiency of reading and obtaining core information will be greatly improved, which will help us to quickly master the core knowledge in different fields instead of reading the full text of each book.
With the acquisition of more and more knowledge and information through reading, it is particularly important to manage information in an appropriate way and establish a personal knowledge system in order to obtain appropriate information in time as the basis for future decision-making. I recommend Kamanka note-taking method. This method of taking notes requires retelling the knowledge points you have read in your own language and recording them on a card. After reading it, if there are knowledge points that are closely related to the existing knowledge points (which can be supported or refuted), you can record them in the form of cards and link them with the previous knowledge points cards. This method of taking notes can make users always think about the relationship between newly acquired knowledge and information and existing knowledge when reading, and then help readers establish and improve their own knowledge system.
As long as a person knows the current situation of his knowledge system, he will know what knowledge is lacking in the knowledge system, so as to read or lack relevant knowledge in a targeted manner. This is directional reading. Only in this way can readers master the knowledge of different disciplines and fields as comprehensively as possible.