Augmented Thinking

Extended Mind Thesis is a connected idea.
#noteinprogress

What does it mean to augment our thinking?

We should probably also start exploring the very idea of thinking, so I'll just link that for later...

And back to my train of thought...

Those last three sentences were direct stream-of-consciousness from mind through fingers to keyboard, where I can read what I write on a screen on my laptop, saved in an Obsidian vault with multiple backups.

That ability to reread my thoughts as I wrote them out to be displayed on screen (or paper) means I can pause and think those exact thoughts again to get a better idea of where they might want to lead.

It enables metacognition which is the really cool human ability to think about what we're thinking about and even think about how we think about what we're thinking about. Recurse into that enough and you reach a weird mental space where you can tip over to enlightenment or psychosis, so tread with caution.

Obsidian and other writing tools are how I augment my memory. I don't have to remember every thought that I have. I can capture the ones I want to capture in the designated places, and let the other thoughts go.

Writing and reading are two types of mind augmentation.

I write to remember what I was thinking.

I read the writing of others to learn what they were thinking. To augment my mind with their thoughts, and sort them through my own mental simulation of the world. To simulate different worlds and compare them to my own simulation. To learn new ideas and new skills and see what I can do with them that I couldn't do before.

Our entire education system is about augmenting young minds with the information necessary to keep the society functioning - results vary. Augmentation is messy.

AI can be used to replace thinking or augment thinking. Having it write for you? That's replacing your thinking. So is just trusting what it says at face value and buying into it's saccharine validation personality.

I'm experimenting with using it to augment my thinking and learning. Our Augmented Minds is about that. LOT of critical thinking skills to build. But also practical prompting strategies - it's less about the individual prompt and more about how you approach the conversation. Knowing what results you're looking for, and how to get those results. Do you want validation? Great, do it. But be aware that's what you're doing, and balance it with getting some more critical feedback from the bot. Ask it to find the weaknesses in your arguments, to analyze your writing and point you towards people who have explored similar themes and genres so you can learn from them.

Because learning is mind augmentation, and I'm mindful about how I augment mind. I don't trust the bot, I work with the bot as a human-tool partnership.