In today's world, the way we learn to think may look very different from the way it once did. We live in an age of information overload: almost any topic you can name yields a flood of material online, anyone can publish, and circulating and broadcasting information is no longer a privilege of the few. Take an example: fifty years ago, if you wanted to buy a camera, you would seek out a trusted friend and decide only after hearing their view. Today a quick search turns up reviews of every camera going. Information is cheap, yet finding what is genuinely useful in that ocean of it is extraordinarily hard. In short, what gives you the edge today is no longer how much information you hold, but your ability to process it and sort the wheat from the chaff. Below, I will outline three practical methods to help you build your capacity for deep thinking.
1. Read widely — and read books that stretch you
I went to an education fair recently, and one of the guests argued that since any piece of information can be found on Google, there's really no need to read all that much; you only need to focus on training your critical thinking. The argument is a bit like telling a chef that since all the ingredients are readily available, you can master the culinary arts by practising on an empty pot. The biggest problem with this view is that thinking cannot be divorced from background and context, and the human ability to synthesise and reason about new information is something Google cannot match. Consider a doctor handling a case of methanol poisoning who saved the patient in the end by, decisively, having them drink five litres of beer[1]. The principle is that the liver preferentially metabolises the ethanol in beer, so the toxic methanol is not absorbed by the body. Behind that decision lies a doctor's thorough understanding of alcohol's chemical properties and of human physiology, which is what made the on-the-spot judgement possible. Google cannot make those decisions for us.
So if you want to sharpen your thinking, you must read a substantial number of books (or use some other systematic method of absorbing knowledge) to give your brain the raw material for thought. That brings us to the question of which books to read. Why do some books wash over you and leave nothing behind, while others stick fast? When looking for a new book, it's best to pick one whose content you have a hazy grasp of — say, one you understand thirty or forty per cent of, with most of it still beyond you. A book you understand entirely is, of course, dull, and needs no further comment. But why not read something wholly new? Suppose I read psychology — wouldn't reading a physics book add even more to my knowledge? The principle behind this can be explained in psychological terms: when you learn new information, one of the most important ways to digest it is to consider how the new information relates to what you already know. As old and new information link up, recalling the old naturally calls the new to mind, forming a tightly woven memory network[2]. If new information cannot connect to anything you already know, it ends up like an island cut off from the wider world, gradually isolated. So a book that is good for you should let you absorb new information and reshape your view of what you already know. When some of the core information and beliefs in your mind are washed over and jolted by a different book, they naturally grow far more robust.
2. Learn some basic logic and thinking methods
If we're talking about the discipline most relevant to thinking, it has to be logic and thinking methods. Learning logic and thinking methods helps you recognise why some arguments don't hold up. Take an example: some people oppose legalising same-sex marriage because they believe legalisation could lead, in time, to legalising polygamy, bestiality, incest… and so on. This is the classic Slippery Slope fallacy. Because there is no evidence that legalising same-sex marriage would cause other relationships to be legalised, the argument doesn't stand. There are many other kinds of fallacy too – and the value of learning them is that they let us raise a red flag whenever we meet a flawed argument, and pinpoint exactly where it falls down. In the example above, if the opponents could prove that legalising same-sex marriage really would be very likely to lead to legalising incest, then it would no longer be a slippery slope fallacy. And this is something you can apply to your own thinking or to that of others.
If you're interested, for logic I recommend Harry J. Gensler's Introduction to Logic — it's a university logic textbook, yet remarkably clear and accessible. As for thinking methods, Lee Tin Ming's The Art of Thinking is well worth a read.
3. Widen your circle, and meet people who hold different views
The third suggestion may be a little surprising. Why would widening your social circle help build your capacity for deep thinking? On this point I'd like to first share a famous psychology study known as the Stanford Prison Experiment. In the study, a group of psychologically normal university students were randomly split into two groups and made to play prisoners and guards in a mock prison. The result was deeply unsettling: within a few days the guards turned into figures of frightening cruelty, bullying and humiliating the prisoners in countless ways. The prisoners, too, seemed to forget they were merely participants in an experiment, and most became utterly submissive to the guards[3]. The experiment eventually spiralled out of control and had to be cut short. The students in the study ought to have had a basic capacity for independent thought, yet under the enormous pressure of the social situation, most of them acted in ways that defied common sense. This experiment shows that the group we find ourselves in influences us far more than we imagine.
If someone's social circle is narrow, and the group they belong to does not encourage rational discussion, their thinking can easily fall under the sway of Groupthink. Groupthink shows that people have a desire to conform to the group they belong to. One reason behind this may be the wish to be accepted by the group. Sometimes Groupthink is enough to cloud the judgement even of people with very strong cognitive ability (note: not the same as thinking ability). Aum Shinrikyo, the Japanese group behind the Sarin gas attack, for instance, drew on the help of a great many scientists and PhD students, which is how it managed to manufacture the poison gas. There is no doubt these people had a certain ability in academic analysis and the like, yet the power of the group was enough to make them blindly devoted to their guru. So if you want to cultivate the capacity for deep thinking, engaging with people who hold different views matters greatly. For one, it can keep you from becoming overly fixated on a single viewpoint; for another, engaging with different people lets you learn different ways of looking at the world, and refine your own views in light of others' opinions.
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References
[1] https://www.chinatimes.com/realtimenews/20190120000017-260402
[2] Schlichting, M. L., & Preston, A. R. (2014). Memory reactivation during rest supports upcoming learning of related content. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(44), 15845-15850.
[3] Zimbardo, P. (2011). The Lucifer effect: How good people turn evil. Random House.
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