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Hello Dear Readers, Welcome back to your Sunday Synapse. Hearing the ideas of others is the best way to work our intellectual minds. New ideas, opposing ideas, and different perspectives we have not thought of trigger our synapses to fire up. This space is dedicated to getting you thinking. Inside this email, right here, you are inside one of my lectures or lessons. Thought 1: Philosophical Quote “We are prone to overestimate how much we understand about the world” (Nicholas Nassim Taleb, a philosopher and statistician).
Thought 2 Availability heuristic and pools of information This week, as I sat down to write my weekly newsletter, I struggled to have a clear plan of what I would write about. This is extremely unusual for me as I am usually bursting with ideas. Often throughout the week, as I listen and observe patterns in what people say, I have thoughts about what is relevant and important to expand on. My thoughts usually feel exciting and new, and I look forward to getting them out of me. With my experience, I know exactly why I had a block. It is because I didn’t read or connect with enough new ideas this week. I had a busy week where I needed to submit a journal article, and so I have not had time for deep, reflective reading. Often, when I have a week like this, my mind has less recent information to ponder over. The way our biases work is that we recall recent ideas more quickly and automatically. Our minds love to grab what is readily available. It’s instinctive. Let’s talk about this process a little as it is a very common reason why we make thinking errors. How we access stored information It is important to know how we access our mind as we do it both automatically (intuitively) and deliberately (critical thinking). Automatic thoughts where we quickly and easily recall the most recent thoughts are common and a well-defined natural human bias. It was formally named by intellectual companions and lifelong friends, Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, in 1973. They decided to call it the: availability heuristic. It refers to a mental shortcut where people estimate the likelihood or frequency
of an event based on how easily examples come to mind. A common example of this is the fear of flying versus driving. As well as the fear that the chances of our children being kidnapped if they take a walk on their own is higher than the likelihood of it not happening. However, the reasons our minds become geared to think this way are because of things like the constant and overexcited news coverage of these bad and infrequent events catastrophising the level of fear we should feel that makes our minds misinterpret or inflate the risks rather than focus on the actual level of risk. This is how our minds work. When we know this, we can be more thoughtful when we are jumping to conclusions. Once you begin to understand and accept what your mind is going to do, you are in a position to be ahead of it. This also reinforces why we need to make sure we access broad topics of information voluntarily and openly rather than letting other people and institutions decide what we should know. While avoiding plane travel may not be a significant issue, preventing children from experiencing essential forms of community independence carries substantial risks to their mental health, physical health, and socio-emotional intelligence. The availability heuristic, for instance, can lead parents to make poorer daily decisions in such cases by focusing disproportionately on immediate fears rather than long-term impacts. Availability bias As a result of this heuristic process, we also experience availability bias. This is where people disproportionately rely on information that is easily recalled. I tell you this because the more you fill your mind with diverse ideas and if the quality of those ideas increases (i.e. wisdom from intellectuals and clever people) the more sophisticated the pool of information to draw from becomes. When you actively expose yourself to a variety of information and broad ways of thinking, it enriches your mental framework. Knowing we have natural cognitive processes and our tendency for biases, you’re far more likely to recall these recent and diverse ideas as you go through life realising suddenly that you have quality ideas to contribute. This is why it is vital to read or interact with new ideas that trigger deeper thought just for a little time each day so that you have a mind that is working and pondering new ideas and thoughts. We can see that this is why people who travel widely, listen to diverse stories and immerse themselves in varied experiences often become particularly wise and tolerant of diversity. Similarly, those who read broadly and deeply over the years evolve into intellectual sages, shaped by the diversity of perspectives they encounter. You can actually gain critical thinking skills just by practically observing the world around you and the patterns you see. This means you have to step outside our natural tendency to focus on our own mind and really look. This takes practice. Cognitive routines I can feel the difference in my own mind when it is sparked by fresh, varied ideas versus when it sits idle. For instance, people who read or listen only to the same type of content every day—whether from a single news outlet, one dominant institution, or books that present only one perspective on an issue—will have limits in their thinking. This is logical. This is especially true in the modern world, where the political popularity of thought is often treated as universal truth, despite the inherent subjectivity of the people behind the movements. If people follow the same cognitive routine, they will automatically draw on what is readily available in their minds, leading to skewed perceptions shaped by a narrow availability of data or information. You can notice who they are easily, and I really believe they should not be listened to. They have ulterior motives which even they are unaware of. This is why there is such a significant difference between intellectual or wiser thinkers and heavily biased, less intelligent thinkers. Someone is thinking less intelligently if they are completely unaware of their own biases yet quick to believe that only others possess them. I often see this lack of intelligence in people from both extreme far-left and far-right political groups, who immerse themselves exclusively in one type of idea. This narrow focus frequently evolves into an unhealthy ideology, shaped by the way their biases influence their thinking. This is why critical thinking is so important—it encourages moderation of thought and assists us in the ability to discuss any idea, promoting intellectual growth and meaningful, gratifying discourse regardless of the topic. Pools of knowledge This led me to focus on today’s letter by acknowledging that my mind felt like it was underperforming. I realised I had little recent knowledge available and my pool was dry. This letter is a reminder that we can only ever draw from what we already know and very often what we have recently engaged with. Try and look out for that in the coming weeks. If you have recently had a conversation or read a book with ideas that interested you, notice how much you recall the information and then over time whether it fades or stays the same. Our pool of recent knowledge shapes not only our ideas but also our judgments, assumptions, and the mistakes we make. It is important to understand that those wise sages are usually full of a lot of knowledge therefore the pool they have to draw from is deep, wide, and rich. The smaller the pool of knowledge or the dryer, the narrower the availability of ideas. For the purposes of critical thinking, I like to bring an interdisciplinary lens into my letters so remember, having a narrow lens to look through was probably very necessary historically. From an evolutionary perspective, it makes perfect sense why the brain is so easily convinced. In early human history, people only needed to understand and internalise the ideas within their tribes to maintain commitment and loyalty. This limited scope of knowledge served a vital purpose, maintaining unity and survival within small, close-knit communities. However, in today’s world, with an overwhelming abundance of information at our fingertips and a societal shift away from community-oriented thinking toward individualism, the narrow, tribal mindset that once served us well has become a significant problem. The purpose behind what we know—and why we need to know or recall it—often becomes unclear or overlooked. Our intuition is very powerful. Remember that. This doesn’t mean it is bad, it just needs to be understood…if you do not learn how to manage it, given it’s not going anywhere soon, it may continue to betray you. Thought 3 CT Activities this Week Learn about the common biases of availability heuristic and availability bias. Look up Nicholas Nassim Taleb, Amos Tversky, and Daniel Kahneman and learn about these three thinkers. If you want to be a critical thinker, improve your critical thinking, or teach critical thinking you must buy Daniel Kahneman’s book Thinking, Fast and Slow. Read it slowly and read it deliberately, just like Kahneman’s would have hoped. This book will teach you about your intuitive mind. I believe reading it will change the way you perceive everything from this day forward. When you are trying to recall information, take a moment to think about where you’re drawing your ideas from and whether there’s more you could learn. Test your knowledge by reading about the topic and reflecting on how much new information you’ve gained. This practice helps expand your pool of knowledge, so next time, you’ll draw from a broader and more informed perspective on the issue. Repeat this practice forever.
That is it from me for today! Send me an email if you have any comments, ideas, epiphanies, stories, or feedback, or please just send mail to say hello as I love to hear that you are out there! Please note that I am now receiving a large amount of emails and messages. While I may not always be able to reply to each one of you due to time, please know I enjoy looking at your words. It helps keep me motivated and gives me an idea about what you are thinking. Please do not stop! Until next week… Esha. References Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1973). Availability: A heuristic for judging frequency and probability. Cognitive Psychology, 5(2), 207–232.
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