Thank you for listening to the feedback of those of us who are avid readers and "get" visual charts & graphics, but have a much harder time with audio only presentations and, particularly, the back and forth of a podcast. You have an amazing gift for communicating in a style we reading/visual folks can really sink our teeth into. Just because podcasts are "in" right now does not mean we will simply move over to that format. Our brains don't work nearly as well to absorb information delivered solely via audio, so we will 'tune out', thereby missing out on all the amazing insights and perspective you have to share.
Excellent summary! If I may add anything, I would try to make a distinction between facts and opinions. Our knowledge relies on both. Ideally, we should filter out opinions (or confirm them as facts if possible) to strengthen our knowledge tree. Not everybody goes in depth, pursuing a reality check on everything, or even question the information they are fed with. Lately, the line between fact and opinion is even more blurred by the unmanageable amount of information that we are daily bombarded with... people are tired and unwilling to get to the bottom of things and the confirmation bias conveniently fills the gap that would otherwise lead us to cognitive dissonance (we unconsciously tend to avoid it altogether). We want clear and consistent information. We need to take decisions based on that information. The bias creeps in to give us some reassurance and spare us of uncomfortably changing course when new data conflicts our old beliefs. Here is the point: our knowledge tree can be strengthened into a fact-based ground or into a shaky, biased, opinion-based soil. Communication is nearly impossible without a common understanding of the facts. Even if you travel back someone's twigs and branches to understand his thought process and values, you may have to literally dig to the roots for the ground truth. If, beyond the roots, you find a shaky soil of unverifiable beliefs, you may never be able to communicate efficiently with that person. Sadly, many of us are already there. We take sides and entrench ourselves without leaving space for new branches to reach out into different realms, we even prune the twigs that go into uncomfortable topics contradicting our old trunk's principles.
Further questions:
How do we change people's minds when they refuse to acknowledge reality and learn? This is a heavy burden and education plays a fundamental role (but we have to update our education system first). Who will change the education system? For sure, not those who don't understand the problems. Who is in charge? How do we get in charge people that are willing and able to make the change? What is the critical mass in our leadership that would flip the switch to the right position? How much time we have until things go worse (hope not as bad as "unrecoverable"...) and how do we get there? I do not have good answers, but please keep bringing up the problems that you see so people can read and learn. Not yet enough people (far below the critical mass) with high visibility to get traction at larger scale, but all transformation must start somewhere, even from a small seed... or a few.
HUUUUGE! In epistemology, from what I've read they call opinions assertions, but yes, you're right.
Through my articles I've peppered the fact that this is the single most important topic of today I believe. If we solve this, we will solve many more problems. I want to solve it at some point.
On your question: funny you ask, that was the follow-up article: How to Change Beliefs
You have made my explanation re medical productivity a lot easier! The skill I need to use 20 to 40 times every day is that of listening to people I don't know, getting some understanding of their knowledge framework and being able to communicate effectively with them. The post-Covid world allows me to have more control over that process so I can improve its efficiency. I'll expand on that in the other thread.
Love this framework! I find it helpful in understanding my own knowledge and hopefully that of others. More understanding leads to less judgment and more collaboration. We need this more understanding than ever in our world today, instead we settle for soundbites and tweets.
Some while ago, we briefly discussed the future of education. That was before I had any real experience of using AI.
My suggestion was that education would cease to be based on a syllabus, and that it would become more self-led; the student would tend to meander through various interconnected topics according to their current interest, and that they would eventually be examined for skills, understanding, and a certain amount of knowledge.
Having used AI on a daily basis for a while, I now see that an AI driven education process is far more likely than any other solution. The process of asking a question and receiving clear uncluttered answers is now a "several times a day" event. All we need is an AI portal that is structured to provide answers which lead to several related subjects so that the student can continue their research.
Wow, what a great article. I ran a couple of schools and a nonprofit all built around project “Progress trees“ with core (trunk) projects and optional (branch) projects in math, science, music, coding, sports*, etc. When you do this, you immediately get buy-in from the students and you unleash incredible energies, which make teaching a joy (our teachers had the highest job satisfaction in 2015 e.g. of 40 schools audited that year. Trees made them happy!). Instead of forcing each child to pay attention to you every day, and keeping them in suspense, you give them the incomplete knowledge Tree on the first day of class, and then you’re just helping each child climb _their_ tree (many paths to excellence, many ways to build your tree, as you say—-everybody climbs the trunk to get core knowledge and skills they need to make real choices, but no two students climbs the same branches).
* in sports we used skills pyramids (for individual, team, and game skills) instead of “trees” because sometimes in heavy skills-based activities – like surgery! – you need to sharpen the mind by narrowing it. It’s a shame, but competence requires it.
Yes, progress is addicting even when it’s pointless (video games)! A couple years after I created my first tree (in response to Gardner’s multiple intelligences book which made me realize I was trying to force every child into the math/language box… and that if I created a tree with optional branches, I could make every academic subject into a class where multiple intelligences had a chance to shine) the book Flow came out. When I read that I recognized what was happening in my classrooms: the visual Trees were putting kids into a state of flow, which explains why they were so happy (and a fortiori their teachers too). Clear goals, choice, timely feedback (real-time in my classrooms- grading at home is a new waste of time) on their progress, and the next step progressive challenge always waiting.
Your article also helped me see deeper into certain aspects of the method…Building your knowledge tree, etc
Thank-you for sharing this, really great read. This article is so clear - it's great when the graphics perfectly complement what you're writing about. It reminds me of WaitButWhy's style. Ideas feel really concrete when you can illustrate them. The diagram about the intersection of interests is so good.
I've been trying to work out recently whether there's a set of fundamental, general questions that allow you to most efficiently attach knowledge to your tree, or build a new tree. If I told you that I'd present you with a completely new topic to learn tomorrow, what topic-independent questions could you ask to "converge" on an understanding? I feel like "How does this fit in with what I already know?" is too high-level and doesn't add much.
WaitButWhy is amazing, so that’s quite a compliment. Thanks!
From my experience, most people have flimsy trunks and branches with very dense twigs and leaves. And the strongest branches are either popular topics or their own lived experience / industry.
This is bad because it gives an illusion of deep knowledge: in their everyday lives, they are indeed experts at nearly everything.
Their holes are in 2 areas:
1.- all the topics that they haven’t even engaged in
2.- depth in popular topics (Eg economics, politics) beyond the average person.
When they’re exposed to their hole 1, they’re just not equipped to process them because they don’t have enough branch structures to support them.
When they’re exposed to type 2 holes, they have already a dense (but shallow) tree structure and can’t easily rebuild it.
This also gives you an idea of how to answer your question. The more disciplines you learn about, the more you reinforce super fundamental branches. Things like MECE, ROI, 1st principles, cognitive biases, influence, math, etc
Once you learn to see these patterns across more than one industry, suddenly you can start applying them across industries.
Great as always. Just to say, the podcast has yet to appear/update in my standard podcast feed (pocket cast). Can access through here of course, but just thought I'd flag it up. Also, am v happy with podcasts in general. Love the articles, but podcasts are a nice addition. Cheers
For example, whenever somebody doesn't understand something I'm saying, or when somebody can't make himself understood, visualizing this helps me explain the pbm and find solutions.
I worked in education, and this is one of the cores mental frameworks that is *not* consistently applied in that field.
Financial benefits --> Not direct, but if you know this you can be much better in your communication, which is a huge benefit for career progress.
Tomas, When you mentioned "mental model" it brought to mind one I use often when trying to decide between two options. I call it the "greater desire" method. I imagine owning or being in scenario "A" in all it's glory. Then I consider scenario "B" and try to quantify my preference for "B" over my current ownership of "A". Then I reverse to owning or being in scenario "B" and my desire for "A". I may do a couple iterations to filter out nonsense. By comparing the relative strength of the desire for the "other" scenario, I am often able to come to a decision. I use this method and the "greater regret" method/model often. Love your stuff.
Makes sense. I'm a high school teacher so this is a good mental model for teaching and becoming a better writer myself. I want to work on my writing and communication for financial and other reasons. Thanks a lot for the response!
Thank you for listening to the feedback of those of us who are avid readers and "get" visual charts & graphics, but have a much harder time with audio only presentations and, particularly, the back and forth of a podcast. You have an amazing gift for communicating in a style we reading/visual folks can really sink our teeth into. Just because podcasts are "in" right now does not mean we will simply move over to that format. Our brains don't work nearly as well to absorb information delivered solely via audio, so we will 'tune out', thereby missing out on all the amazing insights and perspective you have to share.
Totally agree! I'm a big fan of written work or if it must be a podcast please publish a transcript!
Excellent summary! If I may add anything, I would try to make a distinction between facts and opinions. Our knowledge relies on both. Ideally, we should filter out opinions (or confirm them as facts if possible) to strengthen our knowledge tree. Not everybody goes in depth, pursuing a reality check on everything, or even question the information they are fed with. Lately, the line between fact and opinion is even more blurred by the unmanageable amount of information that we are daily bombarded with... people are tired and unwilling to get to the bottom of things and the confirmation bias conveniently fills the gap that would otherwise lead us to cognitive dissonance (we unconsciously tend to avoid it altogether). We want clear and consistent information. We need to take decisions based on that information. The bias creeps in to give us some reassurance and spare us of uncomfortably changing course when new data conflicts our old beliefs. Here is the point: our knowledge tree can be strengthened into a fact-based ground or into a shaky, biased, opinion-based soil. Communication is nearly impossible without a common understanding of the facts. Even if you travel back someone's twigs and branches to understand his thought process and values, you may have to literally dig to the roots for the ground truth. If, beyond the roots, you find a shaky soil of unverifiable beliefs, you may never be able to communicate efficiently with that person. Sadly, many of us are already there. We take sides and entrench ourselves without leaving space for new branches to reach out into different realms, we even prune the twigs that go into uncomfortable topics contradicting our old trunk's principles.
Further questions:
How do we change people's minds when they refuse to acknowledge reality and learn? This is a heavy burden and education plays a fundamental role (but we have to update our education system first). Who will change the education system? For sure, not those who don't understand the problems. Who is in charge? How do we get in charge people that are willing and able to make the change? What is the critical mass in our leadership that would flip the switch to the right position? How much time we have until things go worse (hope not as bad as "unrecoverable"...) and how do we get there? I do not have good answers, but please keep bringing up the problems that you see so people can read and learn. Not yet enough people (far below the critical mass) with high visibility to get traction at larger scale, but all transformation must start somewhere, even from a small seed... or a few.
Thank you!
HUUUUGE! In epistemology, from what I've read they call opinions assertions, but yes, you're right.
Through my articles I've peppered the fact that this is the single most important topic of today I believe. If we solve this, we will solve many more problems. I want to solve it at some point.
On your question: funny you ask, that was the follow-up article: How to Change Beliefs
https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/how-to-change-beliefs
I will write more on this topic of influence, but it's different from that of epistemology, which I hope to solve in the medium-to-long-term
You have made my explanation re medical productivity a lot easier! The skill I need to use 20 to 40 times every day is that of listening to people I don't know, getting some understanding of their knowledge framework and being able to communicate effectively with them. The post-Covid world allows me to have more control over that process so I can improve its efficiency. I'll expand on that in the other thread.
Love this framework! I find it helpful in understanding my own knowledge and hopefully that of others. More understanding leads to less judgment and more collaboration. We need this more understanding than ever in our world today, instead we settle for soundbites and tweets.
Some while ago, we briefly discussed the future of education. That was before I had any real experience of using AI.
My suggestion was that education would cease to be based on a syllabus, and that it would become more self-led; the student would tend to meander through various interconnected topics according to their current interest, and that they would eventually be examined for skills, understanding, and a certain amount of knowledge.
Having used AI on a daily basis for a while, I now see that an AI driven education process is far more likely than any other solution. The process of asking a question and receiving clear uncluttered answers is now a "several times a day" event. All we need is an AI portal that is structured to provide answers which lead to several related subjects so that the student can continue their research.
Wow, what a great article. I ran a couple of schools and a nonprofit all built around project “Progress trees“ with core (trunk) projects and optional (branch) projects in math, science, music, coding, sports*, etc. When you do this, you immediately get buy-in from the students and you unleash incredible energies, which make teaching a joy (our teachers had the highest job satisfaction in 2015 e.g. of 40 schools audited that year. Trees made them happy!). Instead of forcing each child to pay attention to you every day, and keeping them in suspense, you give them the incomplete knowledge Tree on the first day of class, and then you’re just helping each child climb _their_ tree (many paths to excellence, many ways to build your tree, as you say—-everybody climbs the trunk to get core knowledge and skills they need to make real choices, but no two students climbs the same branches).
* in sports we used skills pyramids (for individual, team, and game skills) instead of “trees” because sometimes in heavy skills-based activities – like surgery! – you need to sharpen the mind by narrowing it. It’s a shame, but competence requires it.
An example of the power of Trees… giving children an early learning advantage : http://mathsciencechampionship.org/teacher-training-instructable-k-2-robotics-first-day/
What a great idea!
This combines with another concept that is very useful: the sense of progression is the biggest human motivator. Your trees visualized that
Yes, progress is addicting even when it’s pointless (video games)! A couple years after I created my first tree (in response to Gardner’s multiple intelligences book which made me realize I was trying to force every child into the math/language box… and that if I created a tree with optional branches, I could make every academic subject into a class where multiple intelligences had a chance to shine) the book Flow came out. When I read that I recognized what was happening in my classrooms: the visual Trees were putting kids into a state of flow, which explains why they were so happy (and a fortiori their teachers too). Clear goals, choice, timely feedback (real-time in my classrooms- grading at home is a new waste of time) on their progress, and the next step progressive challenge always waiting.
Your article also helped me see deeper into certain aspects of the method…Building your knowledge tree, etc
Thank-you for sharing this, really great read. This article is so clear - it's great when the graphics perfectly complement what you're writing about. It reminds me of WaitButWhy's style. Ideas feel really concrete when you can illustrate them. The diagram about the intersection of interests is so good.
I've been trying to work out recently whether there's a set of fundamental, general questions that allow you to most efficiently attach knowledge to your tree, or build a new tree. If I told you that I'd present you with a completely new topic to learn tomorrow, what topic-independent questions could you ask to "converge" on an understanding? I feel like "How does this fit in with what I already know?" is too high-level and doesn't add much.
WaitButWhy is amazing, so that’s quite a compliment. Thanks!
From my experience, most people have flimsy trunks and branches with very dense twigs and leaves. And the strongest branches are either popular topics or their own lived experience / industry.
This is bad because it gives an illusion of deep knowledge: in their everyday lives, they are indeed experts at nearly everything.
Their holes are in 2 areas:
1.- all the topics that they haven’t even engaged in
2.- depth in popular topics (Eg economics, politics) beyond the average person.
When they’re exposed to their hole 1, they’re just not equipped to process them because they don’t have enough branch structures to support them.
When they’re exposed to type 2 holes, they have already a dense (but shallow) tree structure and can’t easily rebuild it.
This also gives you an idea of how to answer your question. The more disciplines you learn about, the more you reinforce super fundamental branches. Things like MECE, ROI, 1st principles, cognitive biases, influence, math, etc
Once you learn to see these patterns across more than one industry, suddenly you can start applying them across industries.
Hope that makes sense
Really insightful! How does the tree analogy apply to things you once knew or thought but have since forgotten?
Branches that are old and don't support new branches and leaves eventually decay and fall
Great as always. Just to say, the podcast has yet to appear/update in my standard podcast feed (pocket cast). Can access through here of course, but just thought I'd flag it up. Also, am v happy with podcasts in general. Love the articles, but podcasts are a nice addition. Cheers
Very nice!
EXCELENTE ENFOQUE...
excelente post !
Which of these things made the most improvement in your knowledge? And what were the practical and financial benefits? Thanks!
I use this mental model all the time!
For example, whenever somebody doesn't understand something I'm saying, or when somebody can't make himself understood, visualizing this helps me explain the pbm and find solutions.
I worked in education, and this is one of the cores mental frameworks that is *not* consistently applied in that field.
Financial benefits --> Not direct, but if you know this you can be much better in your communication, which is a huge benefit for career progress.
Tomas, When you mentioned "mental model" it brought to mind one I use often when trying to decide between two options. I call it the "greater desire" method. I imagine owning or being in scenario "A" in all it's glory. Then I consider scenario "B" and try to quantify my preference for "B" over my current ownership of "A". Then I reverse to owning or being in scenario "B" and my desire for "A". I may do a couple iterations to filter out nonsense. By comparing the relative strength of the desire for the "other" scenario, I am often able to come to a decision. I use this method and the "greater regret" method/model often. Love your stuff.
I love it. It speaks directly to opportunity cost and the endowment effect, but I had never heard it explained this way. Thx!
Really useful insight, thank you.
Makes sense. I'm a high school teacher so this is a good mental model for teaching and becoming a better writer myself. I want to work on my writing and communication for financial and other reasons. Thanks a lot for the response!