Class Content I >Introduction to the class
1.2.2
Prerequisites:
This course is all about learning to think scientifically -- to use a large body of knowledge to recognize situations that seem new and to solve problems that you might never have seen before. (In medicine, these skills are required both in diagnosis and in designing appropriate interventions.) To develop these skills you have to both learn lots of facts and procedures, but you also have to learn to bring them to mind in appropriate situations when you need them.
Surprisingly, most of the errors students make in this class -- and that doctors make in practice -- are not because of things they don't know, but because of things they know but don't use. We've said that science is not just about how the world works, but about how we can think about how the world works. As a result, knowing something about how we think -- and how your mind might lead you astray, it helps to understand a bit about how your mind works -- your memory, where you store what you know, and how you use and access it. This helps you defend against the most common types of errors your brain can lead you into.
In the past few decades, psychologists and neuroscientists have learned a lot about how the brain works. The whole story isn't in, and won't be for a few decades (at least). But enough is known to help us figure out that there are some dangers to standard rote learning. One of the best discussions of this is Daniel Kahneman's book, Thinking Fast and Slow. Kahneman identifies two primary modes of thinking: a fast mode, based on quick recall and the simplest story you can construct, and a slow more reflective mode.
Your fast mode can be quick and efficient, but it can also lead you astray. I call this one-step thinking.
One step thinkingis when you look at a situation or question and quickly, without any analytical thought, make a quick almost automatic response. "Oh! I recognize this and know the answer." It can be very dangerous and lead you astray, especially when you are beginning to learn a subject.
It's like moving your hands to catch a pillow thrown at you. You've had enough experience to know what to do without thinking about it. You certainly wouldn't want to analyze the motion using the principles of physics and doing a calculation! This pillow would drop (or hit you) long before you've complete your analysis.
One-step thinking of this type is very effective when you've built it up through developing expertise -- through many years of experience, seeing it in many different situations.
But one-step thinking can be dramatically ineffective if you try to short circuit the learning process through rote memorization. The multiple repetitions that one does to learn by rote is notthe same thing as developing expertise because it misses the developing of the understanding of context.
A great example of how one-step thinking can fail is if you are studying for a physics test and you memorize the answers of questions you have seen in class. On the test, the question might well look like one you have seen, but a subtle change in the conditions might result in a different answer being correct. Saying, "Oh! I know this one! Then answer is...." will lead you astray. This kind of thinking is particularly dangerous in multiple-choice tests. You might have gotten away with this kind of thinking in some introductory courses, but it's not a good way to deal with more advanced science learning.
A second, more dangerous example, is medical diagnosis. Sometimes, when doctors are pressed for time, they will look at a patient and focus on a symptom or two they see right away and say, "Oh! I know what this is! I'll just prescribe..." Now sometimes, if a doctor is a real expert, this can work because they are watching for signals that it might be something more. But way too often it can lead to a misdiagnosis and unfortunate results. (For an excellent discussion of these issues and LOTS of examples, see Jerome Goopman's, How Doctors Think.)
The follow-ons include some brief discussions (with some fun and surprising exercises) to show you some things you might not have known about your brain and how you think.
Follow-ons:
Joe Redish 7/3/11
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