How to Think Clearly

“Clear thinker” is a better compliment than “smart”.

The really smart thinkers are clear thinkers. They understand the basics at a very fundamental level. If you can’t rederive concepts from the basics as you need them, you’re lost. You’re just memorizing.

The most famous clear thinker in modern times wass Richard Feynman. He famously would teach his lectures without using any jargon or definitions, just an unbroken chain of logic from basic to advance concepts.

In his book he recounts the story about how Neils Bohr the most famous physcist alive at the time would ask his opinion about the plans for the atomic bomb as he correctly identified that Feynman was able to think clearly and for himself, unlike most of the other experts complied for the Manhatton project.

This also illustrates how clear thinkers deal with reality, they don’t have a strong sense of self, judgments or mind presence.

The number one thing clouding us from being able to see reality is we have preconceived notions of the way it should be.

Clear thinkers are able to think from first principles and derive concepts from the basics all while removing a sense of how things should be so they can see things how they are.

Becoming a clear thinker is the hard part, to start, I am reinforcing my foundational knowledge of the sciences.

To remove the self and be able to make clear decisions I have a hunch starts and ends with mediation. However, I suspect studying mental biases can help too.