'Intuition to Action' series - Mental Modeling Framework - On 'Clarity of Thought'
Originally published on LinkedIn · October 02, 2024
"Simplicity is not the lack of complexity; it is the clarity of understanding." —Professor Richard Feynman
'Intuition to action' series - Clarity of thought
Clarity of understanding is essential in deconstructing, reconstructing even the most complex ideas, concepts and subjects to fundamental units of learning.
In a world where everyone needs only a summary line of every single thing, it often gets missed out that there's a great deal of understanding that needs to be met effectively, either at some point by everyone or by someone at every point. In other words, summary matters only when the details are digested, not without it, not before it.
If we apply the idea that not everyone needs to know everything, not everyone needs to be good at everything, we also would appreciate this idea that there will be a rare few who care about the depth of details for bringing the enormousness of understanding.
For instance, scientists, academicians, R&D of new inventions and discoveries and such. They each must invariably follow the complexities, intricacies of the subject in question in order to bring the essence of it. And that "simplicity" is the clarity of understanding after traversing a lot of details.
For the techies, it's inuitive with this example. It's like the difference between Truncate and Wordwrap functions. Or in the latest Generative AI lingo, it's the tokens and temperature we set it to.
Truncate function simply ends at the character limit set without comprehensively bringing the gist or the essence of it all. Our insights and summary or opinions can't be a truncate function, it's meaningless, incomplete, inaccurate, misleading at best.
A proper grasp of a subject leads to comprehensive, cohesive, complete, accurate grasp and understanding of a given subject.
Clarity of thought, is one of my most favorite elements in the 'intuition to action' series.
It spans much wider areas of our day-day life than we think. It's required for good decision making, good choices, refined intuition, thoughtful submissions, enriching perspectives as opposed to lazy, unvetted, raw emotions unprocessed ones.
What does 'Clarity of thought' entail or comprised of?
Here's a way to build your Mental Model:
Stage 1: Root cause Identification
- Deconstruction of an overwhelming problem or idea.
- Separating the subjects involved, identifying the "what" of the problem statement.
- Identifying the root cause of the problem, the origination to the best possible way.
- What does the idea of "fix" mean? Recovery, rebuild, rethink, revisit, redo, reset, repeat, repeal, repair etc., Based on the type of problem, some of these apply and the next set of clarity ensues after this stage.
Stage 2: Root cause analysis
- Cause - effect analysis.
- Necessary and sufficient conditions exploration.
Stage 3: Factorization of problem elements
Correlated factors?
Weightage of each factor.
Stage 4: Analyzing the independence of factors identified
Significant or secondary or dependent one.
Independent factor but significant?
Can you make a decision now, even if the other conditions move to a different place in time? this element is directly tied to the amount of regret you can/can't have in the future.
Stage 5: Impact analysis of not addressing it altogether or staying status quo.
Would staying with inaction helpful or would it hurt more?
If there's an action, what's the first one to act on, collect, examine and repeat.
Stage 6: Controlled thought experimentation on all possible outcomes with the best identified solution.
What other related tests can be performed?
Give it time and observe? Observe what and to what purpose?
Stage 7: Testing your own methods sufficiently enough.
Sufficiently addressed all the major components, deconstructed, able to reconstruct now. And you know the game plan. Execute with 'clarity of thought' gained on the subject and let this become an invalidate-able element as you have completed a thorough exercise on this topic.
Failing on the above leads to regret, self-doubt, agony, misery, missed opportunity.
DIY exercise for you:
- For a personal or professional decision making impending, can you think of using this framework and build a confident, clear approach?
- If you have used a similar mental modeling (unconsciously), can you redraw the situation that you are proud of, and see how this can be personalized to all of your critical decision making?
- Is there anything you can do, to inspire and influence your colleagues or team to embrace a mental modeling framework?
Thoughts? Questions? Drop them in the comments, we'll explore.
About the Author:
I’m Veda Konduru, a former AI tech founder, data scientist, technology product architect with an academic excellence in science and technology with an overall 20+ years of subject domain career experience..
Inspired by some events in my life, I set myself off on a quest for exploring the role of natural intelligence, the human mind’s underpinnings, in the age of AI, and made significant strides in the past few years and I’m here to help others on a similar journey.
In short, An artificial intelligence architect NOW turned into The Mind Explorer.
