Psychology, thinking, figure out and find out. --- .This section is about the concepts of figuring out and finding out. --- 1/24/2006
Psychology, thinking, figure out and find out. --- (1) A creative person often can figure out (for themselves) faster than they can find out (from others). (2) A skilled researcher can often find out (from others) faster than they can figure out (for themselves). (3) Do whichever is more efficient and economical for you. --- 5/8/1999
Psychology, thinking, figure out and find out. --- (1) Figure out: Putting two and two together. That is, any new conclusion that you reach, based on pre-existing ideas, whether the ideas are self-generated or whether the ideas are from outside sources. It can be a guess, a hunch, a provisional hypothesis, or a thought experiment. Thus, figuring out is not the same as logic, deduction or rationalism. (2) Find out: Verbal information from an outside source. The source can be another person, print, television film or radio. We are talking here about processed information, not raw sensory data. Thus, finding out is not the same as science, induction, or empiricism. --- 5/8/1999
Psychology, thinking, figure out and find out. --- (1) Figuring out can be defined as: (A) Learning by doing. (B) Active learning. (C) Skill building. (D) Mental exercise. (2) Finding out can be defined as: (A) Learning by lecture. (B) Passive learning. (C) Finding out builds one's knowledge base, but it does not build thinking skills. --- 5/22/1999
Psychology, thinking, figure out and find out. --- (1) Find out. We find out from the media. We find out from talking to other people. (2) Figure out. We figure out by thinking critically, for example, thinking critically about what we find out in the media. We figure out by being creative. --- 6/7/2005
Psychology, thinking, figure out and find out. --- (1) Found knowledge. Speed of learning depends on (A) Hours available to read. (B) Pages read per hour, and pages of notes written about them. (C) Speed of memorizing. (D) How long memory of knowledge lasts per each time you review (re-read) it. (E) Speed of forgetting. (F) Carrying capacity of mind. (2) Figure. How creative are you. Ideas per unit time. (3) Given our found and figure abilities, what can we expect? What should we try to learn? Picking what to learn is the most important part. --- 06/10/1997
Psychology, thinking, figure out and find out. --- (1) How to decide what to think about (figure out)? How to decide what to read about (find out)? (2) Unfortunately, there are those who decide not to think (figure out) or read (find out). (3) The most important step in life is to make a decision to think (figure out) and read (find out). The second most important step is to decide what subjects to figure out and find out about. These two important steps take place not in grades 1-12 (age 0-18) but after. If you make this choice, most of your learning will take place after college, during your adult commitment to lifelong learning. --- 5/25/2002
Psychology, thinking, figure out and find out. --- (1) Memory = Data = stuff you found out from other sources. (2) Stuff you figure out is of two types. (A) Senses stimulating imagination. (B) Reason. These two are creativity. --- 1/10/2002
Psychology, thinking, figure out and find out. --- (1) Thinking ("minding"), i.e. figuring out, and (2) Gathering information, i.e. finding out, are what humans are made to do. It is what they are good at. It is their purpose. --- 12/26/1997
Psychology, thinking, figure out and find out. --- (1) We figure out with our entire mind: senses, memory, emotion and thought. (2) We are figuring out even while we are finding out. The two processes occur simultaneously. (3) We also figure out whether to believe what we find out. --- 7/6/2002
Psychology, thinking, figure out and find out. --- A person who does all finding-out and no figuring-out is likely to not know who they are, and is likely to suffer from an overactive super-ego and an underdeveloped ego. (2) A person who does all figuring-out and no finding-out is less likely to "play well with others", and is likely to suffer from an overactive ego and underdeveloped social skills. --- 6/4/2001
Psychology, thinking, figure out and find out. --- Another word for figuring out is creativity. Figuring out is personal-level creativity, even if not society-level creativity. --- 6/4/2001
Psychology, thinking, figure out and find out. --- Arguments for and against (1) Figuring. (A) It is fruitless, nothing can be known. (B) It is not worth the time and energy. (C) Other things are more important. (2) Finding. (A) It is boring. (B) Domesticating, civilizing, enslaving, not freeing. (C) Clone, drone. (D) Waste of time, not useful. (E) It can change you, for worse. (F) It can't change you. (G) Giving in to system. --- 12/30/1992
Psychology, thinking, figure out and find out. --- Attitudes about information. (1) Accept no information vs. accept information. (2) Absorb information passively vs. look for information actively. (3) Accept information uncritically vs. being critical about information. --- 11/15/2000
Psychology, thinking, figure out and find out. --- Definitions. (1) Figuring out: "experience" or one's own thinking. (2) Finding out: "book learning" or Internet, television, radio, etc. (3) Not really. --- 6/4/2001
Psychology, thinking, figure out and find out. --- Excuses for not searching for information. (1) No time to do so. (2) Do not know how to do so. (3) Thinking your brain is full and cannot hold any more information. (4) Thinking you are perfect. Thinking your views on any subject are 100% correct. (5) Fearing having your ideas changed. (6) Thinking that it is no fun to find new information. (7) Thinking it is too difficult to find new information. (8) Thinking it is no use and why bother because it is futile and worthless. --- 11/15/2000
Psychology, thinking, figure out and find out. --- Figure out is actually a combination of empiricism (sense data) and rationalism (logic). Figuring out also involves: (1) Body knowledge (be). (2) Action knowledge (do). (3) Experiential knowledge (be done to). (4) Memory (remember any of above). PART TWO. Finding out is a combination or mix of: (1) Book knowledge, or any other media. (2) Second hand knowledge (testimony from others). --- 7/12/2002
Psychology, thinking, figure out and find out. --- Figuring out is more powerful than finding out because finding out will not get you to change as much as figuring out will. --- 11/15/2000
Psychology, thinking, figure out and find out. --- Figuring out is not the same as learning from experience because you can read something (book learning) and then figure out a new idea not contained in what you read but also not derived from any experience you had. --- 6/4/2001
Psychology, thinking, figure out and find out. --- Figuring out vs. finding out is not the same as book learning vs. learning from experience. Nor is it the same thing as rationalism vs. empiricism. Its a unique category. Its an important category. Its an overlooked category. --- 6/4/2001
Psychology, thinking, figure out and find out. --- Figuring out vs. finding out. We figure out when we think of a new idea ourselves. We find out when we get verbal information from outside sources. (See psychology, thinking) --- 01/01/1993
Psychology, thinking, figure out and find out. --- Find-out general theories. Figure-out your own life. --- 12/30/1992
Psychology, thinking, figure out and find out. --- Finding and figuring out. (1) Figuring out: thinking for yourself. Finding out: listening to what someone tells you. (2) Figure out (think of it) vs. find out (hear about it). --- 12/30/1992
Psychology, thinking, figure out and find out. --- Finding out. (1) Building your mind is like building a house, or a garden, or a city. The books, movies, websites, etc., that you find and absorb, or fail to find, or decide not to absorb, are all important for building the mind. Reading a book is like buying a prefabricated, preassembled component for your mind. (2) You are responsible for the construction (or destruction) of your mind and thus of yourself. You could end up with an empty lot of a mind. You could end up with a dilapidated slum of a mind. You could end up with a thorny hedge of a mind. (3) Dumb luck, and your past history, and indifferent society, all need not determine who you are. (4) Constructing you own mind is not effortless. It requires work to grow the mind. It requires maintenance. Garbage in, garbage out. Nothing in, nothing out. Good stuff in, good stuff out. (5) Build your mind when you don't need to, so that you have it ready when you really need it. --- 6/9/2000
Psychology, thinking, figure out and find out. --- Finding out. The big problem with second hand knowledge, i.e. knowledge we have found out instead of figured out, is that anything we are told or read could be lies and in many cases we have no way of knowing if it is. We trust the newspapers, some of us more than others. --- 03/20/1993
Psychology, thinking, figure out and find out. --- How much do people figure out vs. find out? Consider this: Most people can read and write. One would think that they would do each 50% of the time. But in fact they read about 95% of the time and write about 5% of the time. This is a sign that people find out 95% of the time and figure out 5% of the time. --- 6/4/2002
Psychology, thinking, figure out and find out. --- Hypotheticals. (1) What if we spend our whole life finding out from newspapers, television and conversation without ever figuring out? (2) What if we spend our entire life figuring out using first hand experience without ever finding out? --- 7/12/2002
Psychology, thinking, figure out and find out. --- In our minds, figure out is not separate from find out. We figure out based on what we find out. We direct our finding out based on what we figure out. --- 7/12/2002
Psychology, thinking, figure out and find out. --- It is very easy to waste your entire life by thinking (figuring out and finding out) about essentially useless things. It happens all the time. --- 5/25/2002
Psychology, thinking, figure out and find out. --- Just as societies vary from one to the next in terms of what degree they encourage their members to think (reason) vs. believe (obey blindly), so also do the societies that encourage their members to think vary in what degree they encourage their members to either find-out information or figure-out ideas for themselves. --- 6/4/2001
Psychology, thinking, figure out and find out. --- Modern American society is, perhaps unintentionally, pathologically forcing its members to rely predominantly on finding-out rather than figuring-out. It does this several ways: (1) Bombarding people with information at work and play, leaving little quiet time for the individual to figure out. (2) Creating a society in which we defer to specialist experts who tell us we are not smart enough to figure out things for ourselves (see Philosophy, specialization and generalization). --- 6/4/2001
Psychology, thinking, figure out and find out. --- Needs. For x person in y situation what combonation of find and figure would be best for them? --- 12/30/1992
Psychology, thinking, figure out and find out. --- Pathology. (1) When a person is put in an environment where they are constantly bombarded with information they experience "information overload". In this situation they are forced to continually find-out without having any time to figure-out. Its a dangerous way to live. (2) On the other hand, when people have no access to information they are "information starved". They have to spend all their time figuring out because they have no resources to find out. This is also a dangerous way to live. (3) So not only is it bad to have "no time to think". It is also bad if your time to think is forced to be either completely figuring-out or completely finding-out. --- 6/4/2001
Psychology, thinking, figure out and find out. --- People today rely too much on finding out as opposed to figuring out, because they lack good means to record and organize figured out stuff, and as a result, their figuring out processes get rusty. --- 12/30/1992
Psychology, thinking, figure out and find out. --- Some people are good at finding out but are not good at figuring out. Other people are good at figuring out but not good at finding out. Some are good at both. Ideally you want the educational system and society in general to produce people who are good at both figuring out and finding out, and who use both those skills equally. --- 1/24/2002
Psychology, thinking, figure out and find out. --- Some people are not good at figuring out. Some people are not good at finding out. You need both skills. And you need to recognize the importance of using both skills daily. --- 10/11/1998
Psychology, thinking, figure out and find out. --- Somethings you can only figure out (ex. personal things). Somethings you can only find out (ex. the news from the other side of the world). --- 5/8/1999
Psychology, thinking, figure out and find out. --- The link between, on the one hand, "specialization vs. generalization" and, on the other hand, "figuring-out vs. finding-out" is the following: When society is full of experts in every area, and adheres to a "listen to the experts" attitude, then individuals are discouraged from figuring out things for themselves. --- 6/4/2001
Psychology, thinking, figure out and find out. --- There may be a difference between the sexes in the degree they figure-out and find-out. The difference may be genetic (nature) or cultural (nurture). An example of the difference is how guys are inclined to "figure it out for yourself" and not ask others for directions. While women are more inclined to ask for directions and find-out from others how to get there. Could this difference explain why most new inventions and discoveries are figured-out by men? If one operates primarily by finding-out from others the things that are already known, then less new stuff is created. --- 6/4/2001
Psychology, thinking, figure out and find out. --- Two bad extreme attitudes. (1) "I can figure it all out by myself. I don't have to read any books." (2) "I can't figure anything out myself. I have to get all my knowledge from books or experts." --- 11/20/2003
Psychology, thinking, figure out and find out. --- Two types of Finding Out: (1) Actively searching and exploring. (2) Passively accepting what the media gives you. --- 9/21/2000
Psychology, thinking, figure out and find out. --- What does someone look like when figuring out? Sitting quietly alone, staring into space in silence. American society has zero tolerance for such behavior, much to its detriment. America is action obsessed. --- 6/4/2001
Psychology, thinking, figure out and find out. --- What if you could save and organize everything you found out in life (words, music, movies, visual arts) and have it immediately accessible? What if you could do the same for everything you figured out in life too? (2) Sad fact: most of what we figure out and find out in life is trivial, simple and obvious. Most of what we do in life is repetitive and mindless. So what good would it do to capture all this information? PART TWO. (1) What percent do we actually figure out? What percent do we find out (ex. From school, newspaper, television, books)? Is not the ratio about 10 to 1 find out to figure out? (2) What amount of time do we actually spend doing each? If I spend equal amounts of time doing each then what would the ratio of the resulting amount of information be? Not 50/50. More like 10 to 1 find out to figure out. (3) Rather than what we actually do, what amounts of time should we spend on finding out vs. figuring out? What would the ratio of the resulting information be? --- 7/12/2002
Psychology, thinking, figure out and find out. --- When we find-out something it usually leaves a physical trace, like a newspaper clipping, or a book you bought, or a computer print out. These traces allow us to remember more easily. These traces allow us to build on our ideas more easily. (2) However, when we figure something out, most people do not write it down, so no trace exists. The result is that it is forgotten easily and it is difficult to remember. Another result is that building on ideas does not take place. --- 6/4/2001
Psychology, thinking, figure out and find out. --- Why do I think that the sycophants who deify the great thinkers of the past are not quite on target? There will come a day when your typical curious teenager will be able to figure out (not just find out) most of the major ideas of most of the major thinkers of the past. They will accomplish this perhaps with the aid of a technology that lets them effortlessly record, organize and retrieve their own ideas. I'm not talking about reading the greats. I'm talking about recreating over lunch the major concepts that great thinkers labored their entire live to create. It is not arrogance to think so, just like it is not arrogance when a twelve year old girl today can rockclimb better than the best male rockclimbers of thirty years ago. At this point, the pedantic academic argument of "They thought of it first" begin to sound like a lame exercise by fans of historical minutiae. Its going to happen eventually because people are getting smarter and technology is getting more advanced. --- 9/9/2001
Psychology, thinking, figure out and find out. --- You can't just find out things (read) in life. You have to create, think, write for yourself, because (1) Your learning style is unique, (2) You and your life situation and needs are unique, and (3) Your potential contributions to world of ideas is unique. --- 08/21/1993
Psychology, thinking, figure out and find out. --- Your big choice. (1) Choosing whether to find out. Choosing what to find out about. (2) You structure all your finding out (i.e., you figure out what to find out about). You interpret all your finding out (i.e., you figure out what to accept and reject). Thus, anything we find out we have to figure out anyway. (3) Many people only find out in order to confirm their beliefs and maintain their existing structure of ideas. That is not good. --- 11/15/2000
Psychology, thinking, figure out and find out. --- Your figured-out thoughts are more genuine and authentically you than are the ideas that you find-out. No one can tell you who you are. --- 6/4/2001