How to Think — Alan Jacobs

My Take: A book that is interesting to read and written by a person who straddles two important worlds; Christianity and Academia. This book was a breath of fresh air because he talked like an insider, someone who knows our cultural world but can still speak to it. His thoughts on changing your mind, finding smart skeptics and method acting were really, really good. (Plus this book isn’t long, the brevity is refreshing).

Quotes:

This is what thinking is: not the decision itself but what goes into the decision, the consideration, the assessment. — 14

For me, the fundamental problem we have may be best described as an orientation of the will: we suffer from a settled determination to avoid thinking. Relatively few people want to think. — 17

When we do not know, or when we do not know enough, we tend always to substitute emotions for thoughts. — 22

As valuable as long experience has been in thinking about thinking, still more valuable has been my participation in multiple communities that are often at odds with one another. -25

When I hear academics talk about Christians, I typically think, That’s not quite right. I don’t believe you understand the people you think you’re disagreeing with. And when I listen to Christians talk about academics I have precisely the same thought. — 25

We may be able to avoid listening to our Repugnant Cultural Other, but we can’t avoid the realization that he or she is there, shouting from two rooms away. -27

I would love to offer you a set of invariable instructions that you could follow step by step to become a better thinker, but thinking isn’t like that. -29

Megan Phelps-Roper didn’t start “thinking for herself” — she started thinking with different people. — 37

Similarly, people in my line of work always say that we want to promote “critical thinking” — but really we want our students to think critically only about what they have learned at home and in church, not about what they learn from us. — 37

To be “broken on the floor” was a token of good faith and an indication of a willingness not just to accept but to live our the values of the community. — 53

One of the classic ways [for overcoming animus] is to seek out the best — the smartest, most sensible, most fair-minded-representatives of the positions you disagree with. — 75

Some of the people whose theological positions strike me as immensely damaging to the health of the church are nevertheless more prayerful and charitable, more Christlike that I will ever be. — 76

The identification of argument with war is so complete that if you try to suggest some alternative way of thinking about what argument is — you’re almost certainly going to be denounced as a wishy-washy, namby-pamby sissy-britches. -97

The most dangerous metaphors for us as the ones that cease to be recognizable as metaphors (brain as computer). — 104

[summarizing an opponent’s argument to their satisfaction] becomes immersion, mnethod-acting, dual-booting. To make your argument strong, you have to make your opponent’s argument stronger. You need sharp thinking and compelling language, but you also need close attention and deep empathy. I don’t mean to be too woo-woo about it, but truly, you need love. — 109

Yet on some level, method acting — perhaps all acting — brings one to see that that sensibility is not so completely alien after all. — 110–111

Solzhenitsyn, like a method actor, projected himself into the life of another and discovered that they had far more in common than he would ever have wanted to believe. — 111

We really don’t want to be or want anyone else to be permanently open-minded. — 125

The problem of course, and sadly, is that we all have some convictions that are unsettled when they ought to be settled and others that are settled when they ought to be unsettled. — 126

When the falsehood [of a prophet’s] prediction was revelaed her followers would not abandon her but rather escalate their commitment to the cause. — 130–131

In general, on most issues, it’s fair to say that if you cannot imagine circumstances that would cause you to change your mind about something then you may well be the victim of the power of sunk costs. -137