We are at an age and time where everyone has a favorite LLM to help brainstorm, problem solve and ideate (I am not against AI and think they can, and should be a tool- a means to an end). I believe we have started losing some of our sauces for some layer of critical thinking, and problem solving that will frankly make us better at using LLMs to bring some uniqueness to all of the outputs we generate from said LLMs.

Some of the symptoms of the LLMs usage have led to:

  1. Everyone sounding the same
  2. Some loss of taste in writing, ideas and quality (this one is subjective, well, except the AI posters and fliers- those are objectively and subjectively bad).
  3. We are losing our problem solving/critical thinking (seemingly)

My argument tho, is that we never actually had the deep skills for critical thinking taught to us. We brute forced problems (how we were taught quantitative reasoning and verbal reasoning growing up), and learnt from patterns from people that were more patient than us (who themselves mostly got it by intuition). Some of us were lucky enough to get the frameworks and mental models (yes, learn about them) to be able to both think critically and problem solve from first principles.

So here is my contribution to helping you (and also maybe guide someone) think a bit more critically.

  1. Learn mental models: There are a bunch of them, and they are incredibly accessible. They help shape ideas, give us tools to understand questions and helps us find answers where none exists. it helps you start from a place of inquisitiveness first when you are faced with information. You typically only need about 10 functional ones and ability to access as many as needed when needed.
  2. Argue for and against a perspective regardless of where you stand. This bit is a bit more difficult to do but it helps you understand why people have the perspective they do, and then helps you understand why you dont fully agree with them. Use this simple structure -> Conclusion -> Why they came to that conclusion -> How they came to that conclusion (the how and why ARE two different things). This applies to sharing ideas at work, helps you know what questions to ask (when you are stumped, you can and should ask for clarity to be able to form the full picture required to understand a stand, and helps keep you
  3. Every big idea starts with little chunks, that is where putting the mental models and perspective building come into lay together. When you are given a task or someone posits an idea, understanding the building blocks of it (why did they say that, what information do they have? what information do I need to gather? do I agree or disagree -read this as align or un-align). Those are the building blocks that you use to think critically and then use to form your own perspective.

The last bit is how those are expressed, and its simple. it does not have to be fancy, same process for thinking, same headings as your thinking and a fine one sentence conclusion. This also works with work projects and initiatives at work. The core difference is you do need to take multiple passes and rephrase certain things on second/third readings of them.

This is my submission on how to teach critical thinking to someone.

Some resources on mental models: https://medium.com/@yegg/mental-models-i-find-repeatedly-useful-936f1cc405d

https://jamesclear.com/feynman-mental-models https://fs.blog/mental-models/