Thought Technologies: Cognitive Outsourcing, PKM, and Taking “New Age” Thinking Seriously

I am responding in large part to this article, the thesis of which is most clearly articulated in the conclusion way at the bottom (I skimmed the middle sections with all the math because I found them superfluous). You should skim it as well and get the gist before moving on.

Contrast the thesis of this article with the concept of personal knowledge management systems like Roam Research, which purport to extend thinking not by introducing new modes of thinking into human brains, but by doing an inhuman form of “cognition” outside of them (i.e. in a computer) using human brainstuff as input.

I think Roam actually exists in an interesting liminal space between what the original article is about, i.e. between mathematicians "seeing" the concept of groups and subgroups in their mind in a private, almost intuitive way that differs from the textbook explanations they present to their students, and full “cognitive outsourcing” e.g. Googling the answers to questions you have.

Lately, I’m becoming personally fascinated with the extreme human side of what seems to me to be the continuum of mental activities here, i.e. between “humans doing the maximum possible share of cognitive work” and “algorithms doing the maximum possible share of cognitive work.” I’m not a luddite. I use computers constantly to make my life and work easier and better than they could ever be using just paper. But there are lots and lots of problems computers simply cannot solve for you, such as telling you how you should feel in your own skin or whether you should fall in love with someone. To put it a different way, I have found myself becoming less interested in problems that computers can solve or me, and more in problems that I need to solve for myself (with the caveat that computers can potentially teach me to solve them better).

This all came up during a long solo walk on the beach. I was reflecting on a recent conversation with a friend about his passion for “new age” spiritual thinking. I’m not a spiritual person, but some of the stuff he said piqued my interest. I found myself Googling the term "thought technology," which first came into my lexicon via podcaster Merlin Mann. As far as I can tell this is not an extant term beyond 2016-18 era podcasts featuring this one guy. The only Google result for the phrase as such is a biofeedback technology company with that name. And yet, it is something I say all the time, and as a concept it seems to have a lot of overlap with the “psychology” (quotes because I’m still unsure how I feel about it, not trying to pass judgment) behind “new age” spirituality.

I get the sense the term “thought technology” started as a satirical take on how an imagined stereotypical new-agey tech entrepreneur giving a talk at a conference would rephrase what has traditionally been called “philosophy” or “psychology” or even just “ideas,” but the term has transcended irony for me and become legitimately powerful. I love how discrete and functional it is. A philosophical system like, say, stoicism or Buddhism, may be said to comprise numerous independent (if interlinked) thought technologies.

Personally, thought technology interests me in a way “regular” technology (e.g. computer programming) does not, particularly because the startup cost is tantalizingly low, e.g. take some free time and go for a walk alone, no podcasts or music in your ears, no distractions (maybe grab a coffee to go like I did) and just observe your thoughts at work. That doesn’t mean this stuff is easy at all, however. If you have read Dune, you will know that it is lowkey all about this precise question, i.e., how far can humans qua humans push themselves mentally (also physically—so much of the book is about genetic engineering that makes the challenging physical and psychological training possible in the first place—then again I’m no dualist, so I view body and mind as inseparable parts of the same one thing), in a world where all computers have been destroyed.

I think the “new age” phenomenon (is it even new anymore? AFAIK it’s been around for over 100 years) gets a bad rap among people with a scientific cast of mind for being super woo-woo and obviously pseudoscientific. But in fact I think if something as superficially silly as the Seven Hermetic Principles gets you (read: me) to reflect on your own habits of mind in a way that is new (for example, I have been turning over and over in my mind the zen koan-like assertion that "The Universe is Mental" which, while materially false in my scientific worldview, upon analysis provides novel and possibly useful ways of thinking about my attitudes about my actions and the events that happen around me), that's probably good and I ought not to treat it as suspicious or weird at all.