Learning, Thinking and Thinking about Thinking aka Metacognition

“It ain’t what you know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” – Mark Twain

Why? 

I am passionate about Learning and Knowledge(Just to be clear, I am not bragging that I am a learner or knowledgeable person. It's the process I am curious about). As usual I need to answer the why question at the outset and at a very basic level. Otherwise, this piece wont progress. 
Learning is not about intelligence or even basic cognitive capabilities. Even inanimate things learn. At least that is what my hypothesis is. For example light knows(?) to travel exactly at a constant speed. No more and no less. How did that happen? We can extend this argument to every observable behavior of animate and inanimate things. How did a Deer learn to run at the sight of a predator Tiger? All these can be explained with evolutionary theory. Any Deer that wanted to stand and fight a Tiger would have died a long time ago giving it no opportunity to leave an offspring for us to observe. Similarly an inanimate thing has its behavior because anything else would have been unstable and died off long time ago. May be there was an universe where light was traveling at different speed but it was unstable and got destroyed.
The point for the humans with cognitive capabilities is that if we don't continuously learn the right thing we will disappear.  Nature gives a long rope we can do a lot of stupid things and still not perish. That is why even when we do not know what is that absolutely correct way of behaving we are still able to survive. No one knows, no one would ever know or there is no such absolute correct way of behaving. But it is clear that there are many things which we absolutely should not do if we don't want to perish. Humans or anything for that matter will eventually learn, but the choices for us are, either we leave the control of learning process to evolution or take it in our hand and constantly learn so the pursuit of knowledge can be accelerated.
As a species named sapience( knows), not just knows but knows that it knows, it's an obligation for humans to continuously learn. Learn so we don't perish and continuously because knowledge is evolving continuously.
Fixed Mindset and Growth mindset.Then the question comes how to learn effectively? Learning is generally associated with intelligence and smartness. We celebrate smart people. But latest research suggests smartness is achieved via hard work and practice. The more we praise smartness/intelligence a person tends to assume since they are already smart they don't have to work hard for learning. This is called fixed mindset, and it results in sub-optimal learning outcome. But if we celebrate and praise the hard work and process of learning more than the outcome itself, a person tends to work hard and practice more and more for learning. This is growth mindset. Researchers have shown kids and adults with a growth mindset do much better in learning outcome compared to the ones that have a fixed mindset.
UnlearningAnother aspect of learning is the unlearning part. The moment one is so sure of what they know and become dogmatic in the face of evidence to the contrary, it becomes a downward spiral. We need to cultivate the habit of unlearning things that don't work anymore.
Metacognition
We learn not just by hearing a lecture or reading a book. We learn mostly by thinking about all that we have received and observed. In fact thinking goes deeper. Consider this.

“I am not who you think I am; I am not who I think I am; I am who I think you think I am ” - Charles Horton Cooley

Ok, that's too much thinking there. But will you dispute that 'Thinking' defines us. In that case, don't we have to understand how we think. That is what Metacognition. Thinking about thinking. We need to take a step back and observe how we think and how we learn facts and form opinions. When we understand that, it makes us less susceptible to bias, pseudo sciences, and fake narratives.

Why to be ethical at all?

Organizations that have a long term outlook should also have a strong purpose for their existence and they also must have an ethical guideline that navigates them towards their purpose. This is applicable for individuals as well. That ethical guideline should also stand the scrutiny of a very fundamental investigation. More often than not, it is not the case. What is the right thing to do has become a matter of convenience.  Taking a step back and asking a more basic question "Why to be ethical at all?"

Here, I try to answer that question with Game Theory. Consider a game in which two players he and she can do the right thing or convenient thing. Their pay-offs can be shown in the diagram

If he and she act independently they would act rationally and both would do the convenient thing and that would result in an overall inefficient result. In case both of them cooperate and decide to do the right thing that would maximize the over all result. In such a case, doing the right thing is ethical but if one of them decide to break the contract and do the convenient thing he will much more in return and she who did the right thing according to the contract will be losing. This scenario can be projected to the ethical dilemma we face as individuals and as an organization. A society that has rational and ethical actors will always do the right thing. This may be influenced by moral norms of the society, systematic nudges and enforceable laws. A society that achieves the group level rationality will maximize the returns for all actors. But a society that fails in achieving this equilibrium due to majority actors breaking the ethical contract, eventually settle for suboptimal equilibrium of both actors doing the convenient thing and thus having much lower overall return.

So the first principle argument for why to be ethical is, it is in one's own interest to do the right thing and encourage others to do so. If one indulges in an unethical act, it may create benefit for self in the short term, but eventually its lose-lose for all involved. And in societies that have strong ethical system, doing the convenient thing may be bad even in the immediate term.

So do the right thing!

Ref :  https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/game-ethics/

Nurturing Intuition

Zen Buddhist and Japanese nationalist Master Nissho Inoue started a group popularly known as "Blood Oath Corps" in the early 1930s, with a purpose to restore the degrading national character of Japan by resorting to violence against politicians and rich business owners. One of the members of the group assassinated the Prime Minister Tsuyoshi Inukai on 15 May 1932. Many attributes this assassination as one the defining events that eventually led to consolidation of power which emboldened Japan to enter World War II. Though the core teaching of Buddhism is compassion to all, what caused a committed Zen master to resort to violence and murder.

In his trial when asked about his political ideology behind his actions, he replied: "It is more correct to say that I have no systematised ideas. I transcend reason and act completely upon intuition." 

As a fan of mindfulness and Zen, I was bewildered while reading this insightful Aeon article on "Zen Terror". We were discussing about the power of intuition and this case shows, acting completely upon Intuition, even for a seasoned Zen master, could result in terrible outcomes.

Acting based on pure reason may be impractical, that is the reason all of us resort to intuition to make quick decisions. And many glorify the intuitive decision making. I think, while we use intuition all the time, we need to be careful about it. Intuition is essentially informed by reasoned analysis. In his book “The Power of Intuition” , Gary Klein suggests we should not be depending neither on analysis  nor on intuition alone and rather we should use a blend of them. His model of intuition as shown in the picture below involves having a mental model and quickly rapidly simulating the scenario in the model and taking decisions upon the action script that passes the model. 

Illustration - https://readingraphics.com/book-summary-the-power-of-intuition/

By constantly reviewing the decisions and adjusting the mental model with reasoned and analytical inputs we can nurture the intuition. Considering intuition as a natural or divine gift and making intuitive decisions without regular reviews would lead to a toss of coin situation eventually.