# The Best Thinkers Do These Things - Notice relevant factors that others overlooked - Point out non-obvious gaps or friction between theory and reality - Ask key questions no one had thought of - Make new distinctions that suggest different conceptualizations of the situation - Change the description of the problem so that different solution approaches appear - Rethink the purpose of the work, and therefore technical priorities - Realize that difficulties others struggled with can simply be ignored, or demoted in importance - Apply concepts or methods from seemingly distant fields - Combine multiple contradictory views, not as a synthesis, but as a productive patchwork. --- Date: 20241007 Links to: Tags: References: * [Meta-rationality: An introduction | Meta-rationality](https://metarationality.com/introduction)