Ask HN: Using plaintext argument maps to improve critical thinking?
Hi HN,
A year ago I came across the concept of argument maps and was intrigued by a meta-study showing that college students who used argument maps as part of philosophy courses improved scores on critical thinking tests by roughly one standard deviation over the course of a semester. Most representations of them I've found online have a big tree structure that takes up lots of space, but I realized I could use them in an indented bulleted list since that's also a tree structure. For example:
Plaintext argument maps are superior to just bullet points
- Support: prefixing each bullet's content with "support" or "oppose"
lets you easily see the logical relationships between concepts
- Support: since this just uses plaintext, it works anywhere you can
type
- Support: if you have to use "support" or "oppose" for each bulleted
item, then you naturally don't bother listing things that aren't
relevant, because they won't support or oppose
- Support: and if you're sure that something's relevant, but it both
supports and opposes, then clearly you need to either start with a
more fundamental assertion or break down the mixed support/oppose
item into separate concepts
- Oppose: writing "support" and "oppose" for everything requires more
writing
- Oppose: you can abbreviate them as "S" and "O" if you're not
illustrating the concept
- Support: This is kind of hard to read... single capital letters
at the start of lines stand out more from the prose
- Oppose: if I want to share my notes with people and I use this goofy
notation, I'll have to explain it to them and I'll feel like a huge
dork
- Support: this is accurate, it's pretty embarrassing