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Comment by ThomPete | Hacker News Reader

Hmm I am not sure what to think about this.

It is my experience that "The art of thinking" comes in many shapes.

Some people are very clear in their thinking others are very messy. Some people need to speak rather than think, some people need to think rather than speak. Some people need to Doodle, some do 100 ideas in 10 minutes other do 10 ideas in 100 minutes.

I appreciate the purpose and the methods of the book. I am sure it's a fantastic way... for some people.

It's not necessarily for everyone.

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Nothing's for everyone. No technique, workflow, programming language, business methodology, or idea applies to everybody.

No post on HN will ever resonate with everyone. Take that as a given, because every post could just as well have a disclaimer like this.

A lack of resonance doesn't prevent some concepts from being universal.

You're taking it too far by saying that no concepts are universally applicable to human beings.

If I made a post saying "We need to eat to live a healthy life", would that not be a universal truth? If it doesn't resonate with some people (e.g. some quibble: "We can puree our food and drink it" or "intravenous injection works for me", and ignore the serious disadvantages of both choices) is the scientific truth of "we need to eat to live a healthy life" not true?

Relativism to an extreme degree is next to nihilism.

The problem with "We need to eat to live a healthy life" is that it opens up all sorts of questions.

What do we need to eat? What is a healthy life? Who are we? etc.

It's not really about relativism it's about asking those questions.

Anyway, way to far from OT.

I think you're taking it for granted that we know we need to eat to live a healthy life.

If this fact were debatable, it would be a different story.

We need to think is as universal as we need to eat is.

We need to eat 3 meats or 5 meals or meat or vegetable are specific manifestation of universal facts that we need to eat.

This book tries to teach what author think can help you in thinking creatively which is an answer to how question.

You may or may not like it and it may or may not be applicable to you.

I'm sorry, we're not actually talking about the book. This thread is off-topic.

I believe his comment is justified for this particular article because the author specifically says, "The results are almost always incredible...And it works for everyone. Even if you hated school writing assignments, you will love Freewriting."

I completely agree. First started thinking this way after listening to Feynman talk about his discovery of how people think very differently.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj4y0EUlU-Y#t=146s

He does a great job of communicating this, despite our interpretive differences. (Though perhaps it's just very well spoken for my interpretation and just the opposite for someone else out there.)

I could listen to Feynman forever.

He always leave me humble and exited at the same time.

His way of thinking about things are so rare even among the contemporary "great thinkers". He treats everything as an experiment and show what it really mean to be a careful thinker.

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