When you’re on fire, problems are transparent: they’re solved simply by the act of looking at them. Even complicated layers of multiple problems can simply be glanced through like stacked panes of glass. But nobody can work that way all the time.
Bridges & scruples
For your own sanity, you have to remember that not all problems can be solved. Not all problems can be solved, but all problems can be illuminated. —Ursula Franklin
Wicked problem
In planning and policy, a wicked problem is a problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize. It refers to an idea or problem that cannot be fixed, where there is no single solution to the problem; "wicked" does not indicate evil, but rather resistance to resolution. Another definition is "a problem whose social complexity means that it has no determinable stopping point". Because of complex interdependencies, the effort to solve one aspect of a wicked problem may reveal or create other problems. Due to their complexity, wicked problems are often characterized by organized irresponsibility.
The mistake we all make... and the simple experiment that reveals it
Your answer reveals how you see the world – and the common error that hampers our decision making. In an extract from his new book, psychologist Richard Nisbett reveals the ‘mindware’ to help us think smarter
(PDF) Why is dialogical solving of a logical problem more effective than individual solving?: A formal and experimental study of an abstract version of Wason’s task
PDF | We study the accomplishment of the abstract version of Wason’s selection task in a cooperative dialogue context that has been neglected in the... | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate
The Illusion of Thinking: Understanding the Strengths and Limitations of Reasoning Models via the Lens of Problem Complexity
Recent generations of frontier language models have introduced Large Reasoning Models (LRMs) that generate detailed thinking processes…
Itai Sher on Twitter / X
I think there should be a norm that when a set of AI solutions to mathematical problems is released, the set of all problems attempted be released alongside.When trying to understand AI capabilities, it is problematic to selectively report only positive results. https://t.co/ywcWCnFojS— Itai Sher (@itaisher) August 1, 2026
Smoke-away on Twitter / X
Andrej Karpathy: "What you want is the inner thought monologue of your brain... The trajectories in your brain as you're doing problem solving, if we had a billion of that, AGI is here roughly speaking." pic.twitter.com/C0kBUITPBv— Smoke-away (@SmokeAwayyy) October 18, 2024
Cognitive Bias Lab | Learn to Make Better Decisions
Explore cognitive biases with interactive tests, simulations, and real-world examples. Free platform to sharpen decision-making and critical thinking — no sign-up needed.
The Irrational Decision
How the computer revolution shaped our conception of rationality—and why human problems require solutions rooted in human intuition, morality, and judgment
Up and Down the Ladder of Abstraction
"In science, if you know what you are doing, you should not be doing it. In engineering, if you do not know what you are doing, you should not be doing it. Of course, you seldom, if ever, see either pure state."
The AI Question that No AI Person Asks
The AI Question that No AI Person Asks
The Cognitive Debt of Digging Through Preprints
Your Brain on MIT Media Lab
Addressing the Precision-Breadth-Simplicity Impossible Trinity in Psychological Research: A Comprehensive Exploration Approach
Psychological research faces a fundamental challenge—the Precision-Breadth-Simplicity (PBS) impossible trinity. While experimental findings are often precise and simple, they tend to be narrow in scope. Conversely, broad-and-simple concepts frequently lack precision. Developing theories that are both precise and broad is scientifically valuable but inevitably introduces complexity, which conflicts with humans’ cognitive limitations in processing complexity. To address this impossible trinity, I propose a comprehensive exploration (CE) approach—a data-guided theory-building framework that involves: (1) designing experimental conditions in a stimulus-driven way, with minimal upfront theoretical specification; (2) conducting experiments with tens of millions of observations (e.g., 40 million responses in Huang, 2025a); (3) modeling the results through iterative improvements; and (4) producing the outcome: a moderately complex quantitative information-processing model to integrate diverse empirical findings. Inspired by similar strategies that drove breakthroughs in artificial intelligence (e.g., ImageNet’s role in advancing object recognition), the CE approach offers a promising path toward more integrative psychological theories. Initial implementations in visual working memory research demonstrate both its practicality and potential to transform how we study mental processes.
People Who Can't Visualize Anything Are Challenging a 300-Year-Old Theory of Thought
Mental imagery might not be as central to complex human thought as we believed, philosophers say.
The 1960s Art School Experiment That Redefined Creativity
A groundbreaking study revealed that the most compelling artists seek to find problems, not solve them.
