• T H E
    147
    I see a skill as something a human being can acquire or not.Tom Storm

    :up:
  • Possibility
    2.8k
    Three useful skills:
    Awareness, connection and collaboration
  • T Clark
    13.9k
    I think that's fair and far better expressed than my version.Tom Storm

    So, can you flip and egg without breaking the yolk - I'd say about 53% percent of the time for me.
    Can you drive stick? I used to own stick cars. The last time I tried, I kept grinding the gears, so my brother wouldn't let me drive anymore.
  • Wittgenstein
    442
    Not a skill but being good looking is one of the most useful thing in life.

  • Tom Storm
    9.1k
    Yep, I can drive stick although it has been 2 or 3 years. Most cars here were manual (as we call them) and then automatics started to predominate from the 1990's.
  • TheMadFool
    13.8k
    How does everything supervene on thinking?
    Most failure of understanding is due to an inability to see the obvious, rather from an inability to think.
    Yohan

    How did you arrive at this conclusion? To what do you owe this insight to if not thinking?

    What I mean by "everything supervenes on thinking" is that no matter what this exercise of homing in on the "...most useful skill..." involves, it, for certain, requires us to think well.
  • Yohan
    679
    There's some truth to this but I was asking more about your idea about people's 'inability to see the obvious.' I don't think we can see without thinking. We see, then we process and put what we see into some context. This might be different if you were enlightened (a category of human I would consider contentious at best). And what is 'the obvious'?Tom Storm
    I think it was Orwell who said to see what's in front of ones nose requires a constant struggle.
    Our conditioning is the problem. It makes us filter what will or will not register in consciousness.
    I would argue that unbiased awareness is the root of intelligence. Thought is just the breaking down of information. Awareness organizes data automatically and effectively if it is not hindered by biases.
    Maybe I can say the greatest ability is to be aware without bias. Or to not get in ones way.
  • Yohan
    679

    How does everything supervene on thinking?
    Most failure of understanding is due to an inability to see the obvious, rather from an inability to think.
    — Yohan

    How did you arrive at this conclusion? To what do you owe this insight to if not thinking?
    TheMadFool
    It's self-evident to me. It's like asking how I came to the conclusion of an axiom. I can't prove axioms by way of logic. Axioms are pre-logical, based on direct knowledge.
    What ever we think revolves around our view. Two people with opposing core views will not convince each other of their views by providing arguments. They have to see the other's view in order to understand where the logic stems from.
  • TheMadFool
    13.8k
    It's self-evident to me.Yohan

    Self-evident [to me]. Ok! I can't argue with that.

    Two people with opposing core views will not convince each other of their views by providing arguments.Yohan

    That's odd because you seem to be "...providing arguments..."
  • Yohan
    679
    That's odd because you seem to be "...providing arguments..."TheMadFool
    How did you arrive at this conclusion? To what do you owe this insight to if not thinking?

    What I mean by "everything supervenes on thinking" is that no matter what this exercise of homing in on the "...most useful skill..." involves, it, for certain, requires us to think well.
    TheMadFool
    I owe the insight to sight. I just see it.
    You say we need to think well, I say we need to look well.
    Which came first, thought or language? I would
    argue thought is a language.
    Anyway. Consider the color red. Do we need to think or analyze to know what red is?
    Is there any thought that isn't a reference to an experience?
    I am in part playing devil's advocate, because I have no idea what thought.
    I suspect when people talk of thought they are talking about creating order internally. My experience is that I have an experience, then it leaves an imprint on my memory. If I observe the memory closely or from far away, I recognize different details, different patterns. To me I am discovering, rather than creating order.
    Reality is already the way it is, isn't it? I don't organize reality. I get progressively more observant of its orderliness.
  • TheMadFool
    13.8k
    Change is a most fundamental nature of this world. When we suiffer, it's usually in some part because of a failure adapt to change. We got to where we are as humans because we adapted.Yohan

    Therefore,

    the most useful skill is the ability to adapt to change.Yohan

    Why do you say that it's self-evident when you take the trouble of proving it?
  • Hanover
    12.9k
    My current thought is that the most useful skill is the ability to adapt to change.Yohan

    Per evolution, the ability to reproduce would be the most useful skill, and most critical.
  • Yohan
    679
    Why do you say that it's self-evident when you take the trouble of proving it?TheMadFool
    If I say it's self evidently hot, because I directly experience the heat...I'm explaining my experience, which is self evident. I can also point to sweat and other things caused by heat. Something can be self evident yet also given indirect inferences to its truth as well. However, indirect inferences are not proof. When did I claim I was offering proof? I said my view cannot be proven to someone who has a radically different view.
    How does your question add to the topic?
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