What is a tool for thought?

A tool for thought can be understood as a technology that assists with the tasks of analysis, synthesis and evaluation, which are crucial faculties of critical thinking¹

But more than this, it should be something that augments intelligence, whereby intelligence augmentation (which funnily enough is the reverse acronym of AI), involves changing the operations and representations we use to think.

Andy Matuschak suggests that a better terminology than tool for thought is a medium for thought. A medium for thought is a collection of tools, within which to think.

A system that creates insight needs to be a system that allows you to think within it, not with it. This is an effective “second brain”, as it allows you to undergo the same thinking process, but within a repository of information that has been created by you, for you.

The term with and with reminds me of this quote:

Narrative in VR is internalised through a psychological process where the participant engages “with” and “within” the narrative

Perspective: Narrative Storyliving in Virtual Reality Design.

So within mediums, there are tools, and with these tools we can implement techniques.

• A computer is a medium for thought.
  • A word processor is a tool.
    • Indented dot points (tree structures) are techniques (to structure thought and relationships).

A tool for thought can therefore be seen as an environment of tools that allow us to implement techniques in pursuit of the analysis, synthesis and evaluation of thought.