Let's give two quotes first.

1. In "Thinking, Fast and Slow", Kahneman has done a lot of introduction to the automatic association ability of people. For example, if you are presented with a set of words "Village House Swiss Cake", it is likely that a word "cheese" will pop into your mind unconsciously, and then you are given a set of words "Salt Deep Foam", you may immediately think of "Sea". This is actually a subconscious calculation in the brain at work, reflecting the power of intuition, we can take this experiment as a minimalist version of problem solving under incomplete information, that is, "village house Swiss cake" is three incomplete clues, and "cheese" is the answer to the question.

2. Almost all detective novels and movies and dramas show us how to do "information analysis". Among them, the American drama "Criminal Minds" I think is a better demonstration. In the show, criminal psychology background of the FBI to solve the case of the road is to do three things: 1) to collect as many clues; 2) in the brain to call a lot of criminal psychology knowledge and past cases; 3) based on 1) and 2) to conceive the criminal Profile, the construction of the criminal's psychological profile, and then the mystery is revealed. In this process, "current information" and "historical knowledge" are missing, and the more and more complete both are, the better. Moreover, you will find that when entering 3), the agent often has an epiphany, which is often due to the discovery of a previously overlooked clue or knowledge, and then immediately corrects a previous false assumption. So how does this epiphany come about? Does it come from analysis? No, it's the power of intuition.

Then let's look at a counter-example: technology reviews.

In my opinion, most of the so-called technology reviews nowadays are garbage, and the opinions given in these reviews have little to no reference value. Why? There are two main reasons for this.

1. they have too little information, because a company's internal strategy and product information are its secrets and cannot be easily disclosed, while "technology critics" are onlookers, and it is difficult for them to get the most core information in time.

2. their knowledge roots are too shallow, few tech critics have deep knowledge of technology history and cannot have a clear understanding of the history and evolution of technology development, and their knowledge of economics, management, etc. is also lacking.

So if they were to be the agents in Criminal Minds, they would definitely not be able to solve a single case because their 'information' and 'knowledge' are severely handicapped. In contrast, the fields of literary criticism and film criticism are not as embarrassing as technology criticism, because the information in these fields is completely open and the practitioners are often in the habit of reading, which makes these fields often have high-level authors.

In fact, more counterexamples occur in almost every one of us, and there are three most common mistakes we make when conducting analysis.

1. relying on a single source of information. We often just passively receive information without doing active information hunting, leading us to get used to relying on several fixed sources for information, which hinders us from being good information analysts. Information sources can be simply divided into explicit and implicit sources, where all kinds of media, books and journals, research papers, reports of professional institutions, etc. are explicit sources of analysis, while implicit sources can be anything. In my How to find certain big trends through small things around you? In this small case, information from multiple sources is collected and then aggregated, with stationery stores and tweets from nameless strangers both being invisible sources of information. There are two major advantages of obtaining information from multiple (independent) sources: first, more clues can be obtained, like a jigsaw puzzle that reveals the hidden contours; second, information can be verified with each other, eliminating information that is not highly credible.

2. Ignore the role of knowledge. Just to collect information is not enough, think about "Criminal Minds" why there is a genius Dr. Spencer Reid character, he actually played the role of a human encyclopedia. But it is important to understand that when doing information analysis, knowledge is both the fulcrum and the limit of the analysis. The knowledge we have also constitutes our limitations. Especially when our knowledge background is relatively homogeneous, our analysis is easily limited inside a specific, solidified framework. The drawbacks of a single domain of knowledge are especially evident when faced with exceptionally complex and uncertain issues, which is why the investment field is often populated by very knowledgeable individuals who must therefore pursue a degree of diversity in their personal knowledge systems.

3. Prematurely presenting ideas. When the information we gather is not comprehensive enough and our knowledge base is not sufficient, it is often disastrous to present an opinion prematurely and rashly. Because psychologically speaking, we all have a "confirmation bias", once we put forward an immature view, then we selectively choose the evidence that supports it and ignore the contrary evidence. When our information and knowledge are very diverse and sufficient, our ability to avoid this kind of solidification and narrowing of thinking increases, and we are more comfortable applying "lateral thinking", jumping between different tracks of thinking to find the best answer.

Let's give two quotes first.

1. In "Thinking, Fast and Slow", Kahneman has done a lot of introduction to the automatic association ability of people. For example, if you are presented with a set of words "Village House Swiss Cake", it is likely that a word "cheese" will pop into your mind unconsciously, and then you are given a set of words "Salt Deep Foam", you may immediately think of "Sea". This is actually a subconscious calculation in the brain at work, reflecting the power of intuition, we can take this experiment as a minimalist version of problem solving under incomplete information, that is, "village house Swiss cake" is three incomplete clues, and "cheese" is the answer to the question.

2. Almost all detective novels and movies and dramas show us how to do "information analysis". Among them, the American drama "Criminal Minds" I think is a better demonstration. In the show, criminal psychology background of the FBI to solve the case of the road is to do three things: 1) to collect as many clues; 2) in the brain to call a lot of criminal psychology knowledge and past cases; 3) based on 1) and 2) to conceive the criminal Profile, the construction of the criminal's psychological profile, and then the mystery is revealed. In this process, "current information" and "historical knowledge" are missing, and the more and more complete both are, the better. Moreover, you will find that when entering 3), the agent often has an epiphany, which is often due to the discovery of a previously overlooked clue or knowledge, and then immediately corrects a previous false assumption. So how does this epiphany come about? Does it come from analysis? No, it's the power of intuition.

Then let's look at a counter-example: technology reviews.

In my opinion, most of the so-called technology reviews nowadays are garbage, and the opinions given in these reviews have little to no reference value. Why? There are two main reasons for this.

1. they have too little information, because a company's internal strategy and product information are its secrets and cannot be easily disclosed, while "technology critics" are onlookers, and it is difficult for them to get the most core information in time.

2. their knowledge roots are too shallow, few tech critics have deep knowledge of technology history and cannot have a clear understanding of the history and evolution of technology development, and their knowledge of economics, management, etc. is also lacking.

So if they were to be the agents in Criminal Minds, they would definitely not be able to solve a single case because their 'information' and 'knowledge' are severely handicapped. In contrast, the fields of literary criticism and film criticism are not as embarrassing as technology criticism, because the information in these fields is completely open and the practitioners are often in the habit of reading, which makes these fields often have high-level authors.

In fact, more counterexamples occur in almost every one of us, and there are three most common mistakes we make when conducting analysis.

1. relying on a single source of information. We often just passively receive information without doing active information hunting, leading us to get used to relying on several fixed sources for information, which hinders us from being good information analysts. Information sources can be simply divided into explicit and implicit sources, where all kinds of media, books and journals, research papers, reports of professional institutions, etc. are explicit sources of analysis, while implicit sources can be anything. In my How to find certain big trends through small things around you? In this small case, information from multiple sources is collected and then aggregated, with stationery stores and tweets from nameless strangers both being invisible sources of information. There are two major advantages of obtaining information from multiple (independent) sources: first, more clues can be obtained, like a jigsaw puzzle that reveals the hidden contours; second, information can be verified with each other, eliminating information that is not highly credible.

2. Ignore the role of knowledge. Just to collect information is not enough, think about "Criminal Minds" why there is a genius Dr. Spencer Reid character, he actually played the role of a human encyclopedia. But it is important to understand that when doing information analysis, knowledge is both the fulcrum and the limit of the analysis. The knowledge we have also constitutes our limitations. Especially when our knowledge background is relatively homogeneous, our analysis is easily limited inside a specific, solidified framework. The drawbacks of a single domain of knowledge are especially evident when faced with exceptionally complex and uncertain issues, which is why the investment field is often populated by very knowledgeable individuals who must therefore pursue a degree of diversity in their personal knowledge systems.

3. Prematurely presenting ideas. When the information we gather is not comprehensive enough and our knowledge base is not sufficient, it is often disastrous to present an opinion prematurely and rashly. Because psychologically speaking, we all have a "confirmation bias", once we put forward an immature view, then we selectively choose the evidence that supports it and ignore the contrary evidence. When our information and knowledge are very diverse and sufficient, our ability to avoid this kind of solidification and narrowing of thinking increases, and we are more comfortable applying "lateral thinking", jumping between different tracks of thinking to find the best answer.