Intellect Stack and Self-Development Stack
Let's imagine you've been tasked with understanding transportation operations, the banking sector, or IT. It's likely that you'll approach this challenge based on your own practical experience. But if you're an IT specialist, roads might not be your area of expertise, and conversely, someone in transportation operations probably doesn't know much about IT. And perhaps you're also not very familiar with banking terminology? In that case, you might not even know where to start. However, if you possess systems thinking, your intellect will focus on those objects that exist in any field of activity: roles, methods (practices)[1], work artifacts, systems, architecture, and other systems concepts.
Intellect (thinking mastery) helps us handle new problems, and that's why applied disciplines are not suitable for its development[2]. Intellect as an ability is demonstrated when you need to deal with something new: an unfamiliar work problem, a personal life situation, or learning a new theory and mastering new tools. And even if it were possible to invent applied theories for every new problem, no single person could know them all. Intellect helps you study the necessary theories, and a strong intellect allows you to do this much faster.
Every person has innate intellect, which is primarily developed through practice: children learn to cope with new problems in their lives—crawling, walking, running, speaking, managing attention, and so on. As we grow older, knowledge becomes increasingly important for the development of intellect. And this doesn't refer to just any disciplines, but to thinking theories that help us handle new problems. This is what distinguishes them from applied disciplines, which solve a specific class of tasks. That's why we call such thinking disciplines transdisciplines. A transdiscipline sets concepts and principles for several disciplines or fields of knowledge[3].
The full list of transdisciplines in the intellect stack includes[4]:
- Systems engineering
- Methodology
- Rhetoric
- Ethics
- Aesthetics
- Research
- Rationality
- Logic
- Algorithmics
- Ontology
- Concept theory
- Physics
- Mathematics
- Semantics
- Composure
- Conceptualization.
The intellect stack literally weaves intellect together with certain concepts, principles, and thinking techniques that help us think abstractly, adequately, consciously, rationally, and using a systems approach. It enables us to develop thinking models, work with data, and act in the real world. With the help of the intellect stack, it becomes easier and faster to understand new areas of work and life, to focus and reason without obvious mistakes, and to create successful systems.
At Aisystant, in addition to the conscious development of intellect through the intellect stack, students are taught applied practices for the role of a learner. The role of a driver or manager has its own set of applied theories that they master. In the same way, applied practices are identified for the role of a learner—these are self-development practices.
The course "Self-Development Practices" brings together such universal practices that you can use throughout your life (just like arithmetic): investment and time management; systematic slow reading; thinking through writing; thinking by speaking; organizing leisure; shaping your environment; strategizing; planning.
Conscious mastery of self-development practices is what we call new or second literacy. We consider these practices to be the personal practices of a cultured person in the 21st century, who consciously learns throughout their life. The course "Self-Development Practices" helps you understand what "learning how to learn" means and how the above practices form the mastery of self-development, or the ability to develop independently and endlessly. If you are proficient in the practices of a learner, then, along with intellect, they will also help you learn faster.
The terms "method" and "practice" will be used as synonyms in this course. However, note that in some cases, "practice" refers to an activity that is contrasted with theory. ↩︎
By studying operational management, accounting, or the crawl method, you won't develop your intellect. Of course, the more you learn and the more new problems you solve, the more likely your intellect will develop. But in addition to practical activity, you need to know theory. That is, the development of intellect depends on both theory and practical activity. ↩︎
For example, the transdiscipline of mathematics provides the mathematical language for other disciplines—physics, chemistry, etc. A transdiscipline is also a discipline, but often it's important for us to emphasize the relationship between different theories as "transdiscipline–discipline." There are other classifications of knowledge as well, such as "fundamental and humanities." ↩︎
The order in which transdisciplines are presented in the intellect stack is approximate, and providing explanations requires knowledge from transdisciplines lower in the stack. At the same time, the intellect stack is a lattice of knowledge in which various transdisciplines and explanations are interwoven. ↩︎