What are some of the characteristics of an effective idea system?

The right people.

An open-mind and the ability to listen, not just talk.

Internal consistency and respects/adheres to logic and reason. Adapts to scientific facts/discoveries as they are made instead of trying to warp scientific interpretation to accommodate pre-defined values/beliefs. Respects cultural differences, but acknowledges that there are fundamental human rights that no culture should violate.

An effective idea system is characterized by its comprehensiveness, coherence, and efficiency. The purpose of an idea system is to understand the universe you inhabit. The system must add up to a model that will allow you to predict the consequences of any action with great accuracy.

In order to do that, it needs to contain a comprehensive knowledge base. You need to know a lot about a lot. The information must be understood—coherent. You have to understand how each piece of information relates to as many other pieces of information as possible. Finally, you need a model that relates the information in a cause and effect kind of way. You can tell how good your model is by how often and well it correctly predicts the future.

We all carry these models around in our heads. For most of us, this is intuitive. But some of us make a conscious and organized effort to build and improve the model. We constantly test it by making public predictions and seeking out feedback. This is what makes it possible, over the long run, to go against the conventional wisdom, when you know it is probably not efficient.

By the way, I just spat out the above bullshit in about a minute. I’ve never thought about this before. But if I have an effective idea system, this makes sense, anyway.