A Case for Mapping the Texture of Our Thoughts 

3.17.25

This post is inspired by a discussion I heard on The Cognitive Revolution podcast, and particularly this quote:

“Establishing your own chain of thought and teaching the model to do the chain of thought in the way that you want it to be done is one of the biggest unlocks for AI automation, application development, you name it.” — Nathan Labenz, talking about GPT-4

Upon hearing this, I paused the audio to process a chain of thought that is bolded below. My future self wrote responses to each chain.

1. How many of us can really articulate the texture of our thoughts?

Many. But few with a high degree of precision — such as being able to pinpoint personal triggers between different modes of thought. So what if meta-cognition isn’t a well-rounded enough opinion? (This question deserves its own post).

2. I’d love to be able to articulate the way I think…

I’m a fast associative thinker who jumps freely between ideas. I lock into analytical thinking in key bursts, especially when resolving complex or abstract ideas into something testable. Self-analysis (reflective thinking) is a huge part of my process, and I often slow down to do it in the moment rather than retrospectively. When my thoughts are physically embodied, my associative thinking accelerates, so I externalize thoughts that I want to attend to and grow, bringing them from my mind or digital spaces to the physical.

3. What ways of externalizing thoughts can reveal these patterns? What are their strengths and weaknesses?

Externalization creates visibility that offers opportunity for analysis. As a creative and human, I strive to develop a feedback loop between my internal cognition and externalized thought artifacts that I’m happy with. The question is: “what method fits this thought?” My digital universe punishes my analytical side with the consequences of fragmentation across tools, while rewarding my exploratory side with limitless experimentation. Freedom at the cost of coherence — quite the tradeoff.

I wonder if mapping our thoughts as a tree, with branches representing different explorations and intersections marking open vs. targeted revisits, could reveal hidden patterns in how ideas evolve. Someone should try sketching a Thought Tree to see whether structured refinement or organic discovery plays a bigger role in shaping their thinking over time.

4. What will GPT-4 say if I ask it to align its thinking with me by analyzing my train of thought in a voice memo?

When I gave it a stream-of-consciousness where I was exploring topics relevant to something I was designing, it had some “key takeaways.” It would adjust pacing to the acceleration of my thought, suggest physical representations of ideas when seeing me struggle to pin them down, note a pattern if I loop back to an idea multiple times, and reflect my own cognitive patterns back to me. It’ll certainly be interesting to see how we iterate on this together.