There are as many of these "mind tools" out there as there are kinds of chewing gum. No use to blame Edward de Bono, it's always been with us in various forms: Descartes, Buddhist meditation, Euclid, the structure of language, etc. These post-de Bono tools however are just the latest fads to come along - stealing a bit from psychology to give it a dash of science, tossing a bit of I-Ching-ish operational mumbo jumbo to distract us from seeing the parts that don't add up.
In this age of Mind Tool-ism there needs to be a way to simplify this vast array of choices: a meta-mind tool that unifies all of the above into a single system: All-in-one Mind-Blowing Toolbox (TM, pat. pending, registered, copyright 2009 by David Tse).
For some reason I am reminded of a short story by Kurt V. called "Report on the Barnhouse Effect"; maybe because it parodies this cult of mind tool-ism. Actually, it may not - but it's a damn good read regardless!
Impossible. The mind itself can only be simplified down to something like 6000 rules, and that's the most optimistic estimate. Physics on the other hand can be boiled down to only a handful of grand laws. Trying to come up with one 'unified' mind tool is a futile endeavor. Moreover, why would you want only one mind tool? With only one tool you would have to keep using the same tool over and over again. It would get rather mundane and likely crippling to the innovativeness which mind-tools are meant to support. I would argue that the wide variety of tools be seen as myriad opportunities, many different ways to achieve similar goals but with often quite different outcomes.
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