Ideas
(@casesnthingsla/Facebook)
It is commonplace to bemoan the lack of critical thinking all around us. We live in an era of strong opinions, yet weak convictions.
Of spin doctoring, political correctness and fake news. We all wish critical thinking was a subject in school or college so that we would not have to deal with the ‘bozos’ of the world. To be sure, one person’s `bozo’ is another’s hero.
Behavioural scientists, economists and logicians talk about a variety of inherent biases and logical fallacies.
Within domains and contexts such as the financial markets or policy making, we are now applying these insights to improve our judgment and make better decisions.
What is less clear is how a technical concept like ‘confirmation bias’ affects critical thinking across domains in a more general sense. The recently popular notion of nudge is a useful tool in getting people to change behaviours.
However, the ‘nudge approach’ helps greatly in adjusting or modifying habits and does not necessarily affect the underlying thought process.
Interestingly, many biases seem to afflict the intelligent, sophisticated folks more than the people who see things in a simple, raw form.
Perhaps, educated folks process a lot more information but superficially and hurriedly?
Now, we do notice that intellectually oriented folks have a more prominent ego that expresses itself more actively.
Quite likely, the Ego distorts the picture to match the mind and its predisposition. And a diminished ego interferes less with the perceived signal.
On the other hand, can a low self esteem trigger stronger prejudices and irrational thinking?
Can we train people to become better critical thinkers? Or is learning to think critically subject to the same limitations that inhibit critical thinking in the first place?
These, and more questions, put this topic on a path of multi-disciplinary research with neurologists joining the other experts, probably playing a pivotal role.
Meanwhile, let’s take a practical lens to critical thinking to first recognise and then deal with day-to-day, universal types of non-critical thinking.
The purpose is to evolve a framework that can be used to illuminate the subject. Notably, I have avoided examples to illustrate the point. While this makes the subject dry, examples themselves can limit understanding and create biases.
Further, I believe it’s important not to oversimplify the observations. Rather allow the reader to think about each point and apply it to a set of held views to uncover fresh perspectives. So here we go!
To sign off, I urge the reader to take this framework, use it, make it your own and go ahead, expand it. Remember that just Thinking is a scalar while critical thinking is a vector that takes you forward in the direction of truth.
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