Critical thinking

[03-04]

Throughout my school-years I've been taught, that it is important to think critically.

If you can think critically, then you can think for yourself, and then you won't be so easily fooled - so the reasoning went.

As I got older I gradually realized how insane this idea really is: No matter what, you must always remember to criticize.

What I found out - especially at university - was, that everybody felt that thinking critically was so important, that it really didn't matter if you understood what you were criticizing or not. It was all about thinking independently - and everybody assumed that being critical of everything was the only way to 'not letting yourself be fooled'.

The foolishness was, that nobody even thought of criticizing the whole idea of criticism as independent thinking in itself. Everybody just went along with it. Why? Well - that's what we were taught, wasn't it?

So much for thinking for yourself.

What it really leads to is no one being able to think at all. Everybody is so afraid of being fooled by 'dangerous ideas', that they don't even dare to understand the things they fear being fooled by.

'Cause that could lead to, like, oppression man.' Oppression of every man's right to 'think for himself', ie. to be freely able to dismiss anything, without understanding anything about it, that is.

- 'Equality' follows naturally: Nobody should be fooled by anything = Every individual has an absolute right to fool himself.

[NHA]

Critical thinking calls for the ability to:

Recognize problems, to find workable means for meeting those problems
Understand the importance of prioritization and order of precedence in problem solving
Gather and marshal pertinent (relevant) information
Recognize unstated assumptions and values
Comprehend and use language with accuracy, clarity, and discernment
Interpret data, to appraise evidence and evaluate arguments
Recognize the existence (or non-existence) of logical relationships between propositions
Draw warranted conclusions and generalizations
Put to test the conclusions and generalizations at which one arrives
Reconstruct one's patterns of beliefs on the basis of wider experience
Render accurate judgments about specific things and qualities in everyday life
In sum:

"A persistent effort to examine any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the evidence that supports or refutes it and the further conclusions to which it tends.

That's your definition of insane?

It's like people are desperate to turn everything into some butthurt narrative - reminds me of third wave feminism ha.

[03-04]

Critical thinking is fine, if you know how to apply it.

This implies being able to understand what you apply it to.

If you do not understand the thing you are criticizing, then your critique will not make any sense.

An overemphasis on criticism leads to a devaluation of understanding.

Insanity is a result of an unbalanced mind.

[crow]

This is a great eye-opener for me. I was never taught this in school.
Maybe that is why almost nobody understands me. Nor I them.
Instead of criticizing, I consider, while I don't get considered, I get criticized.
I wish I'd known this sixty bloody years ago.

Critical Thinking seems to be a whole discipline that I must have completely missed, somewhere, way back.
Maybe I had measles, or something, that day.
It sounds like the art of not being able to understand anything, ever, no matter how it is presented.
I've often noticed the results of it, but had to try to figure it out from first principles.

The arcane art of fooling oneself into thinking of oneself as superior to absolutely everybody else.
While isolating oneself in a hermetically-sealed bubble of ignorance.

Thank you 03-04. Old dogs still sometimes have things to learn.

[Vigilance]

Proper training in critical thinking fell out of style after the second world war as I've come to understand. It's one thing to lash out at the way our formal schools of thought are mistreated but it's entirely another thing to attack them, themselves as they are developed to maintain a correspondence between what actually happens and our thoughts.

[crow]

The proof is in the pudding.
No matter the intent, the results are what proves value.
If critical thinking becomes in any way visible, it has failed completely.
If used at all, it is best used as a background process.
I've noticed that those who visibly do it, contribute nothing, but criticize everything.
Forums are full of it.

[Vigilance]

It depends whose pudding you're looking at and when you're looking at it. If you look at the pudding on the far side of a civilization, it will appear to have gone bad. That's just the way of things though. Evaluation is an active mental process built on top of the snap judgement simian heritage. It takes effort to continually ensure ones thoughts correspond to things they describe. I think we'll have to agree to disagree here.

[crow]

Evaluation is an active mental process built on top of the snap judgement simian heritage.

How simian are you, to understand a simian mental process, or the lack of one?
I have learned, from spending vast amounts of time around wild creatures, that they possess a very workable substitute for the abstract constructions humans use to perform the simple act of evaluation.
They keep it very simple. Which is something humans seem incapable of.
I often admire creatures of the wild. I find it rather rare to do the same with humans.

[Vigilance]

Fully simian.

[crow]

That might account for those times I find you admirable.

[Vigilance]

I'm intolerable, who are you kidding?

[crow]

I see through the genius to the value that lies behind it.

[Dylar]

Evaluation is an active mental process built on top of the snap judgement simian heritage.

How simian are you, to understand a simian mental process, or the lack of one?
I have learned, from spending vast amounts of time around wild creatures, that they possess a very workable substitute for the abstract constructions humans use to perform the simple act of evaluation.
They keep it very simple. Which is something humans seem incapable of.
I often admire creatures of the wild. I find it rather rare to do the same with humans.

It's a matter of design.  Humans are not built to "keep it simple" any more than crows are built to use walking as their primary mode of travel.

[crow]

Tell that to a Moroccan goat herder. Not all humans are paranoid, neurotic, jangle-brained Westerners.

[Dylar]

Tell that to a Moroccan goat herder. Not all humans are paranoid, neurotic, jangle-brained Westerners.

The life of a Moroccan goatherd isn't less filled with abstractions than a jangle-brained Westerner; fewer abstractions and different abstractions, but abstractions nonetheless.  The human brain was built to fly.