Mar 31 2009
Do Your Own Thinking - Updated
Sometimes it amazes me. Just as something triggers a train of thought in my brain, like the response to yesterday’s blog, the New York Times (or a blog or something else) will spit forth something that goes along with what I’m thinking. In this case, it was the New York Times again with this article .
But what was I thinking, you might ask (unless, of course, you know by now that I’ll tell you whether you ask or not). I was thinking about people noting that Wikipedia is fallible, that you have to take some of what you read with a grain of salt, that you can’t take everything you read at face value.
Granted. But, then, shouldn’t we do that all the time? Skipping, for the instant, religion and religious texts (where I find the advice still applicable, but I don’t intend to tell anyone else what to do or believe), what source is so authoritative, so infallible, so incontrovertible that you shouldn’t read it critically? Seriously. And, yes, that includes me.
Newton was a genius. Do you think he never made a mistake? Or Einstein? Or Gallileo? Gallileo struggled, in fact, because the notions and logic of Aristotle (or Archimedes - some Greek with a name that started with A) were considered definitively true and, therefore, couldn’t be challenged. Even though they were wrong. It should be noted that being wrong doesn’t mean you’re not bright or brilliant or intelligent. (Refusing to acknowledge you’re wrong even when data presents itself may be a different matter but that is another blog post.) Everyone gets stuff wrong.
However, you’ll get a lot less wrong if you don’t forgo your own thinking. Give it the sniff test. Sure, so-and-so is an expert or has been write about X before, but is he right now? And this is where the article came in. It’s all about exercises in a book called Guesstimation: Solving the World’s Problems on the Back of a Cocktail Napkin where guesstimation exercises (as Enrico Fermi used to impose) are provided to help you learn to guesstimate big things. They’re more than just an exercises in math, though, they’re exercises in doing quick and dirty calculations that can give you a quick sense of whether something makes sense or not. Ok, ok, so math isn’t everyone’s bag, but the concept isn’t just about math.
Where I work, I call it the sanity check. Someone makes an assertion and my first reaction is to double check it in my mind. In some cases it might be validating an analysis - I do a ballpark estimate and, if they’re pretty close, I know it’s probably fine. If they’re off by a decimal place, I need to look closer because one of us is likely wrong (and, yes, I’ve caught other people’s errors that way - and many of my own). But it applies to logic. If someone asks for funding because their current model is underpredicting risk (as compared to actual damage), but then the new improved model comes out and it says the risk is half what was originally predicted - that should send up flags. Something doesn’t smell right. (And, yes, I’ve seen that happen too - and I’m the only one it bothered).
We’ve grown too lazy, willing to put off our thinking to someone else. Politics is one of the worst. I’m mostly liberal, but I have some conservative tendencies. Why? Because I decide for myself what I believe is best on each individual issue. No one decided for me. I did. I like Obama, but I don’t assume he’s always right or infallible. No one is. We agree on some topics, but not on others. I don’t have a problem with someone else disagreeing with him either, but I do have a problem with someone regurgitating tired arguments (that have been readily disproved) or making unsubstantiated allegations with no basis. I would feel the same if someone did it to Sarah Palin. People, in my opinion, are entitled to any opinion they want, but I won’t waste my time arguing with someone who hasn’t bothered putting thought behind it nor will I respect it.
If we thought for ourselves, we would realize that interest only loans and adjustable rate mortgages were too good to be true. If we think for ourselves, we can understand the difference between our rights and a moral imperative to impose our beliefs on others. We can listen to an expert or a scientist or a skeptic without ignoring the small voice inside our own heads that says, “that doesn’t sound right.” If it doesn’t sound right, find out more. Your view on the world might change or you might realize that a lot of things that sound authoritative really are nonsense dressed up like something meaningful.
Asking someone to do our thinking for us is a dangerous proposition, for two reasons if no others. First, because those with the most definitive and authoritative voices often have a vested interest in getting you to think they way they want you to and, secondly, because you will have to live with the end result, whether you trusted someone else’s thinking or your own.
Update: Speak of the devil, here’s a perfect example. I don’t object to the joke but I do object to the yahoos who swallow it without thinking.
it’s funny how often the recaptcha’s seem to fit
great article…. love the way you set up this two parter - whether it was intentional or not…. and very good advice
rather too bad that most of your regulars already seem to be people that do tend toward thinking for themselves… lets hope some of the more sheeplike are lurking
Appropriate for April Fool’s Day… so many of us are duped when we choose to accept whatever info is given us.
Just think of how many wars and how many lives could have been saved over the past few thousand years if people pulled their head out of their own tooshies and opened their minds to the POSSIBILITY that they might not be right or that another idea has merit. They don’t even have to agree, they just have to acknowledge.
I always get good Captcha words on your site. I wonder how those words are chosen.
I remember when I left fundamentalism several years ago, I realized I had been given a “package” of beliefs all linked together. In the first few years, I found I had to examine every single belief from the package, to decide if I still believed that particular one, or if I had good reason to believe something else.
Even now, many years later, I still find one of the beliefs from that package floating into my head, and realize it’s one I haven’t looked at yet, and now have to examine.