SCI-ART LAB

Science, Art, Litt, Science based Art & Science Communication

                                                               Interactive science series

                       CRITICAL THINKING - an important aspect of becoming a true scientist

Q: You emphasize on critical thinking. How can that be done? Will science help us in doing this?

Q: I am particularly concerned about the process of developing critical thinking. How can that be developed to think like you do?

Krishna: Glad you people asked me this question. 

Everyone thinks; it is human nature to do so. But much of our thinking, left to itself,
is biased, distorted, partial, uninformed, or down-right prejudiced. Yet the
quality of our life and that of what we produce, make, or build depend precisely
on the quality of our thought. Shoddy thinking is detrimental to science. It also affects the standard of our living. But still several people, I observed, think, just because they did graduation,  PG and  Ph.D. in science, they can think scientifically. This itself is lopsided thinking. Excellence in thought, however, must be systematically cultivated. 

Therefore, Critical thinking is a part of science training. If you don't get this training properly, your science education is incomplete and useless. 

You just need to commit yourself to remaining rigorous, clear-headed and honest in your analysis while conducting science.

Critical thinking is highly disciplined, knowledge oriented, analytical well directed ( informed by genuine evidence and data), monitored and a corrective process. It follows rigorous standards of excellence. 

You have to free yourself from cognitive biases     and fallacies that try to influence your thought processes.  Cognitive-distortions are bothersome too while doing the highest form of thinking. These are simply ways that our mind convinces us of something that isn’t really true.

You have to  try to be completely neutral and highly rational. Only real scientific facts, genuine data and evidence should help you in this process and nothing else. 

“Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to action.”

Keen observation, acquiring full knowledge on the subject, analysis, interpretation, reflection, thorough evaluation, inference, explanation, problem solving, and decision making are the vital stages of critical thinking.

The steps that should be followed are ...

First you should develop the ability to understand the information you are being presented with correctly. You need full and correct prior knowledge on it to do this. It is also the ability to connect pieces of gathered/observed information/data together in order to determine what the intended meaning of the information was meant to represent. Try to understand the logical connections between ideas/data presented.

Then try to analyse it with a neutral mind - remove all the influences that might screw up your thought process and understanding. These are cultural, religious, political, emotional and ideological ones. Just because you love or respect somebody - that somebody need not be always right. Or just because you hate somebody that person need not always be wrong. Just because you believe in something doesn't make it a fact. THIS REALIZATION IS VITAL FOR CRITICAL ANALYSIS.

Identify, construct and evaluate arguments. We live in interesting times…times when misinformation, alternative facts, and opinion carry equal or more weight than empirical data. Therefore, search for evidence, facts, or knowledge by identifying relevant and highly reliable sources and gathering objective, subjective, historical, and current data from only those sources. Take into consideration only the data and facts of information exactly as they are presented to you or come to your notice - forget  rest of the things. In order to do this you should develop the ability to understand and recognize what elements you will need in order to determine an accurate conclusion or hypothesis from the information you have at your disposal. You should be able to discard the useless things without any hesitation. This selection process is extremely important to have an  accurate judgement.

Refine the ability to evaluate the credibility of statements or descriptions of a person’s  conclusion or observations presented/noted in order to measure the validity of the information. 

Seek clarification if the information presented is posing problems in understanding. Never hesitate to question the information if found faulty.  Try alternative or information presented by others too while analyzing. 

Reason thoroughly using all the knowledge available to you on the matter. Detect inconsistencies and common mistakes in reasoning and rectify them.

Draw inferences or conclusions that are supported or justified by genuine evidence and evidence only. Judge according to established  professional or scientific rules or criteria using only scientific methods and methodology. 

You should have complete clarity and perspective about the information after analyzing it thoroughly. Fuzzy or hesitative conclusions denote  erroneous process. You should be able to transfer this to others with precision too.

But one should also realize that this fact finding process should be open to correction if new data arrives and demands it. And that the facts that helped you to arrive at a conclusion this moment are only provisional and falsifiable.  

You should be able to solve the problems you face or help others using this information creatively. Identify the relevance and importance of ideas/information and how they could be correctly used.

Once trained or learned, this process should be with you 24X365X100 influencing your every thought, action and move in your whole life. There shouldn't be any exceptions. 

It should sink into your body, enter each cell, mind and become a part of you. If this state of mind is reached, you become a true scientist.

Being a scientist is a state of mind, not a profession!

Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa's poem on scientific thinking ...

Scientific Thinking

Acquire scientific knowledge
Resort to clutter abridge
Go for cognition haulage
A good Comprehension flowage
Should become your college
Get a smart thinker badge!

Sense organs shouldn't be your only perceptor
Use grey matter as your insight creator
Science facts as guides of your truth receptor
Neutrality as a leading factor
Critical thinking as misinformation interceptor
Become one of the world's best scholar!

https://kkartlab.in/group/theartofwritingpoems/forum/topics/scienti...

Some Qs on this aspect and my replies....

Q: What is the difference between reasoning and critical thinking?

Krishna: You use reasoning to derive conclusions from assumptions. You use critical thinking to question the validity of the assumptions. 

There are two types of reasoning: 
(1) the one that is attached to emotions and beliefs
(2) the one that is detached and neutral
An example: You have a very young daughter whom you love more than your life. If one day she behaves very badly during a party, you try to understand with your loving mind and think that as she is still a child she doesn’t know how to behave properly and she would definitely learn things when she grows up and excuse her! Here your love for her shaped up your behaviour! As an unemotional person I would say that even if the child is young, she has to be taught how to behave in a public place with a mild warning after understanding her innocence so that she doesn’t repeat it and help her correct herself.

There is another aspect to this type of reasoning: Motivation. You want to forget your ex-girlfriend. So you try to reason that you would be better off without her by recollecting all her negative qualities!

This biased analysis of anything is due to the now well-known psychological phenomenon of motivated reasoning. Research suggests that all people tend to seek out information that confirms (or at least does not challenge) the conclusions they want to draw on a given topic. In other words, we will work to discredit or avoid information that might require us to reconsider our pre-existing beliefs. Motivated reasoning is particularly likely when taking the other side might create conflict within our social circle—like religious or political groups.

Likewise if you are attached to a belief (or emotion or group), it fogs your reasoning power out of fear, hope, love or respect and affects your behaviour. A mind that is agitated by belief can never be free and therefore never know truth.

Therefore, science asks us to come out of these attached things and do neutral reasoning. That is where critical thinking helps you to correct your reasoning process and therefore is placed at a very high position in the thought process.

Krishna: I work in several fields. So the insights I get differ from one another.

In science, before conducting experiments, we plan a lot depending on the literature and prior data we come across. We also keep in mind what else we need to know more about the problem or how the data collected earlier could be utilized using creativity.

We think ( not ordinary thinking but we use deep a critical thinking process) a lot about the earlier data, and information gathered and how they help us. We try to creatively connect various things available in our information bank and try to solve the problems. This thinking can take just hours, or days, or months, or even years in some difficult cases.

Sometimes we even forget to eat , sleep and interact with others. The problem will have you in its total grip. Until a solution is found, you will be totally restless.

How do we get insights? After thinking a lot, I fall asleep. When I wake up early in the morning , start thinking again and I suddenly get the solution to the problem! Most of my scientific solutions ( you can call them insights if you want) are obtained in the early morning hours as soon as I get up!

There is a systematic thinking, and not chaos in science to gain insights.

In art: There is no specific time. When I think about something that is happening around me and analyse why that thing cannot happen in a different and correct way, I get these insights at any time of the day.

Sometimes chaos, sometimes orderly thinking precede these insights.

Same with themes for poems and stories.

When I try to use art and literature to communicate science, I get these insights as soon as I think about what I want to convey as a result of these creative connections.

Whenever I find problems, I get instant solutions (while doing ordinary things).

Q: Is critical thinking the highest form of thinking?

Krishna: Yes, it is!

Q: You are a critical thinker. Can you explain how your thought process goes?

Krishna: Let me give an example.

You and your friend both say two things that oppose each other in front of me. Let us assume you are my friend and  your friend is a total stranger to me. Now I will have to consider both things and accept the right one. Right?

Now the first thing I do is erase both of you from my mind. Only what you people said remains in the arena. 

Before proceeding further, I want to say this: I have already removed all the irrational things that influence my mind long back. It is an almost clean slate now. Now I used the word 'almost' here. Because something still remains on it. What is that something? Data and  fact based scientific knowledge and evidence based facts. These are necessary tools to evaluate things neutrally. 

Now I also remove the connections, if any, between what you said and culture, religion, politics, emotions etc. 

Now what remains is just two opposing statements.

Then I analyse each one thoroughly using my knowledge, facts, reason, questioning everything that occurred to my mind at each step of the way. 

Only the answers that satisfy all the questions posed by my analytical mind will be taken into account and the rest are discarded mercilessly. Anything that doesn't fit the facts and evidence will also be thrown out. 

Finally what remains is the right one! And I chose it because it with stood the critical analysis of my mind and came out with flying colours.

The person who said it doesn't matter at all still. Only the right statement matters. My friend or foe or my relative or colleague or an unknown person who made it is immaterial. Its affiliation is still unimportant.  

Only the statement, that has all the right features shines in my mind.  

I feel extremely satisfied with this analysis. My mind feels light, free and elated. 

Shall I tell you a secret? A biased  thinking, irrational thinking is a great burden on any mind. Suppose if you choose the one made by your friend because you like him, even though his statement  is not correct, even if your mind knows it is biased, it tries to suppress this fact, denies this fact that you are partial, and tries to project a right picture before the world taking the help of lies and all those negative things that strain your mind a lot.

Several people, especially  the politicians, told   me this. They have to undergo a lot of stress because they have to support their party's and colleagues' stand even if it is not correct! They have to answer several Qs posed by  the media and their colleagues. 

As I dissociate myself from all such burdens and refuse to get associated with anything, I am stress free. And need I add I am extremely happy?

Yes, critical thinking makes you very happy and satisfied! Because you take only the right decision overcoming all the negative things that affect it!

Read these articles that might help you ...

Scientific Thinking

The right way to boost your intelligence and become insanely creati...

Q: Is critical thinking really important?

Krishna: Yes, in science. To get facts established. 

If you really want to live in reality, yes. If you want to deal with only genuine knowledge, yes. 

 In mathematics ‘You Cannot Be Lied To’!

 said a mathematician recently. If you are a critical thinker, nobody can influence you in anyway! You become completely independent. You cannot be cheated, you cannot be lied to. A thing is true or not true, and there is this notion of clarity on which you can base yourself.

It takes you to higher levels of mind matters.

Q: Can a person be completely neutral?

Krishna: I try to be neutral, always. As I am proud of my critical thinking abilities, I think I am neutral, well most of the time. :)

Recently one person told me , " Ma'am, you are talking like both the persons whose psychology we 're discussing. If you are neutral, you shouldn't talk like anyone, you should keep a distance from both".

 "What?!", I asked him, "I can view things from both points of view and analyse the situation from each person's point of view. That doesn't mean I accept their views, or anyone's. I only accept things if my critical thinking says this is the right one because of these undeniable and indisputable reasons and evidence". Being able to see the problem from all angles, not one, is the right way to deal with a problem and providing neutral analysis. After neutral analysis, when I accept one thing because that is  what I think is right, which might make others think I am biased but in reality, I am not! 

I refuse to join any groups, parties, accept any ideology just because I want to be always  neutral. I try my best to control my emotions too. I came out of conditioning of my mind too. 

Yes, It is possible for me to be neutral because I am a critical thinker. Yes, when one is a critical thinker, it is possible to be completely neutral.

But still if there are any hidden biases that are still influencing me, I try my best to control them.  I think 99% neutrality is better than 50% neutrality any day. And I am 99% neutral. Test me if you want!

Q: Are all scientists critical thinkers?

Krishna: The answer, disappointingly, is NO! Recently I watched a debate on hypnotism online. There, participants were asked to debate whether hypnotism is real science. 

An American neuro-scientist said it was and gave several examples, which I felt were not soundly scientific. On the other hand a graphic artist from Serbia tore into this explanation and with sound science. I was literally hypnotized by this artist's critical thinking abilities!

Actually my experience should be the other way round. But sadly it wasn't! People were let down with the scientist's  argument. His 'beliefs' were projected as facts, with the help of lopsided and inconclusive research. But people watching it gave all their up votes to the scientist! "Confirmation Bias"!

Only people who are critical thinkers can differentiate between lopsided arguments and the sound ones. Only they can understand things as they are without  biases  effecting them.

I should be supporting my colleague here. I should be opposing the artist. But I didn't!

Like everybody else I should be looking for confirmation of my biases. But I didn't!

Highly scientifically advanced America should be given the up vote than less developed Serbia. But I didn't!

Well experienced and older scientist should be given  more  weightage than less experienced and younger artist. But I didn't do that!

More good looking scientist should have got more appreciation. But I didn't do that either!

Only the soundness of the argument, evidence and facts shaped up my thinking and analysis. Yes, I was neutral and completely unbiased.

My up vote went to the artist from Serbia! I was the only person who did this! And I am proud of it!

Here you will find another example to show how neutral I am: the-way-conspiracy-theories-work-and-how-to-overcome-them

And there is a thing called  Nobel_disease

The Nobel disease is the apparent tendency of Nobel Prize-winning scientists to endorse or perform "research" in pseudoscientific areas in their later years, generally (though not always) after having won the esteemed prize for some legitimate scientific achievement.
What makes the term special is the fact that you'd think Nobel laureates (of all people) would be the most resistant to crankery. On the contrary however, the Nobel "disease" underscores the fact that human beings simply aren't "immune" to falling for crank ideas — accomplished scientists included. The Nobel disease also serves to demonstrate how being universally hailed as "right" would appear to bolster the individual laureate's confirmation bias more than it does his or her skepticism. This shows if you are not careful with your mind matters, your thought process deteriorates!

Q: What are the characteristics of critical thinkers?

Krishna: 

Strong critical thinkers demonstrate the following characteristics:

  • inquisitiveness with regard to a wide range of issues
  • concern to become and remain well-informed
  • attentive to opportunities to use critical thinking
  • self-confidence in one’s own abilities to reason
  • open-mindedness regarding divergent world views
  • flexibility in considering alternatives and opinions
  • alertness to likely future events in order to anticipate their consequences
  • understanding of the opinions of other people
  • fair-mindedness in appraising reasoning
  • honesty in facing one’s own biases, prejudices, stereotypes, or egocentric tendencies
  • prudence in suspending, making or altering judgments
  • willingness to reconsider and revise views where honest reflection suggests that change is warranted

Q: What is the difference between rational thinking and critical thinking?

Krishna:Rationality is the quality of being based on or in accordance with reason or logic.  Reason and logic can be lopsided too. They can be twisted to suit your biases. 

Critical thinking is the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue. This is unbiased. 
Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to cognitive processes and action. 

Watch this video that gives a rough difference...

And read this article:

Viewing Our Develo

Q:Given that today's young generation has access to facts and truth from all possible information sources, how true is the fact that the future Indian society will have be less superstitious and have less taboos? 

A culturally, religiously, emotionally and politically conditioned mind processes that information differently from that of a neutral and scientifically oriented critical thinking mind.

Most human minds cannot tolerate cognitive dissonance. Therefore they stick to their original path of thinking that gives less discomfort and avoid new information that goes against their beliefs and conditioning.

People start using the information they have or get to support their beliefs and create pseudo-science in the process.

There is another aspect too. Modern means lots of chaos and competition where a person’s mind has less control over this situation. Such situations make people take temporary external emotional support such as irrational beliefs.

Unless a person is mentally very strong, a highly critical thinker who has the courage to come out of a conditioned mind, swim against the tide, and can stand on his/her own, has lots of knowledge to process information correctly, it is not possible for anybody to come out the holes s/he lives in just like that only because a new day has dawned with lots of promise. You should have the capacity to utilize it correctly.

Majority of the Indian youth don’t fit this bill, sorry.

Critical Thinking

Burning Q: Why are more and more young people who claim they are mo...

Q: How can confirmation bias interfere with problem solving?

Krishna: At the stage of understanding the problem itself, confirmation bias interferes leave alone solving it.

Let me give examples. We, the people of scientific community, fight superstitions and pseudo-science. We want to avoid problems caused by them or solve them.

When we tell people that black magic is a superstition and astrology and homeopathy are pseudo-science and when we show evidence, people who practice them or believe in them even refuse to consider the evidence provided. They think what we give as evidence is just our opinion. Or they provide lame excuses like we have to broaden science to understand what they treat as science as science or as our kundali’s (astrological charts) are so strong, we would never face the bad consequences of black magic so we don’t understand them.

They do all sorts of things, argue as much as they can using silly reasons but never, I repeat never, consider what we show as evidence.

Some go even further and use the evidence we provide to confirm what they preach or practice by twisting it to suit their beliefs creating pseudo-science in the process. And people don’t know what the real facts are and whom to believe. They just blindly believe in these people who propagate these irrational beliefs and pseudo-science which again confirm their biases.

We are fighting very tough battles because of these confirmation biases. As long as people don’t come out of them, there won’t be any real progress and relief from suffering.

We want to add here that people themselves are creating their own problems by refusing to come out of their biases and suffering unnecessarily.

Q: What happens to your brain when you read mythology and science simultaneously?

If the person is a critical thinker, he can clearly differentiate between mythology and science and trust and follow only evidence based facts.

If he cannot think at the highest level, he tries to authenticate his belief in mythology by using science creating pseudo-science in the process.

If he cannot think properly at all he follows the second type of people and think all that pseudoscience is true.

The person with the least type of thinking refuses to see evidence and facts at all, consider them at all, thinks they are ‘conspiracy theories’ to harm him and his beliefs and totally refuses them.

Now decide which category you belong to. I don’t think I need to tell about mine.

Haven’t you heard about the Indian scientific community helping societies by educating people about things like COVID 19. ( A group of 500 Indian scientists is fighting the Covid-19 fake news... ). I am a member of this Indian ScientistsResponse to COVID-19 (ISRC).

Politicians these days control the funds. Scientific research is getting affected because of cutting of funds by politicians. Also politicians are deciding which way the research should go.

However, it would be better if we keep unwanted things like politics and emotions out of the scientific arena. But wherever human beings are there there will be emotions.

Good Critical Thinking skills make us avoid these things and concentrate on our work only.

When I was first trying to enter a Microbiology lab, I was told to leave my emotions outside the door. I learnt how to do this after entering my lab. I got a high grade training in my lab.

As long as I am dealing with science, emotions-especially fear, opinions, politics, irrationality , ignorance, pseudo- things have no place in my arena. I built an indestructible wall between them and me.

That is how I manage to be sane despite everything.

Q: Do lacking critical thinking abilities hamper scientific research and understanding of things around ?

Q: How does affiliation to some things affect our cognition?

Krishna: Yes it does, undoubtedly! Let me give an example here. 

I know a very good scientist. When we first met, I was really impressed by his scientific knowledge in his field and his rationality. I put him on the Himalayan heights with regard to his knowledge about his subject.

He is highly religious. That shouldn't have mattered at all. 

But what made me sad 's his behaviour towards  people belonging to other religions and the media.He is highly biased towards people of other religions. If some media people or politicians criticise his religious superstitions etc., he totally bans them from his world. He wouldn't allow them at all!

When once I innocently shared a fact -checked media report on a site administered by him, he  removed it because it seems  that media site 's against his religion! He wouldn't listen to the facts! He wouldn't consider the correctness of the report. When I protested, he and his friends posted another subdued report and showed his disguised bias again! HMMM!

This made me put him at the bottom of a hole! 

What a mess his affiliation towards his religion and lack of critical thinking abilities ( rationality is different from critical thinking) made to his cognition! 

Q: Why do we waver while thinking?

Krishna: If your thoughts are wavering, that means you are not a critical thinker. When only genuine knowledge and data supports your thinking process, you choose only one genuine way and stick with it. 

I never deviate from my thought process as it is highly methodical. I also never deviate  from the decision I reached. As it is supported by scientific evidence and data, I know it is the best conclusion I

arrived at and I always stick with it no matter what. Why should I go for a second best or a third best option just because somebody suggested it or the majority says it should be followed? 

Critical thinking helps you with stability of the thought and decision making and courage to stick with it.

Q: I find it difficult to accept several things you mention. We 're brought up with some beliefs. If you say they are not correct how can we accept your arguments?
Krishna:Science  told us this would happen! People are proving science right all the time! :)

There are a few things that interfere with your thought process if you are not a critical thinker. There is a huge list but I will tell you only about three of them.

1. Cognitive dissonance (the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially as relating to behavioural decisions and attitude change.

Cognitive dissonance refers to a situation involving conflicting attitudes, beliefs or behaviours. For example, when people smoke (behaviour) and they know that smoking causes cancer (cognition), they are in a state of cognitive dissonance.

This puts tremendous stress on one's' mind. To get relief from that stress people try to avoid conflicting thoughts and refuse to even consider what others say - if it is different from what they believe in - that gives this stress.

2. Confirmation bias: The easiest way to avoid stress to one's mind, people think, is seeking things only that agree with their thought process and beliefs.

They seek only information that agrees with their beliefs. This is what we call confirmation bias.

So they refuse others' view points if they clash with their beliefs. They don't even try to consider them, totally avoid them and treat people who have views opposite to theirs as 'opposition party' or even "enemies".

3. Then we have this Dunning–Kruger effect - a cognitive bias in which people with low ability at a task overestimate their ability. It is related to the cognitive bias of illusory superiority and comes from people's inability to recognize their lack of ability. They think what they know is right and others are wrong ( Lab scientists versus internet scientists ). This makes them refuse what science and scientists say.

A religiously, culturally, emotionally, politically, traditionally conditioned mind, therefore cannot come out of this hole and think that only what it thinks is correct.

Unless a person can overcome all this can he become an intellectual, completely neutral and can enter a higher mental state. We don't expect this to happen to everybody but click on the link below and read this article on critical thinking that might help you.

Critical Thinking

Q: What is real education? Why don't they teach critical thinking in schools?

Krishna:  There are various levels of learning. At the bottom is knowledge level. These are the facts. The next level is comprehension. After that is application, and then analysis, evaluation, and synthesis. If you never make it past the first level, there wasn’t much to your education.

Like Vivekananda said, real education is the one which takes your thoughts and mind towards the right direction. Just learning ABCD, okay,  how to conduct a heart surgery or how to build a dam, isn't real education. You will become a literate alright, you might get a good job but that isn't education.

I saw many engineers and doctors who follow irrational things despite their high qualifications. I faced several face palm movements too while dealing with them. They don't command any respect from critical thinkers. They are as good as illiterates.

You should ask the Governments around the world why they don't teach critical thinking. My guess is if everybody can think critically, nobody votes to bring these governments into power!

Q: What is more important to critical thinking, knowledge or the way you process information?
Krishna: Both are equally important. If there is no knowledge  what do you  base your thinking on? How do you analyse anything without any facts guiding you? Imagination? That will lead to creative stories people used to tell in earlier centuries. Like the religious, cultural and traditional stories that don't have any evidence to back up. Do the day and night occur because of the Sun God travelling in his chariot driven by seven horses? After studying science and when you have real knowledge now doesn't that imaginative story look silly?
And I have seen some scientists and science professors still sticking to pseudoscience and irrational beliefs despite their high qualifications. Because they can't process the misinformation brought to their notices in the right way using the knowledge they have. They just have text-book knowledge. They didn't get proper training to use this knowledge creatively in their thinking. Wasting their proficiency. Feel sad when I see such people. 
Q: How can I think like critical thinkers or scientists do?
Krishna: I explained this  in my main article!
Q: Can critical thinking be spontaneous? 
Krishna: After you become an expert in the process, you always do critical thinking.
Spontaneous means - proceeding from natural feeling or native tendency without external constraint.
controlled and directed internally.
Most of the time it comes spontaneously to you. You try to use the procedure of critical thinking  almost always. 
Q: As a critical thinker what do you think of others' thought processes?
Krishna: :)
This might sound arrogant, but when you see incomplete thought processes or biased ones, you feel sad and bad.
Sad because the person didn't get the opportunity like I did to learn it.
Bad because some people don't understand that their thought process is lopsided and they need to correct it. Even if you try to correct them, they just refuse to get corrected. Critical thinking is extremely  hard and they don't want to exhaust their minds with this hard work.
But once you learn it, made a habit of doing it, you automatically do it without much  difficulty.
My only wish is to make all people critical thinkers because this is the highest form of thinking.  I don't want to interfere in others' mind matters unneccessarily, but wouldn't it be wonderful  if everybody can think critically? 
Q: Albert Einstein quotes, ‘Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of mind to think.’ How do you view this quote in the light of your own experience? Comment.
Krishna:

Vivekananda said: Real Education is the one that takes your thoughts and mind towards the right direction.

How can education take you towards the right direction? By training you to think critically.

If Einstein really said, ‘Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of mind to think’ he is not correct. If he used the words “just train to think”, I don’t agree!

Even religions train to think in a certain way. Ideology trains to think in a narrow way. Regional Cultures and family traditions too train people to think from their view points. Are all these trainings faultless? NO!

Everyone thinks; it is human nature to do so. But much of our thinking, left to itself, is biased, distorted, partial, uninformed, or down-right prejudiced. Yet the quality of our life and that of what we produce, make, or build depend precisely on the quality of our thought. Shoddy thinking is detrimental to science. It also effects the standard of our living. But still several people, I observed, think, just because they did graduation, PG and Ph.D. in science, they can think scientifically. This itself is lopsided thinking. Excellence in thought, however, must be systematically cultivated.

Therefore, Critical thinking is a part of science training. If you don't get this training properly, your science education is incomplete and useless.

You just need to commit yourself to remaining rigorous, clear-headed and honest in your analysis while conducting science.

Critical thinking is highly disciplined, knowledge oriented, analytical well directed ( informed by genuine evidence and data), monitored and a corrective process. It follows rigorous standards of excellence.

You have to free yourself from cognitive biases and fallacies that try to influence your thought processes. Cognitive-distortions are bothersome too while doing the highest form of thinking. These are simply ways that our mind convinces us of something that isn’t really true.

You have to try to be completely neutral and highly rational. Only real scientific facts, genuine data and evidence should help you in this process and nothing else. You have to have evidence based facts to guide your thinking.

Keen observation, acquiring full knowledge on the subject, analysis, interpretation, reflection, thorough evaluation, inference, explanation, problem solving, and decision making are the vital stages of critical thinking.

Education must help you in both ways - it should help you in getting genuine facts and then provide you the ability to use these evidence based facts to creatively think, analyse, and draw conclusions based on these processes to solve problems.

How do you acquire this highest form of thinking? Read here:  Critical Thinking

My experience tells me  not ‘any training’, not ‘just training’ is education. If you want excellence in thought and achieve highest form of mind matters, critical thinking and scientific thinking are the best ways to follow.

Q: How can critical thinking help us in real world?

Krishna: Read a real story by clicking on this link: how-can-critical-thinking-help-us-in-real-life

Views: 1858

Replies to This Discussion

/p>

1854

15  commandments of logical thinking

  1. Never believe anything. Only have a position on something if you have mountains of hard data and large-scale scientific studies to support this position. Smart people don’t really have many strong opinions, they only have thoroughly fact-checked stances on issues. Dumb people have opinions and a lot of them.
  2. Never believe a person. No matter what your parents, society, idol, politician says, always fact-check their statements. They are wrong most of the time.
  3. Never, ever just look at a few statistics. Always look at 20 different statistics around a topic at the very least before you form an opinion.
  4. Never ever form an opinion based on a small sample size (below 200). Never ever believe a statistic with a sample size of 1,000 over a sample size of 100,000.
  5. Always check the primary source. Never ever just read a Facebook article. Find the primary source and fact-check that one.
  6. Never ever believe anecdotes and personal experience. They can help in understanding a situation, but anecdotes are never ever good data points. People that are not highly and academically trained in statistics, mathematics and psychology have an extreme bias and false memories of their own experiences and tales that people tell.
  7. Sagan standard: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence
    For example, claiming vaccines cause autism is an extraordinary claim, but there is literally zero evidence
  8. Many people believe things with zero evidence over things with mountains of evidence, that’s the definition of a conspiracy theorist and around 1/3 of people are like that. Those people are very dumb. Don’t be dumb. People with basic intelligence always stand on the side of things with mountains of evidence over things with zero intelligence.
  9. A claim with mountains of evidence requires mountains of evidence to be challenged. You cannot challenge a claim with mountains of evidence only by saying it’s complex, biased. You need to match the existing evidence to challenge
  10. The burden of evidence is always on the claimant. If someone claims there is an invisible cat in the house, they need to prove it, because it’s impossible to disprove it.
  11. Hitchens razor: A claim without much evidence can be dismissed without much evidence.
  12. A theory based on a false premise is always false, such as Chiropractic, Homeopathy
  13. Something that has the same effect as placebo, is just placebo, such as Chiropractic and Homeopathy.
  14. Fact-check all of your world views thoroughly, because 50% of them will be wrong. Spend weeks to months on research and data collection before you form a world-view. Do this for your 10 core and 50 auxiliary world views. This will make you a very smart and capable person. Almost no one does this. Most people just believe whatever their parents, society, religion, culture tells them. 50% of that is complete nonsense. Most people walk around like that, completely clueless about the world.
  15. Learn about, internalise and practice to avoid logical fallacies, cognitive biases and science denial at all costs. They make you dumb.

RSS

© 2024   Created by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa.   Powered by

Badges  |  Report an Issue  |  Terms of Service