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Upgrading critical thinking

Notes on critical thinking

Published:
#thinking

Avoiding five critical-thinking killers

  • Over reliance on authority
    • when the boss is the source of beliefs and knowledge
    • values evidence, challenge solutions
  • Black and white thinking
    • either/or categories. Ignoring complexity and nuances
  • Hasty moral judgments
    • reaction from cultural conditioning
  • Labels
  • Resistant to change

What is Critical Thinking

  • Critical Thinking is the language of strategy
  • Tool for accessing information quality and relevance. It’s judging and making rational decisions about what to do and what to believe. “How do we find out if this is really true?”

Seven ways to think about thinking

  • Purpose - why are we doing this? Make purpose clear
  • Questions - what are the best questions to ask?
  • Assumptions - what can we safely assume?
  • Perspective - are we using insights from the wisest POV?
  • Information - how strongly is our reasoning supported by relevant information?
  • Concepts - are we all agreeing on the meaning of this idea or concept?
  • Conclusions - what’s the best way to interpret this information?

Conditions to think beneath the surface

  • Ability to change your mind
  • Reflective skepticism
    • Is this a fact?
    • How relevant is this information
    • Is this statement factually accurate?
    • Is this source credible?
    • Are these claims ambigious?
    • Are we uncovering assumption?
    • Are we detecting bias?
    • Are we spotting logical fallacies?
    • Are there inconsistencies in this line of reasoning?
    • How strong is this argument?

Minimizing Bad Judgment

Systems in ways of thinking

  • Different situations needs different types of thinking to avoid judgment errors.

System 1 - Intuition

  • Fast, Automatic, Efficient, Unconscious.

System 2

  • Slow, Controlled
  • Monitoring your behavior
  • Conscious
  • Stop multitasking, stop and analyze.
  • Get enough rest. When you’re tired, judging big decisions that require more thinking makes you rely on System 1

Cognitive Biases

The bad reputation of cognitive biases stems from it being undetected.

  • Affect Heuristic
  • Confirmation Bias
  • Clustering illusion
  • Availability bias
  • False concensus bias

Improving Decision Quality

The REF Method: Regularity, Exposure, Feedback

  • Method to check your intuition

Counterfactual Thinking

  • Uncovering possible alternative to outcomes from past events