A Prepared Mind — can reason
ATTENTION! ATTENTION PLEASE!
Please excuse me while I get up on my metaphorical soapbox and have a short rant.
We are becoming intellectually lazy and losing our ability to reason!! 50% of American households buy a newspaper today while over 100% bought a newspaper in 1950! (Over 100% because we had morning and evening editions then.)
OK, I’m down from the soapbox and I have a question for you. Is the above conclusion a good conclusion? Or am I simply A CRABBY OLD MAN ranting about the “younger generation?”
Not sure? Here, try this one instead. “People who drink green tea show a lower incidence of heart disease. Therefore, drinking green tea reduces the risk of heart disease.”
OK, maybe I am a crabby old man, but both examples show bad reasoning.
In the first instance I used emotion (bold type and double exclamation points) and then gave you an unrelated fact to “back up” my statement. Hmmm, do you ever see that kind of “reasoning” coming from our politicians, or talk-show hosts? Maybe in the current healthcare “debate?” In the second example I gave you a conclusion based on a related fact – but a fact that only showed correlation, not a cause.
If you want to be prepared for the future you have to reason well and good reasoning requires that we challenge the “facts” and assumptions that underlie our thinking. Good reasoning is informed through ongoing learning; and new data comes through the skill of observing. Finally, we test our reasoning and the results of our decisions when we reflect.
But let’s get back to the rant of intellectual laziness. (I like ranting, it comes with age.) Good thinking requires that we use evidence to support our conclusions. So here is my Prepared Mind question of the day: Where do you get your evidence for the decisions and actions that guide you and your daily life? Do you take the time to educate your thinking process? Are you willing to plow though a fifteen page article in Atlantic Monthly magazine or do you pick-up your “factoids” from USA Today? By the way, newspaper readership is down significantly, so where are we getting “the news.” And, for that matter, how much of the news on TV or the web or radio is really important news?
Reasoning is hard work and it takes time; so, sometimes, we get a bit lazy and let others do our reasoning for us. Or, we let opinions substitute for reasoning. And, more often than not, we form our opinions based on “received knowledge.” That is, we let others tell us what to think. We see this all the time in people who are devoted to a political or religious ideology. (Does Rush Limbaugh or (now Senator) Al Franken do your thinking for you?) When this happens we fall into the traps of never looking for disconfirming information or not considering other points of view.
Going back to my opening rant, I really do believe that we are becoming intellectually lazy. And I mean ALL of us, not just the younger generation. That’s my opinion and I’m sticking to it. Now it’s your job to prove me wrong. You can give me your opinion (which I’ll ignore because it does not support my opinion.) Or you can reason with me. It’s your choice.
Come on – REASON with me!!!!!
Date: August 2nd, 2009 @ 21:13
Categories: Prepared Mind
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