The Need for Critical Thinking

 A couple of years ago, I essayed a piece on critical thinking and the necessity for it.

It used to be, if you went off for four years of university, you would get a fair dose of critical thinking and get the skill sets to accomplish it.  Over the past twenty years, I'd suggest that you could make it through college today, without much of a mention over the 'art' of critical thinking.  

To define it....you have a problem or situation, and you need judgement over what this is (defined), the root causes, and then if you engaged to remedy the problem....you have some options on the solution.

Generally, you need to know how to evaluate a situation and gather facts or semi-facts to build a judgement. By semi-facts, I mean things that are generally assumed but yet to be proven as absolute fact.

Somewhere in this analysis.....you are also working up a unbiased nature, where you can accept certain things which you'd normally not support.

Then there's the fine art of skepticism, where you've been told a semi-fact, but question this....to the point where you realize it can't be proven, and it can be stamped as fact.

A new way of thinking with critical thinking?  No....the Greeks came up with this....over 2,000 years ago.

Why disengage from critical thinking?  That's the curious thing....without this skill, anything you picked up for the four-year period or the $80,000....is utterly worthless.  It would make no sense, unless the objective was to 'lose' critical thinking skills in our society.  

So, maybe a reading from Socrates and Plato might make sense right now, and asking some stupid questions which ought to have rational answers.  

Time to Heal Chatter?

 

Just something to think about....how so many newspapers went to the same headline.  

The odds of healing coming?  

Shocker?

 It's a bit humorous, but the NY Post reports this....Erica Abi Wright...professionally known as Erykah Badu in the Hip-Hop world....felt she had symptoms of Covid-19.  

She went for a test (well....two tests).  One is done on the left nostril, and one on the right nostril.

Negative on the right nostril.  Positive on the left nostril.   

What does this mean?  You could line up 100 people who think they have symptoms, and just do one single nostril on the test, and it comes back negative.  So the doctor just says you have a light case of the flu (which later turns out to be a fairly bad case of the flu), and you get over this in two weeks.  Yes, you actually had real Covid....because the test only concluded with one nostril which didn't have the virus.

Rocket-science stuff?  No.

So the testing is not really like you'd desire?  More or less.  But some idiot PhD guy will eventually figure out that via your anus....you can swab that and get a good 'reading'.  A bunch of the test folks will step back and kinda refuse to participate once this is the guaranteed way to get a positive-negative reading.  

The Winner Poll

 I was reading through various reports this morning and noticed that Rasmussen worked up a poll.  The question....is Joe Biden the winner now?

Well...49-percent said yes.

16-percent said they weren't sure of nothing. 

34-percent felt Donald Trump had won.

The poll was done between the 5th and 7th of November.  

In simple terms, it's not a convincing win for Joe Biden....there's doubt.  Even if Trump is bested here in the end....there will be marginally a majority of folks who believe Joe Biden actually won.

A mess going forward?  More or less.  

The place-holder President?  I suspect as you get into early 2022 with President Joe (assuming he wins)....the doubt will be there, and a lot of people will be shaking their head over the mess to clean up.

Here's the tough part about this scenario....you'd have to have a news media that openly avoids all discussion over President Joe, his agenda, or the players in his camp.  Yes, the news media would have to go out and cover the actual news (something they haven't done in two decades).  Political chat shows on Sundays?  They will become incredibly boring, and very limited on questions of quality.

This might be the four-year period that you wanted to take up a new hobby, learn how to golf, or rebuild that garage.