Time is so precious that people increasingly hope to find reliable guidance in study, work and leisure, save energy and money and achieve the best living condition. As a result, book reviews, film reviews, music reviews and food reviews have all come to this demand. The prosperity of various network platforms has lowered the threshold of speech and dispelled traditional authority. Everyone can be a maker of comments, and can't wait to tell others which movies are must-see, which foods can't be missed, which books can enhance the spiritual realm and which music can shock the soul; Everyone is also an observer, finding the most convincing new "authority" in the muddled comments to help them make life choices.
But in this process, most people accept what they have seen and heard, let other people's ideas and opinions gallop in their own minds, become the right and wrong of others, lead a chaotic life, and gradually drift away from their own life goals. There are still a few people who have some positive methods, can ask powerful questions, know how to judge the value of all kinds of information by themselves, find effective guidance to correct the direction of life and work hard step by step.
Learning to ask questions provides a set of skills and attitudes, including building awareness of interrelated and interlocking key questions, forming the ability to ask and answer appropriately, and having a strong desire to actively use key questions. This set of skills and attitudes has a familiar name: critical thinking. Mastering these skills and attitudes will help you to be smarter, stand out and become a successful minority in your actions.
Neil brown, the main author of Learning to Ask Questions, is an outstanding economist. He has taught at the University of Wisconsin, Indiana University and the University of Colorado, helping schools cultivate critical thinking among faculty members. Professor Brown recently served as a consultant to the US Department of National Security, Russian State Secret Service, IBM Asia Pacific Company, US Air Force Research Institute and other companies and institutions, providing critical thinking training and consulting services.
I hope that after reading this book, you can use the methods in the book to put forward the "key questions" about the book "Learning to Ask Questions" and further optimize the methodology of "critical thinking".
Today's fast-paced workplace life makes holidays particularly precious. Leaving the city and starting to travel is the first choice of many people. Every tourist wants his journey to be rich, special and unforgettable, so a perfect pre-departure strategy is essential. The content of raiders usually comes from the recommendation of friends and relatives, as well as the promotion of travel websites and official accounts of travel WeChat. However, everyone can do it, but it may not guarantee the wonderful journey, and it is likely to bring a "trembling" experience to tourists. Why is this? The problem lies in the way of thinking in doing raiders.
When the sponge is put into water, it will fully absorb water. There is a kind of thinking with similar characteristics. It hates to be picky about countless information, and it is more open-minded when it comes to well-organized, vivid and interesting materials. We call this kind of thinking sponge thinking. When this kind of thinking is applied to the raiders, there will be such a situation: when you see a WeChat article on "XX Five Must Visit the Night Market", your heart will jump wildly and immediately arrange all five nights of the trip as night market tours; When I heard a friend say that there is a kind of spring water on XX Mountain that is particularly sweet and has the effect of prolonging life, I immediately included the scenic spot in my itinerary. I saw a famous travel column introducing a homestay, which is located at the top of the mountain and overlooks the rising sun in the morning, and immediately listed it as a must-stay place during the trip. The hardships of this trip can be imagined. After arriving in the local area, according to this strategy, if you stay in the hotel for two days, you should pay attention to the closing time of the car leading to the top of the mountain and leave in a hurry before the night market is fully rolled out. There are many scenic spots in the mountains, but I am too tired to visit them because I am looking for remote mountain springs. Sponge thinking is simple and convenient, but it has a very serious defect: it can't provide any choice methods for all kinds of information, which leads people to make chaotic and contradictory decisions.
It is necessary to use all kinds of mineral knowledge and observation experience to identify the highest gold content from a lot of ores. There is a kind of thinking that not only uses memory ability, but also uses reasoning and analysis ability to constantly question the information received and screen the most reliable opinions. We call this kind of thinking gold rush thinking. When this kind of thinking is applied to strategy, you will be more careful when facing various recommendations, ask some questions and review this information. For example, in the face of the recommendation of a food street, you can ask: Why did the author pass by the traffic problem? Is it remote? Since the popularity is not strong, is it really a good wine deep alley? Finally, you may find that the introduction of the food street in this copy is not the author's personal real experience, but an advertisement soft text. So you won't include this place in your itinerary. After such a review, many unreliable attractions and foods will not interfere with your main itinerary.
From the perspective of knowledge acquisition, these two kinds of thinking go hand in hand, and they are both means for us to interact with external information. But from the perspective of solving problems, too much invalid information will occupy our cognitive memory and affect our efficiency in analyzing other problems. Relatively speaking, gold rush thinking can help us think about substantive issues.
We are both natural people and social people, and the activities of thinking are often not limited to influencing ourselves, but also involve others. Only by devoting to the benign interaction with others can we constantly iterate our own thoughts; Without the participation of others, it is easy for us to stand still and do nothing. The improvement of critical thinking level largely depends on listening to others' opinions with an open mind and learning from each other's strengths.
Behind everyone's point of view, personal values, emotional orientation and even their own free will are attached. When faced with other people's doubts, the psychological defense mechanism will be activated to a certain extent, and a lot of fighting hormones will be secreted, which will make you impulsive and even try to argue with the other party for 300 rounds. At this time, we will start a weak critical thinking. The purpose of weak critical thinking is to use the logical loopholes of opponents to highlight their own correctness, and they are not very concerned about whether they can approach the truth and carry forward virtues.
On the contrary, when we establish the following values, including autonomy, curiosity (listening and reading), courtesy, and respect for people who convince others by reasoning, we can start another kind of thinking: strong critical thinking. This kind of thinking requires us to examine all propositions equally, including our own. It won't lead us to give up all our original views, but it can provide a solid foundation for us to further strengthen our views.
However, it is not easy to start this kind of thinking, and everyone will inevitably have emotional attachment to some existing ideas. When you change your mind, it is equivalent to openly admitting that everything you used to be false, which requires great courage and willpower. Therefore, we should constantly remind ourselves what the purpose of thinking is, that is, to make our thinking deeper and more accurate. We would rather change our views willfully with sufficient reasons and conclusive evidence than stick to our own opinions on the conclusion lacking arguments and sophistry.
The word "criticism" in the word "critical thinking" is easily reminiscent of the scene of offending people. Therefore, when we constantly question the opinions and conclusions of others, we have to consider their possible reactions and prepare appropriate countermeasures. The core goal of the countermeasure is to create a friendly atmosphere and let others know that your question is a studious and enterprising attitude, not to find fault. Below, let's take a look at some effective suggestions that have been verified by many people:
Timely feedback: It means that you are listening to "Oh … Um … Oh, I think I heard you say that";
Ask the other party why the other party's evidence is not enough to support his conclusion;
Pause properly during the discussion and take the time to find out whether there is better evidence;
Look for the conclusion that * * * values are the same or other consensus, and find out the root of differences in the dialogue on this basis. For example, the essence of love includes what you call "* * * and what I call" progress ",which is essentially" * * * and progress ";
Pay attention to nonverbal clues, don't be too loud, don't be too arrogant, and don't dance. ...
Ask yourself more, "Could I be wrong?" Perhaps nervousness has become an enlightened education.
Keep dialogue, give full play to critical thinking, and pay attention to wishful thinking that often appears in this process. Biological evolution makes it impossible for the human brain to work all the time, which leads to human cognitive inertia and leads to "we just claim that what we think is true". In addition, we tend to rely on miracles as causal explanations to understand things that science cannot provide reliable explanations. Therefore, we should actively use various key issues to counter this "wishful thinking". Tomorrow we will learn critical thinking from topics and conclusions.
Find a recent hot topic and browse as many opinions as possible. In this process, remind yourself not to accept everything, pick out some ideas that impress you the most and write them down. Then discuss with a friend and try to use strong critical thinking. Don't be angry because your friends don't agree with you. In the process of exchanging views, see what is worth adjusting.