Wisdom on the Topic of critical thinking
Quotations
Belief in Impossible Things
There is probably no job on earth for which an ability to believe six impossible things before breakfast is more of a requirement than software project management. We are routinely expected to work ourselves into a state of believing in a deadline, a budget, or a performance factor that time subsequently may prove to be impossible.
— Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister
Belief is the end of Observation
What you do is you have an idea, and you hold it in your mind as long as it’s useful. And then when it turns out not to be useful, discard it. But the idea of clinging to belief as a basis for your life – which is what most people do – is terrifying, because belief is the end of observation. You believe something, you stop seeing everything else. Clearly, that is not desirable. And yet it’s the way most people live.
The Celestial Teapot
Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of skeptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatics to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake. If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.
The Columbia Disaster
Dr. Sally Ride, the first American woman in space and a member of the investigating board, believes that the Columbia tragedy and the 1986 Challenger Space Shuttle disaster resulted from the same mindset, saying: ‘(NASA) managers…did not grab onto this problem and insist on an answer. It was really quite the opposite. They assumed they knew the answer. They assumed the foam was not going to be a problem. And they were insisting that people disprove the preconception they had.’
Confusion leads to understanding
I’m trying to confuse peoples’ initial perceptions. Confusion leads to exploration, exploration to learning, and learning to understanding.
Conventional Views
The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.
Cost of Education
If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
Critical Thinking Followed by Action
Interviewer: What’s the most important meditation we can do now?
Dalai Lama: Critical thinking, followed by action. Discern what your world is. Know the plot, the scenario of this human drama. And then figure out where your talents might fit in to make a better world.
The Cult of Ignorance
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’
A Dark Procession
Mercer did not think at all in the accepted sense of the word. Ideas occurred to him and engendered other ideas. But the process which linked any two of them was a dark procession taking place in some subconscious part of the brain.
The Discomfort of Thought
As every past generation has had to disenthrall itself from an inheritance of truisms and stereotypes, so in our own time we must move on from the reassuring repetition of stale phrases to a new, difficult, but essential confrontation with reality.
For the great enemy of truth is very often not the lie – deliberate, contrived and dishonest – but the myth – persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the clichés of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.
Easy Solutions
There is always an easy solution to every human problem – neat, plausible and wrong.
Entertain a Thought
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
ESPN president meets Steve Jobs
The story goes that ESPN president George Bodenheimer attended the first Disney board meeting in Orlando, Florida, just after the company had bought Pixar, the innovative animation factory, and spotted Apple CEO Steve Jobs in a hallway. It seemed like a good time to introduce himself. “I am George Bodenheimer,” he said to Jobs. “I run ESPN.” Jobs just looked at him and said nothing other than “Your phone is the dumbest fucking idea I have ever heard,” then turned and walked away.
— Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts
The evil in the world comes almost always from ignorance
The evil in the world comes almost always from ignorance, and goodwill can cause as much damage as ill-will if it is not enlightened…. There is no true goodness or fine love without the greatest possible degree of clear-sightedness.
Exponential growth in a finite world
Anyone who believes that exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.
Facts are Facts
Facts are facts; they are ascertainable through honest, open-minded and diligent reporting; truth is attainable by laying fact upon fact, much like the construction of a cathedral; and truth is not merely in the eye of the beholder.
A First-Rate Intelligence
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless yet be determined to make them otherwise.
The Four-Fold Way
The following four principles, each based on an archetype, comprise what I call the Four-Fold Way:
Show up, or choose to be present. Being present allows us to access the human resources of power, presence, and communication. This is the way of the Warrior.
Pay attention to what has heart and meaning. Paying attention opens us to the human resources of love, gratitude, acknowledgment, and validation. This is the way of the Healer.
Tell the truth without blame or judgment. Nonjudgmental truthfulness maintains our authenticity, and develops our inner vision and intuition. This is the way of the Visionary.
Be open to outcome, not attached to outcome. Openness and nonattachment help us to recover the human resources of wisdom and objectivity. This is the way of the Teacher.
Fuzzy Concept
There is nothing worse than a brilliant image of a fuzzy concept.
Gradually and then suddenly
‘How did you go bankrupt?’ Bill asked.
‘Two ways,’ Mike said. ‘Gradually and then suddenly.’
Great minds discuss ideas
Great minds discuss ideas, average ones discuss events, and small minds discuss people.
Hard Discipline of Reasonableness and Honesty
The great thing to remember is that the mind of man cannot be enlightened permanently by merely teaching him to reject some particular set of superstitions. There is an infinite supply of other superstitions always at hand; and the mind that desires such things, that is, the mind that has not trained itself to the hard discipline of reasonableness and honesty, will, as soon as its devils are cast out, proceed to fill itself with their relations.
Intellectual Debate
In all intellectual debates, both sides tend to be correct in what they affirm, and wrong in what they deny.
Learning from Experience
The most powerful learning comes from direct experience. But what happens when we can no longer observe the consequences of our actions? Herein lies the core learning dilemma that confronts organizations: we learn best from experience but we never directly experience the consequences of many of our most important decisions. The most critical decisions made in organizations have systemwide consequences that stretch over years or decades.
Men Fear Thought
Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth – more than ruin – more even than death…. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.
Merely a Muddle
“And your remarks on the text,” Mr. Gott declared, “are merely a muddle.”
“Yes, Gott,” said Mike meekly.
“You see, Mike, you haven’t any brain really.”
“No, of course not,” said Mike.
“You must just keep to the cackle and write nicely. You write very nicely.”
“Yes,” said Mike, dubiously.
“Keep off thinking things out, and you’ll do well. In fact, you’ll go far.”
Model II Decision-Making
Model II encourages the individual to maximize his uniqueness. If, in doing so, he should arrive at goals that differ from those developed by others, he will have done so under conditions of openness, trust and risk-taking. The individual would therefore feel free to discuss his differences openly with the group. Moreover, if the individual is in a subordinate power position, and if he feels he had adequate opportunity to dissuade the group and that the group publicly confronted and tested all differences, then the individual will probably be motivated to work toward the group goal but still be motivated to generate new information that may change the group’s decision. This means that one can be externally committed to a decision and internally committed to the decision-making processes that produced the decision yet simultaneously monitor the consequences of the decision thoroughly to seek new, valid information to reconfront the decision without being considered disloyal. In the model-II world, conflicts do not disappear–indeed, the illusion of conflict disappearing is more typical of the model-I world, in which conflicts are settled by power plays based on sanctions, charisma or loyalty.
— Chris Argyris and Donald Schön
Model II Values
Clearly, Model II touches on values that are central to social life and to the traditions of moral philosophy: freedom of choice, truth and testability, the nature of commitment, the possibilities for and limitations on openness in communication among individuals, the basis for trust and cooperation among human beings, the sources of long-term personal effectiveness.
— Chris Argyris and Donald Schön
Most advertising an insane irrelevance
It is often said that our society is too materialist, and that advertising reflects this…. But it seems to me that in this respect our society is quite evidently not materialist enough, and that this, paradoxically, is the result of a failure in social meaning, values and ideals…. If we were sensibly materialist, in that part of our living in which we use things, we should find most advertising to be of an insane irrelevance. Beer would be enough for us, without the additional promise that in drinking it we show ourselves to be manly, young in heart, or neighborly. A washing-machine would be a useful machine to wash clothes, rather than an indication that we are forward-looking or an object of envy to our neighbors.
Muddled thinking and self-deception
Mr. Campion was shocked. There are some people to whom muddled thinking and self-deception are the two most unforgivable crimes in the world.
Nirvana Antipattern
The typical, and primary, root cause of [the Nirvana] AntiPattern is the misguided notion that conflict is bad, and therefore should be avoided at all costs. In reality, conflict in the form of tension … is a necessary part of any difficult task that involves intelligent people who care about their work.
— William J. Brown, Hays W. McCormick III and Scott W. Thomas
No Perfect Answer
The higher up you go in politics – but I think this is true of any organization – the more you will be confronted with challenges, problems, issues that do not yield a perfect answer.
Occasions When the Intellect Retires Gracefully
There are occasions when the intellect retires gracefully from a situation entirely behind its decorous control and leaves all the other complicated machinery of the mind to muddle through on its own.
The Other Side of Complexity
I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.
People are happy to give away their most valuable asset
At present, people are happy to give away their most valuable asset – their personal data – in exchange for free email services and funny cat videos. It’s a bit like African and Native American tribes who unwittingly sold entire countries to European imperialists in exchange for colorful beads and cheap trinkets.
The point of modern propaganda
The point of modern propaganda isn’t only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.
Politics and the Debasement of Language
A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly? But you are not obliged to go to all this trouble. You can shirk it by simply throwing your mind open and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. They will construct your sentences for you – even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent – and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself. It is at this point that the special connection between politics and the debasement of language becomes clear.
Public Truth
Reviving the common good also depends on each of us taking responsibility for finding, sharing, and insisting upon public truth. By public truth I mean facts about what is happening around us that could affect our well-being, as well as clear logic about the significance of those facts and reasoned analysis about their practical consequences.
Seeing the Bigger Picture from Multiple Angles
He [Jeff Bezos] said people who were right a lot of the time were people who often changed their minds. He doesn’t think consistency of thought is a particularly positive trait. It’s perfectly healthy – encouraged, even – to have an idea tomorrow that contradicted your idea today.
He’s observed that the smartest people are constantly revising their understanding, reconsidering a problem they thought they’d already solved. They’re open to new points of view, new information, new ideas, contradictions, and challenges to their own way of thinking.
This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a well formed point of view, but it means you should consider your point of view as temporary.
What trait signified someone who was wrong a lot of the time? Someone obsessed with details that only support one point of view. If someone can’t climb out of the details, and see the bigger picture from multiple angles, they’re often wrong most of the time.
Seeking ways to disagree with myself
It has allowed me to return to a long-lost self who once wrote in peace and quiet … doing what I have always loved: finding ways to disagree with myself in order to discover what my true thoughts are.
Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast
“I can’t believe that!” said Alice.
“Can’t you?” the Queen said in a pitying tone. “Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.”
Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said “one can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
Successful Planning
The outcome of successful planning always looks like luck to saps.
Symbolic Language
At the moment, the most powerful marker, the feature that distinguishes our species most decisively from closely related species, appears to be symbolic language. Many animals can communicate with each other and share information in rudimentary ways. But humans are the only creatures who can communicate using symbolic language: a system of arbitrary symbols that can be linked by formal grammars to create a nearly limitless variety of precise utterances. Symbolic language greatly enhanced the precision of human communication and the range of ideas that humans can exchange. Symbolic language allowed people for the first time to talk about entities that were not immediately present (including experiences and events in the past and future) as well as entities whose existence was not certain (such as souls, demons, and dreams).
Taking a Fence Down
In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away. To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.
Ten Commandments for Teachers
Do not feel absolutely certain of anything.
Do not think it worth while to proceed by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light.
Never try to discourage thinking for you are sure to succeed.
When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your husband or your children, endeavour to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.
Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found.
Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.
Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent that in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.
Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.
Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool’s paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness.
Terrible with raisins in it
This wasn’t just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it.
Thinking's a Dizzy Business
Nobody thinks clearly, no matter what they pretend. Thinking’s a dizzy business, a matter of catching as many of those foggy glimpses as you can and fitting them together the best you can. That’s why people hang on so tight to their beliefs and opinions; because, compared to the haphazard way in which they’re arrived at, even the goofiest opinion seems wonderfully clear, sane and self-evident. And if you let it get away from you, then you’ve got to dive back into that foggy muddle to wrangle yourself out another to take its place.
Thinking should be generous and have a good appetite
Thinking should be generous and have a good appetite. I find life far too valuable these days to shut out most of its variety in favour of digging down into the depths….
This faith in consciousness
We are ambivalent, combative, stubborn, wildly changeable beings that have the natural schizophrenic facility to love and hate at the same time. We respond, with Pavlovian predictability, to invisible forces such as the economic infrastructure, ever-changing technology, and unconscious instincts, all the while believing that we are fully conscious beings making decisions based on logic arisen from observations informed by eternal truths. This faith in consciousness is, in the mildest language possible, misplaced.
Those Sharp, Scratchy, Harsh, Almost Unpleasant Guys
I never hesitated to promote someone I didn’t like. The comfortable assistant, the nice guy you like to go on fishing trips with, is a great pitfall. Instead I looked for those sharp, scratchy, harsh, almost unpleasant guys who see and tell you about things as they really are. If you can get enough of them around you and have patience enough to hear them out, there is no limit to where you can go.
To differentiate truth from falsehood
It is the civic responsibility of all of us to check the facts we read or hear, to find and depend upon reliable sources, to share the truth with others, and hold accountable those who lie to us or suppress the truth.
We must also ensure that every American has sufficient education to differentiate truth from falsehood, and to think critically about what they read and see.
To prolong our presence on the face of the Earth
What we’re doing now is trying to think like nature, in the sense that we are aware that species that have gone before us have disappeared from the face of the Earth. We’d like to use our intelligence and our creative capacity to prolong our presence on the face of the Earth as long as possible. It requires, therefore, that we develop the kinds of tactics and strategies amongst ourselves so as to assure that this can occur, to assure that we will not destroy ourselves or the planet, to make it uninhabitable and to allow the fullness of the potential of the individual to be expressed, to flower.
Torturing the Data
If you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything.
The Underlying Principle of the Problem
When you start looking at a problem and it seems really simple, you don’t really understand the complexity of the problem. Then you get into the problem, and you see that it’s really complicated, and you come up with all these convoluted solutions. That’s sort of the middle, and that’s where most people stop…. But the really great person will keep on going and find the key, the underlying principle of the problem – and come up with an elegant, really beautiful solution that works. That’s what we wanted to do with Mac.
Unintelligible Propositions
Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them….
Violent Opposition from Mediocre Minds
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly.
We are Doing our Best
It’s no use saying, ‘We are doing our best.’ You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.
We are what we pretend to be
We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.
We don't even own suits
When an AT&T rep suggested Jobs wear a suit to meet with AT&T’s CEO, the deputy replied, “We’re Apple. We don’t wear suits. We don’t even own suits.”
— Apple
We have wonderful arguments
Jobs: What I do all day is meet with teams of people and work on ideas and solve problems to make new products, to make new marketing programs, whatever it is.
Mossberg: And are people willing to tell you you’re wrong?
Jobs: (laughs) Yeah.
Mossberg: I mean, other than snarky journalists, I mean people that work for…
Jobs: Oh, yeah, no we have wonderful arguments.
Mossberg: And do you win them all?
Jobs: Oh no I wish I did. No, you see you can’t. If you want to hire great people and have them stay working for you, you have to let them make a lot of decisions and you have to, you have to be run by ideas, not hierarchy. The best ideas have to win, otherwise good people don’t stay.
Mossberg: But you must be more than a facilitator who runs meetings. You obviously contribute your own ideas.
Jobs: I contribute ideas, sure. Why would I be there if I didn’t?
We Must Respect the Other Fellow's Religion
We must respect the other fellow’s religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.
When his salary depends on his not understanding it
It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
Where the Puck is Going to Be
There’s an old Wayne Gretzky quote that I love. ‘I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.’ And we’ve always tried to do that at Apple. Since the very very beginning. And we always will.