Critical thinking.
This is really a big topic. Essentially, what is critical thinking?
Translating into vernacular is how to judge authenticity.
In traditional society, this problem is easy to solve. It is mainly the intellectual elite who is responsible for judging the truth, as Qian Daxin, a scholar in the Qing Dynasty, said, "Without Confucius, who can decide the truth of right and wrong?" If you want to distinguish right from wrong, just listen to Confucius and read his books.
But in modern society, especially in information society, we are faced with information explosion every day, and judging authenticity has become a big problem for modern people. 100 years ago, Mr. Hu Shi said earnestly, "I have a thousand words here, and I just need to teach people a way not to be confused."
So how to criticize, how not to blindly believe, and choose credible information to use? Choose a reliable god and follow him. If you make a mistake, you can correct it in time.
This is the basic mission of modern people, and this need is as important to our generation as that of primitive people at that time. Critical thinking is to solve this problem.
What is critical thinking? There are many definitions. But in the final analysis, it is nothing more than cultivating the following abilities:
1. Ability to define and analyze concepts.
2. Be able to analyze and demonstrate the structure.
3. Can find the premise hypothesis implied in the argument.
4. Logical fallacies can be avoided.
5. Be able to judge the credibility of information.
6. Different possibilities can be considered.
7. Be more demanding-you can convince others with rigorous arguments.
There are many more. You can also go to the list below. There are also many books on critical thinking, such as Learning to Ask Questions, The Art of Thinking and so on. Time is limited today, so I can't introduce them to you all. You can read it yourself if you are interested.
Today, I only remind you of three points:
First, the basis of critical thinking is not principle, but rich knowledge.
Critical thinking is different from other disciplines such as mathematical economics. It is not a tool and cannot directly solve the problem. It just tells you a series of thinking principles, just like grammar. It's good that you have mastered it, but if your vocabulary is small, it's useless. You still haven't mastered the language.
For example, the war of resistance against Japan was particularly fierce in previous years. Even many graduates from famous schools around me think that if a Japanese car is smashed in the street, China people will never buy Japanese cars again and support domestic cars instead, so as to achieve the goal of patriotism. You see, this man has noble motives, clear thinking and strong logic, right? But their problem is not logic, but knowledge. To put it bluntly, they are not stupid and lazy, but ignorant:
He doesn't know that many Japanese cars are made in China, some are joint ventures between China and China, and Japanese workers make them, which can promote's economy; They don't know that products made in Japan have penetrated into every aspect of his life, and every mobile phone contains parts made in Japan and Japanese technology; They don't know how much economic globalization has reached. A total boycott of Japanese goods is not only impossible, but also harmful to China's economy.
You see, one of the uses of knowledge is self-calibration, and only logic is useless. A knowledge that seems irrelevant to your life may affect a judgment that is particularly important to you at some point.
Critical thinking is not to criticize everything and doubt everything. Critical thinking is not self-seeking, not purely conceptual deduction, but seeking the external world and knowledge. Otherwise, as Mr. Jiang Yang (Mrs. Qian Zhongshu) ridiculed some people, he thinks too much and reads too little.
We have recommended Charles Munger's Poor Charlie Collection many times, which provides us with a very reliable way of thinking, called "multiple thinking mode". He advocates learning from many subjects and forming a complex thinking mode framework, because the world is full of nails for people with hammers in their hands. This sentence often hangs on Munger's lips. When you have only one tool in your hand, you can only work with this tool.
Therefore, Munger said, the most important thing is to firmly remember a series of principles, such as compound interest principle, permutation and combination principle, decision tree theory, misjudgment psychology and so on, which together can often bring great power. This is two, three or four forces acting in the same direction together, and you usually get more force than the sum of several forces.
The second point I want to emphasize about critical thinking is that critical thinking is not to keep you from making mistakes, but to correct them in time after making mistakes.
It is a tragic fact that more than 99% of living species have become extinct in the three billion years from the origin of life to today. But it shows that evolution is a process of trial and error, trial and error, failure and trial and error.
According to the theory of evolution, in struggle for existence, any improvement in adaptability will be rewarded.
Just like the race between cheetahs and antelopes, only the fastest cheetah can kill enough antelopes; Only the faster antelope have a chance to escape the hunter. Cheetahs starved to death and antelopes were slaughtered in large numbers. But it doesn't matter. From the point of view of species, the "arms race" between beasts and prey is a good thing, which makes the body structure design of these two animals more exquisite and benefits both.
Therefore, critical thinking is essentially the evolutionary process of our cognition of the world. It's not an examination room, and no one will grade you. It doesn't matter how right you are now, what matters is the speed at which you correct your mistakes.
The third point I want to emphasize about critical thinking is that it can't give you a definite result, it can only help you judge the probability of things happening, and then you can keep betting on things with high probability.
As we said before, probability is a very complicated problem. The so-called cattle man is the ability to abstract the world into probability. For example, people who study will have a higher probability of success in the future than those who don't study, so smart people will bet on learning knowledge. Although no one can guarantee what he will learn, he knows that the more knowledge he has, the greater the probability of success in the future.
Like Charles Munger, he studied all kinds of knowledge all his life, because he believed that "multiple thinking mode" would improve his chances of success.
So when someone says, what's the use of learning this, he may also cite a series of examples of useless knowledge. These people are right, but he just doesn't know the probability. He won't keep betting on high probability events, and such a person won't succeed.
Finally, to sum up, today we don't talk about critical thinking itself. Critical thinking is an essential skill for modern people to survive. It is a set of thinking frame used by human beings in the face of an increasingly complex world. It is a tool to constantly check the logical consistency and factual accuracy you realize.
Regarding critical thinking, we mainly emphasize three points today:
First, the principle is not important, but the knowledge from multiple angles is important. This is equivalent to the relationship between grammar and number of words. If you want to learn a language well, you are indispensable.
Second, it is not that we don't make mistakes, but that we can correct them in time. This natural program has been running for billions of years, and so far, the effect is not bad.
Third, critical thinking can't give you definite results, but it can judge the probability of things happening. Successful people, always like this, keep betting on high probability things.
Ok, that's all for today. Thanks again to the initiator of today's topic, Mr. Kuang Qichang from Balansi Innovation Education.
Have a nice weekend. See you next week.