Piggy
Unlicensed street skeptic
- Joined
- Mar 11, 2006
- Messages
- 15,905
Back in August '06, Scientific American published an article by Philip Ross entitled "The Expert Mind" which presented evidence that geniuses -- from Amadeus Mozart to Garry Kasparov to Tiger Woods -- shared a few traits in common.
Among these were:
1. Intense training in their specialty, usually from an early age, and;
2. An acute ability to reject wrong answers.
(I wish I could link the article, but SA does not publish free content online.)
I find this latter proposition very intriguing, and I believe it to be true.
It's another way of saying what Hemingway said about great writers -- that they need a "bulletproof ◊◊◊◊ detector". In other words, they have to be able to recognize bad writing. Which, in the end, amounts to rejecting wrong patterns.
According to Ross, people who are unable to effectively recognize and reject wrong options -- whether they be chess moves, chord progressions, passages of prose, or approaches to a putt -- get mired down in dead-end options and are unable to consistently make the correct choice.
I believe the same is true of critical thinking.
To be an effective critical thinker, one must be able to reject clearly wrong options, based on experience, evidence, and proper method.
If this is true, then it must be true that critical thinking is hampered by taking an infinitely open-minded position.
In other words, if you can't ever say "This is wrong," then you're not an effective critical thinker.
Seems to me that skeptics should be able to say without reservation that, for example:
* Ancient flat earth theory is wrong.
* Leprechauns don't exist.
* The Nazis intentionally murdered millions of Jews and others.
* 9/11 was not an inside job.
If anyone is interested in discussing this topic, I'll try to find excerpts of the original article to cite, or other linkable references to the research cited in the article.
Among these were:
1. Intense training in their specialty, usually from an early age, and;
2. An acute ability to reject wrong answers.
(I wish I could link the article, but SA does not publish free content online.)
I find this latter proposition very intriguing, and I believe it to be true.
It's another way of saying what Hemingway said about great writers -- that they need a "bulletproof ◊◊◊◊ detector". In other words, they have to be able to recognize bad writing. Which, in the end, amounts to rejecting wrong patterns.
According to Ross, people who are unable to effectively recognize and reject wrong options -- whether they be chess moves, chord progressions, passages of prose, or approaches to a putt -- get mired down in dead-end options and are unable to consistently make the correct choice.
I believe the same is true of critical thinking.
To be an effective critical thinker, one must be able to reject clearly wrong options, based on experience, evidence, and proper method.
If this is true, then it must be true that critical thinking is hampered by taking an infinitely open-minded position.
In other words, if you can't ever say "This is wrong," then you're not an effective critical thinker.
Seems to me that skeptics should be able to say without reservation that, for example:
* Ancient flat earth theory is wrong.
* Leprechauns don't exist.
* The Nazis intentionally murdered millions of Jews and others.
* 9/11 was not an inside job.
If anyone is interested in discussing this topic, I'll try to find excerpts of the original article to cite, or other linkable references to the research cited in the article.
