Critical Thinking, An Essential Skill for Global Issues and the Emerging WRSC Knowledge Base - PMD Vol.01 #007

Submitted by pmd on

Critical Thinking, An Essential Skill for Global Issues and the Emerging WRSC Knowledge Base

Examples of the art and science can be found in many places on the Internet today.  (For example: http://austhink.com/critical/pages/teaching.html)

What caused this post was a presentation at a recent Libertopia, a convention of alternative thinkers, expecially in the political arena.

The talk by Sharon Presley, A Critical Thinking Workshop for Libertarians, brought up several different topics of interest, which I ask the reader to explore at the site that Sharon is the Executive Director for: http://www.rit.org.

So, I invite you to explore, and enjoy this challenge:  How would you bring these critical thinking skills to bear on the work of the WRSC? Every other avenue in your life?

:) :)

PMD

Comments

It's hard to have critical

Submitted by Tim Sallume on

It's hard to have critical thinking.  We live in a society that is very much based on quick, easy solutions.  And so much of the WRSC is long-term social planning and retooling infrastructure.  There is also a component of, for lack of a better term, daydreaming.  Because the solutions are not easy, and not straight-forward.  There is a need (at least in my opinion) to not just explore as much of the solution space as possible, but to push the boundaries and to push assumptions.

That is a problem.  Most organizations are not designed for exploration and certainly not the exploration of basic "everyone knows" assumptions.  Netscape did not try to beat Microsoft on its terms, it redefined the game.  Instead of being the best operating system, it made the best browser and made it span multiple systems.  It required everyone else to catch up to them.

I find it very frustrating trying to daydream.  I had lots of ideas, and as my father used to say, "There are no bad examples, only good examples of doing things badly."  And perhaps a majority of my ideas were of the latter instead of the former.  But I felt I was alone in my pursuit to evaluate the hows and whys and any analysis.  Even worse, a lot of research seemed to wag the dog.  Proving that nuclear is bad and researching necessary data to prove that conclusion.*  Showing that a certain country that is in the process of going solar that going solar was a good idea.

I have to say, that I've given up on critical thinking for the most part.  I try exceptionally hard if I'm asked to give my opinion, that it is based on facts and label my assumptions correctly and keep track of where I got what information.  But it is so rarely asked and even rarer actually wanted.

 

* Not to say that the current way that we do nuclear is good.  But since there are experimental ways of doing nuclear that are supposedly much safer and better, I would hope that if we were to continue using nuclear that we would do so using the new and safer technologies (if proven to live to their claims) rather than the old ones.