Saturday, January 15, 2011

a little reminder about critical thinking

as i a half nuclear scientist, i have some degree of critical thinking and i use it almost everywhere in my life. and i hope, ordinary people, especially when reading newspapers and chinese. in the matter of fact, the knowledge level of chinese is high but the critical thinking is low.

the basic is really simple, well, the simple thing is the hardest thing to do, like changing your habit.

questioning on relationship, on the reason for cause and consequences. 


for example, does the background of a politician really that important? is the honestly of a politician is a must? people always demand many criteria on a position. But most of it, only have statistical relation but not a logical relation. people believe horoscope affect their life, they sure there are some relation between the position of star and fate, but they don't know that it is just a statistical relation, not a logical one.

what is logical relation? a physical law is a logical, a math theorem is logical, which is undeniable, inescapable that if A happened, B must follow.

what is statistical relation? the relations are based on statistic, like "Starbucks coffee is tasty" means it is tasty for most people, base on large number of sample. but it does not mean it MUST tasty. that is the different. and by the way, in this special case, "tasty" or not is really personal. another example is "it is 50% that tmr is sunny." that does not mean tmr must sunny, but it is just a chance. when talk about chance, that lead to another blog to explain. since there are at least 2 scientific ways to define what is chance.

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