Quality Thinking - Warning: Long Post Ahead

by Viviane 82 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  CalebInFloroda

  Wonderful and very informative/helpful post.

  If I may add: conclusions made by critical methods require validation by disinterested parties.

  This means while we can and should employ critical methods, we cannot come to final conclusions alone. Critical thinking needs confirmation, controls, and checks. Without these our views are little more than opinion.

  Confirmation by more than one disinterested party also prevents confirmation bias and promotes the inclusion of others and their unique gifts in producing valuable data.
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  Viviane

  You may add :)
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  Village Idiot

  I have to share this jewel from the Texas Republican Party platform of 2012. When you link to the PDF you can find this quote in the document by searching under "critical thinking".

  Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.
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  Terry

  I like the way Ayn Rand states it.

  Logic

  To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one’s thinking; to maintain a contradiction is to evict oneself from the realm of reality.

  No concept man forms is valid unless he integrates it without contradiction into the total sum of his knowledge.

  Logic is the art of non-contradictory identification.

  A contradiction cannot exist in the real world, only in man's description of it.
  
  
  
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  Village Idiot

  Ayn Rand:

  "No concept man forms is valid unless he integrates it without contradiction into the total sum of his knowledge.

  "Logic is the art of non-contradictory identification."

  Let's see. She accepted Social Security payments and Medicare benefits even though she was opposed to those programs.
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  azor

  I really enjoyed this post.
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  JeffT

  Good points everybody. For many, the problem is having been raised in a belief system that totally ignores epistemology - the science of how we know stuff. In Watchtower land the answer to that question is "because the GB says so." In this system, it is perfectly acceptable to say "When Jesus said 'this generation' he evidently meant two overlapping generations" without showing any evidence whatsoever.

  Some people never get over that sort of logic, nor do they learn how to determine the truth or falsehood of information presented by others. Some parts of the internet are wonderful, others are giving the WTBS a run for its money in the production of BS.
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  LisaRose

  It's funny you mention computing because I believe that learning to program is what helped me learn to think in a more logical way and eventually helped me realise the Watchtower was wrong. I did not go to college, but worked my way up from admin to auditing to systems analyst. I liked the challenge and pushed myself to learn new things.

  I started out with excel, which is a very simple version of coding, then simplified version of Cobol. I was mostly self taught, so it was a lot of trial and error. If your code didn't run or didn't give you the results you want, then it was wrong, so you had to figure out why. I think the experience changed the way my brain worked in a way, it's Boolean logic, very black and white. I also had to do a lot of reporting and learn to communicate to people in every part of the company, explaining very complex technical issues to non technical people, all very good experience in learning to think.
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  adjusted knowledge

  Lisa that is a good example. Coding has helped me think more logical.
  
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  ron rawson

  Aha!! As a dumbass myself for having been raised JDub, it often seemed to me that the JDubs use an unscientific method for drawing conclusions.....rather than gathering all evidence exhaustively and studying it to lead them to a conclusion, instead, their method seems to be draw a conclusion, then find means to support it. No common sense there, let alone any sort of thinking ---critical or otherwise.