Critical Thinking…
Austin Energy’s Value of Solar Study presentation the other night drove home to me how few people actually think critically about almost any issue. A few of my fellow commissioners showed a strong grasp of the issues and asked penetrating questions. Nonetheless, almost all of this process demonstrated poor critical thinking skills from almost everyone.
This discussion on critical thinking would help all of us.
Here is its summary:
It is naive to expect social-science education, natural-science education, or education in general-at least in their present forms-to elevate critical thinking to something more than a pedagogical fashion that everyone applauds but few conceptualize very deeply. This leaves the skeptical community. We identify ourselves as champions of science and reason. But this is a broad mandate. We should avoid concentrating our skepticism too narrowly on the realms of superstition, pseudoscience, and the supernatural-for the ultimate challenge to a critical thinker is posed not by weird things but by insidiously mundane ones. If we hope to realize the promise of critical thought, it is important that skeptics affirm a multidimensional definition of critical thinking — reasoning skills, skeptical worldview, values of a principled juror — that exempts no aspect of social life.