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What's the first rule of critical thinking?

Not to try and water it down to trite truism.

"Assume nothing" is fine if you're intellectually honest, not so much if you go "Durr... durr I'm not going to just ASSUME that water is wet (prove it to me again LOL) or that the universe doesn't operate under random dream logic or that the only methodology that has ever given us useful information is more likely to do so in the future than other methods."
 
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JoeMorgue said:
Not to try and water it down to trite truism.

"Assume nothing" is fine if you're intellectually honest, not so much if you go "Durr... durr I'm not going to just ASSUME that water is wet (prove it to me again LOL) or that the universe doesn't operate under random dream logic or that the only methodology that has ever given us useful information is more likely to do so in the future than other methods."
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You're right, assuming nothing has its limits, and you have to know which assumptions are worth looking into.

Maybe the first rule should be, assume nothing, except the obvious, like water is wet.

I'm just sick and tired of reading comments on MSN sites that state everyone in the hospitals (taking up beds) are all vaxxed without any sources to back them up.

Blanket statements like that are usually wrong and stupid to begin with.

Just ranting, sorry.
 
AmyStrange said:
You're right, assuming nothing has its limits, and you have to know which assumptions are worth looking into.

Maybe the first rule should be, assume nothing, except the obvious, like water is wet.

I'm just sick and tired of reading comments on MSN sites that state everyone in the hospitals (taking up beds) are all vaxxed without any sources to back them up.

Blanket statements like that are usually wrong and stupid to begin with.

Just ranting, sorry.
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Where on Earth are you reading that? :boggled:
 
I remember learning the first rule when I started posting here. It had something to do with the Cobb salad doing a cartwheel and everyone blamed Lisa. Maybe that will help your research.
 
AmyStrange said:
You're right, assuming nothing has its limits, and you have to know which assumptions are worth looking into.

Maybe the first rule should be, assume nothing, except the obvious, like water is wet.

I'm just sick and tired of reading comments on MSN sites that state everyone in the hospitals (taking up beds) are all vaxxed without any sources to back them up.

Blanket statements like that are usually wrong and stupid to begin with.

Just ranting, sorry.
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Oh just right into the anti-vaxxer crazy skid without a blinker. Okay, the plot thins. Really should have read between the lines there.

No you're not ranting, you're wrong. Dangerously slow, or at least you're putting on the persona of such.
 
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AmyStrange said:
You're right, assuming nothing has its limits, and you have to know which assumptions are worth looking into.

Maybe the first rule should be, assume nothing, except the obvious, like water is wet.

I'm just sick and tired of reading comments on MSN sites that state everyone in the hospitals (taking up beds) are all vaxxed without any sources to back them up.

Blanket statements like that are usually wrong and stupid to begin with.

Just ranting, sorry.
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Gord_in_Toronto said:
Where on Earth are you reading that? :boggled:
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In the comments on MSN?
 
I dislike all the versions of the "If I know a lot then I know I really know nothing" thing. It's too much just pointless reductionist surface level paradoxing parading as wisdom and it always turns into the side who is talking out of their ass trying to act like not knowing what they are talking about is somehow a point in their favor.

It's not like technically untrue but the actual point it's making (i.e. as you learn more your awareness of other things still to be learned increases) almost always get lost amongst the "This means people who speak with earned expertise or put effort into know what the **** they are talking about are wrong LOL" usages.
 
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I don't think even a critical thinker could make the morning coffee and shovel the driveway if they started with the proposition that one shouldn't make assumptions. Is there a paper in the box? Will the sun rise today? The boundary between inductive logic and assumption is a bit fuzzy, but in any case, we'd bog down intractably if we did not settle for assumption at times.

You don't need to discard your assumptions, only to remember that that's what they are, and be gracious when they turn out to be wrong.
 
Gord_in_Toronto said:
Where on Earth are you reading that? :boggled:
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Like I wrote, on the MSN sites.

To be exact, when I open my Edge browser, I get a page of news items. Almost every news item has its own comment section.

This is the link:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news

Many of the stories (when you open the link) has a comments section in the headline box at the top (For example: 100+ Comments in the ETA link below)

ETA: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/cana...ger-in-u-s-headlines/ar-AATzuiu?ocid=msedgntp

Trust me, there are a lot of idiots who post there.
 
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JoeMorgue said:
Oh just right into the anti-vaxxer crazy skid without a blinker. Okay, the plot thins. Really should have read between the lines there.

No you're not ranting, you're wrong. Dangerously slow, or at least you're putting on the persona of such.
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Whatever, dude.
 
ahhell said:
In the comments on MSN?
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To be exact, when I open my Edge browser, I get a page of news items. Almost every news item has its own comment section.

This is the link:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news

Many of the stories (when you open each news link) has a comments section in the headline box at the top (For example: 100+ Comments in the ETA link below)

ETA: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/cana...ger-in-u-s-headlines/ar-AATzuiu?ocid=msedgntp

(Now the freakin news site above has almost no comment section for almost none of the stories, except the one I linked to.)
 
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bruto said:
I don't think even a critical thinker could make the morning coffee and shovel the driveway if they started with the proposition that one shouldn't make assumptions. Is there a paper in the box? Will the sun rise today? The boundary between inductive logic and assumption is a bit fuzzy, but in any case, we'd bog down intractably if we did not settle for assumption at times.

You don't need to discard your assumptions, only to remember that that's what they are, and be gracious when they turn out to be wrong.
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Well said. Thank you.
 
The first rule of critical thinking is that anyone who disagrees with you cannot possibly be doing it too. Remind them that this is supposed to be a skeptic site.
 
ahhell said:
In the comments on MSN?
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Yes I missed the "comments" part. I read it as the MSN making the claims. "comments" on every site just seem to bring out and amplify he crazies. I long ago stopped bothering with a rational response. :(
 
AmyStrange said:
Like I wrote, on the MSN sites.

To be exact, when I open my Edge browser, I get a page of news items. Almost every news item has its own comment section.

This is the link:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news

Many of the stories (when you open the link) has a comments section in the headline box at the top (For example: 100+ Comments in the ETA link below)

ETA: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/cana...ger-in-u-s-headlines/ar-AATzuiu?ocid=msedgntp

Trust me, there are a lot of idiots who post there.
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As I said above I misread your post. My apologies. :o
 
My first rule is to be more skeptical about anything I emotionally want to be true. My career was designing things that improved on the state of the art. This involves many ideas and some of the more compelling ones were dead ends. I learned early on to focus on the ways an approach could fail and design tests to uncover flaws in my understanding.

I evaluate other information based on how congruent it is with my math and science background. When evaluating things significantly out of my expertise, I evaluate those parts that I am knowledgeable about and make a risk estimate on the overall paper. If interesting, I look for other papers with a different take. Over time one builds up a base of what makes the most sense.

I don't seek agreement or winning arguments. Neither of those increases my understanding of the World.
 
marting said:
My first rule is to be more skeptical about anything I emotionally want to be true. My career was designing things that improved on the state of the art. This involves many ideas and some of the more compelling ones were dead ends. I learned early on to focus on the ways an approach could fail and design tests to uncover flaws in my understanding.
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That's a good start, especially for someone who may be less interested in formally learning common skeptical ideas, or trying to apply it more universally. It offers a rule of thumb, that if some claim has strong emotional notes for you, it is more important to examine it carefully. If more people did only that, we'd be a lot less easy to fool or manipulate.
 
marting said:
My first rule is to be more skeptical about anything I emotionally want to be true. My career was designing things that improved on the state of the art. This involves many ideas and some of the more compelling ones were dead ends. I learned early on to focus on the ways an approach could fail and design tests to uncover flaws in my understanding.

I evaluate other information based on how congruent it is with my math and science background. When evaluating things significantly out of my expertise, I evaluate those parts that I am knowledgeable about and make a risk estimate on the overall paper. If interesting, I look for other papers with a different take. Over time one builds up a base of what makes the most sense.

I don't seek agreement or winning arguments. Neither of those increases my understanding of the World.
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gnome said:
That's a good start, especially for someone who may be less interested in formally learning common skeptical ideas, or trying to apply it more universally. It offers a rule of thumb, that if some claim has strong emotional notes for you, it is more important to examine it carefully. If more people did only that, we'd be a lot less easy to fool or manipulate.
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I like it too. Makes much better sense than what my original thought was.

Thank you.
 
Question everything and demand evidence, but don't go all cogito ergo sum about it either.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Not to try and water it down to trite truism.

"Assume nothing" is fine if you're intellectually honest, not so much if you go "Durr... durr I'm not going to just ASSUME that water is wet (prove it to me again LOL) or that the universe doesn't operate under random dream logic or that the only methodology that has ever given us useful information is more likely to do so in the future than other methods."
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More to the point, don't treat an assumption as if it were fact.

Too many people make an argument without stating their assumptions. Where an assumption is obvious then it is ok to not state the obvious but if an assumption is left unstated (and by default assumed to be fact or that the argument doesn't depend on the assumption) then it can lead to very uncritical arguments.
 
psionl0 said:
More to the point, don't treat an assumption as if it were fact.

Too many people make an argument without stating their assumptions. Where an assumption is obvious then it is ok to not state the obvious but if an assumption is left unstated (and by default assumed to be fact or that the argument doesn't depend on the assumption) then it can lead to very uncritical arguments.
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I second this.

An unrefined free-thinker may think Just Asking Questions and doing everything they can to reject the answers is a legitimate mode of inquiry.
 
psionl0 said:
More to the point, don't treat an assumption as if it were fact.
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And equally, don't treat a fact as if it's merely an assumption.

Too many people make an argument without stating their assumptions. Where an assumption is obvious then it is ok to not state the obvious but if an assumption is left unstated (and by default assumed to be fact or that the argument doesn't depend on the assumption) then it can lead to very uncritical arguments.
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Many people assume an assumption is an obvious fact. But many people assume a fact is obvious when it isn't.

So I have to ask, where's your evidence that too many people make an argument without stating their assumptions? I'm concerned that you may simply be assuming the number is too high, and that this 'fact' is somehow obvious. It's almost certainly true that many people make an argument without stating their assumptions, so it's OK to assume this is a fact. But to state that too many people do it - while expecting us to assume what 'too many' means - is a very uncritical argument.
 
I do not know if this is the "first" rule or not, but one of my beliefs is that before anything can be believed you must have it from two reliable, independent sources.
 
Roger Ramjets said:
And equally, don't treat a proven fact as if it's merely an assumption.
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ftfy.

An unproven fact is just an assumption or theory.

Roger Ramjets said:
So I have to ask, where's your evidence that too many people make an argument without stating their assumptions?
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If your experience is different then I will withdraw the word "too" (it's subjective anyway).

However, I seldom see statements in this forum or elsewhere that are qualified. Prefacing statements with phrases like "It is believed . . ." or "According to [person or theory] . . ." or "Evidence suggests . . ." etc. is a relatively rare thing. It seems that in a lot of cases, the statement maker just wants to sound knowledgeable which is not helped if you qualify your statements.
 
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psionl0 said:
Case in point.
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And I'm still waiting for you to disprove that there's a dragon in my garage.

Watching the same dozen people have the exact same hissy fit every time anyone suggests "Hey maybe DON'T just think wrong things" will never fail to delight me.
 
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