Uncritical Thinking

[Guest guest]

Members may enjoy reading the following, which one of the

Supertraining members posted sometime ago:

------------

<<<Actually, there is a price to pay for the toleration of uncritical

thinking. I will quote Gilovich here since I think he puts it

better than I could. This is an excerpt from " How We Know What Isn't

So. "

" WHY WORRY ABOUT ERRONEOUS BELIEFS?

It is a great discredit to humankind that a species as magnificent as

the rhinoceros can be so endangered. Their numbers thinned by the

encroachment of civilization in the first half of this century, they

now face the menace of deliberate slaughter. In the last 15 years,

90% of the rhinos in Africa have been killed by poachers who sell

their horns on the black market. The horns fetch a high price in the

Far East where they are used, in powdered form, to reduce fevers,

cure headaches, and (less commonly) increase sexual potency. As a

consequence of this senseless killing, there are now only a few

thousand black rhinos left in Africa, and even fewer in Asia and

Indonesia.

Unhappily, the rhinoceros is not alone in this plight. Six hundred

black bears were killed in the Great Smoky Mountains during the last

three years, their gall bladders exported to Korea where they are

thought to be an effective aid for indigestion (bears, the logic

runs, are omnivores and are rarely seen to be ill). To understand the

severity of this slaughter, it should be noted that the entire bear

population in the Great Smoky Mountains at any one time is estimated

to be approximately six hundred. A recent raid of a single black-

market warehouse in San Francisco uncovered 40,000 seal penises that

were to be sold, predictably, for use as aphrodisiacs. The Chinese

green-haired turtle has been trapped to near extinction, in part

because the Taiwanese believe that it can cure cancer. The list of

species that have been slaughtered in the service of human

superstition could go on and on.

I mention these depressing facts to provide an unconventional answer

to the familiar questions of " What's wrong with a few questionable

beliefs? " or " Why worry about a little superstition? " This senseless

killing makes it clear that the costs of our superstitions are real

and severe, and that they are paid for not only by ourselves but by

others - including other species. That our mistaken beliefs about

aphrodisiacs and cancer cures have brought a number of species to the

brink of extinction should challenge our own species to do better -

to insist on clearer thinking and the effort required to obtain more

valid beliefs about the world. " A little superstition " is a luxury we

should not be allowed and can ill afford.

Of course, there are other, more conventional answers to this

question of what is wrong with having a few questionable beliefs,

answers that focus more on the costs to the believers themselves. The

most striking are those cases we all hear about from time to time in

which someone dies because a demonstrably effective medical treatment

was ignored in favor of some quack therapy. Consider the fate of 7

year-old Rhea Sullins. Her father was once president of the American

Natural Hygiene Society, which advocates " natural " cures such as

fasting and the consumption of fruit and vegetable juices in lieu of

drugs and other conventional treatments. When Rhea became ill, her

father put her on a water-only fast for 18 days and then on a diet of

fruit juice for 17 more. She died of malnutrition at the end of this

regimen. I trust the reader has read about a number of similar cases

elsewhere. Is there anything more pitiful than a life lost in the

service of some unsound belief? As the tragedies of people like Rhea

Sullins make clear, there are undeniable benefits in perceiving and

understanding the world accurately, and terrible costs in tolerating

mistakes.

There is still another, less direct price we pay when we tolerate

flawed thinking and superstitious belief. It is the familiar problem

of the slippery slope: How do we prevent the occasional acceptance of

faulty reasoning and erroneous beliefs from influencing our habits of

thought more generally? Thinking straight about the world is a

precious and difficult process that must be carefully nurtured. By

attempting to turn our critical intelligence off and on at will, we

risk losing it altogether, and thus jeopardize our ability to see the

world clearly. Furthermore, by failing to fully develop our critical

faculties, we become susceptible to the arguments and exhortations of

those with other than benign intentions. In the words of Jay

Gould, " When people learn no tools of judgement and merely follow

their hopes, the seeds of political manipulation are sown. " As

individuals and as a society, we should be less accepting of

superstition and sloppy thinking, and should strive to develop

those " habits of mind " that promote a more accurate view of the

world. "

-----

Sloppy thinking carries over into our health care system. A nurse on

this list made the following comment to me:

" I can hardly speak to nursing colleagues and the general public in

social gatherings when they go on and on about herbal supplements

that cure this or that. It is disgusting when even nurses don't

remember scientific process. I remember in nursing school one of my

teachers would say, " who can answer the question without an " I know

somebody who " answer. That made it clear that opinions without double

blind studies or critical thinking were not welcome in her class. "

Sloppy thinking is not something that we should tolerate. Is it

something we can eliminate? No. Will there always be " lazy " minds

that are not willing to think critically? Yes. But that doesn't mean

we shouldn't make the effort to improve the minds of ourselves and

those around us.>>>

=============

Carruthers

Wakefield, UK