In which Wolf pulls back the magician's curtain, and discovers the world.
In which Wolf pulls back the magician's curtain, and discovers the world.
Released April 23, 2021
Let's try a little experiment. I'm going to give you a sequence of instructions that you should try to do in your head. Obviously, I won't know what's going on in there... or will I?
Just do each step, and pause the audio if I get ahead of you. OK? Here we go.
Pick any number from 1 to 10. Good.
Now multiply that number by 9. Personally I hate doing math in my head, so pause the audio if you need time to do this step.
OK, now if you got a two-digit answer, then add the two digits together.
Now subtract five from that. Good.
The number you just got corresponds to a letter of the alphabet, where A = 1, B = 2, C = 3, D = 4, and so on. So, find the letter of the alphabet that goes with your number, and pause the audio if necessary.
Got it? Good.
Now pick a country whose name starts with that letter. No search engines, just think about it and pick one.
Good! Almost done.
Now notice the last letter of the name of that country, and pick an animal whose name starts with that letter.
Finally, notice the last letter of the name of that animal, and pick a color whose name starts with that letter.
OK, good! Now...
...one second...
...hmm...
I must have done something wrong here... because there are no orange kangaroos in Denmark.
Prejudice, ideology, bias, distortion, mindlessness: bad thinking is everywhere. The world needs heroes to lead the way to better, higher, more valuable ways of thinking. These ways are timeless, and never more needed than right now. Some claim that these timeless ways of thinking are now dangerous. To them I reply: BEWARE OF WOLF.
The vast majority of people who follow those instructions will arrive at the words "Denmark," "kangaroo," and "orange." Also, the vast majority of people will truly be surprised when it's revealed that the person giving the instructions knows this. If for some reason you didn't arrive at my expected answer, try it on a few friends and see what happens: you will be amazed at how reliable the results are.
This is a magic trick; specifically a feat of mentalism, or "mind-reading", and like all magic tricks, it is an illusion. Magical illusions are deliberately constructed to take advantage of our perceptual and cognitive blind spots. This trick starts by giving you a choice to make of your own free will: "Pick a number from 1 to 10." It relies on our common knowledge that the contents of our mind are private, and also our intuitive knowledge of statistics: that it's unlikely that a secret number arbitrarily chosen by one person can reliably be guessed by another. The next steps literally force you to compute the number 4. This is, in fact, what magicians call a force: providing the illusion of free choice while actually constraining it. Every step of this trick is a force, with the next steps relying on the understanding that we share a body of common knowledge: for instance that when asked to recall the name of a country starting with the letter "D", most people will think of Denmark, and not Dominican Republic or Djibouti. This forces the next step, as most people asked to think of an animal starting with "K" answer "kangaroo", and finally, most people asked for a color starting with "O" reply "orange."
This trick particularly plays on our common sense about statistics, because we're asked to make what (at first glance) are several arbitrary choices from large sets like the names of countries and animals, and we intuitively know that when small probabilities are combined, it results in smaller and smaller probabilities. For example, flipping a coin has a 50% chance of coming up heads, but the odds of two flipped coins both coming up heads are only 25%, and for each coin we add, the probability of all of them coming up heads goes down by half. And yet, after this sequence of apparently hard to guess choices, to our amazement the magician unerringly announces them, at least momentarily challenging our belief that the secrets inside our head really belong to us alone.
Magicians don't usually repeat a trick, because as entertainers they want to smoothly move you from amazement to amazement, from delight to delight. When we watch a good magician, we know we're being had over and over, but we don't care because it's harmless and fun. Magic tricks don't bear repeating, because the second time we watch an illusion performed we're more likely to engage in a deeper, more effortful form of thought about what's happening to us; a form of thought literally constructed to destroy illusions. A form of thought called Critical Thinking.
Most of us are quite practiced at not thinking critically. For example, when we watch a movie we're engaged in "willing suspension of disbelief." Not only are we letting go of the conscious knowledge that we're watching a rectangle of projected light on a wall, we're also letting ourselves believe, on some level, that things like superheroes exist and that given that premise, how things play out on the screen are more or less plausible. If you've ever found yourself thinking, "Wait a minute, that character would never do that," or "there's a huge hole in the plot of this movie," you're also engaging in critical thinking. In these cases, we learn to suppress our ability to think critically, because too much of that will destroy our ability to enjoy the movie.
But how do we know when to turn on our Critical Thinking abilities? And perhaps more importantly, why would we want to? If I told you that you lived in a world of magical illusion, where magicians are continually playing tricks on you to their advantage and often to your own disadvantage, you'd naturally be skeptical. You'd probably look at your life and think, "My life is pretty OK, so what are you talking about?" Like Neo living in the Matrix, our world of illusion is familiar and comforting, and we've got good reasons to stick with it. When we live our lives shielded from reality, told what to think and who are friends and enemies are, we are relieved of the burden of the consequences of our actions. We are told that the cause of our miseries is "out there," beyond our direct control, and that as long as we remain faithful to whatever orthodoxy we have subscribed, we are guaranteed a life of meaning.
Moreover, learning to think for yourself could be dangerous to your work and personal relationships, and a real epiphany might force you to rethink how you're living entire aspects of your life. That prospect can be truly scary, because it cuts to the very question of our personal identity: If I can change my beliefs, then who am I?
Personally, I can count ten life-changing shifts in belief— epiphanies— that I've undergone. Each of these shifts has literally caused me to rethink aspects of my identity and how I live my life. Each of them represents a "dis-illusion-ment", a loss of a once-cherished illusion that in some way defined me. I look back on my life before each of these shifts, and I know I would never choose to go back, even if I could, because these shifts have not only made me a different person from who I was, they've each made me a better person. At the time I was grappling with each of these epiphanies I often felt afraid and confused, doubting some of my most cherished beliefs. But I was moved forward by a more fundamental realization that I valued truth above all: both in the sense that I valued the truth of objective reality, and that I valued being true to myself. Each of these epiphanies presented itself to me as a deep chasm, but for me crossing them was not a "leap of faith." Looking back on the ones I've crossed, even the ones that in some way represented what some might call a "spiritual evolution," I clearly see that the bridge I used in every case was, in fact, Critical Thinking.
But even if you're not interested in life-changing epiphanies, you need to realize that powerful interests are continuously doing magic tricks at you in an attempt to arrest your attention, to tell you emotional stories that suspend your ability to think critically. They know your cognitive and perceptual blind spots and continuously use them to their advantage, regardless of whether it truly benefits you. They want you to think fast, not deep. Simply put: the media, politicians, corporations, and ideologues of all kinds want your power for themselves. And maybe, after deep thought and careful reflection, you want to lend your power as an individual to things you truly think will make the world a better place. But what is it that gives you the best chance at making the right choices? And, how do you know you are deciding for yourself, and aren't simply being forced by a magical illusion to believe that your action is truly your own decision? This is the purpose of Critical Thinking.
So before I talk more about what Critical Thinking is, I want to point out three things that Critical Thinking is not.
First of all, Critical Thinking is not perfect. Everything humans do is limited by various factors. Decision making is frequently limited by the complexity of the problem, by the mind's cognitive capability, by the amount and quality of information available, and by the time available to make a decision. In most cases, it's simply not possible to perform a full cost-benefit analysis of all possible courses of action, and in many cases there is no single "right" course of action, because all actions involve tradeoffs. The economist and cognitive scientist Herbert A. Simon called this understanding bounded rationality, and in 1956 he introduced the term satisficing, a blend of the words satisfy and suffice, to describe searching alternatives not for a "perfect" or "best" answer, but for one that is most acceptable given the limitations. In this light, Critical Thinking provides the tools to select a best enough course of action given all the constraints.
Secondly, Critical Thinking is not general intelligence. IQ tests measure a composite of various cognitive abilities that have been shown to have strong correlations: a person high in one ability is often seen to be high in others as well. There are numerous documented cases of Nobel Prize winning scientists who were hailed for their contributions to their specialized fields, and who went on to engage in deeply spurious pseudoscience in other fields. In another example, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a physician primarily remembered for creating the character of Sherlock Holmes: a man who could observe and reason critically about his observations to a level that others found uncanny. Doyle was himself an advocate for criminal justice, and helped to reverse more than one wrongful conviction in his time, so he certainly possessed Critical Thinking skills. And yet, he was also a firm believer in spiritism: the belief that people can talk with the dead, as well as fairies in the English countryside; a case that was later shown to be fraud. Doyle even believed that his friend, the renowned magician Harry Houdini, possessed true supernatural power. Houdini, concerned that Doyle was going around endorsing phenomena as supernatural simply because he couldn't think of other explanations, attempted to assure Doyle that everything he did was illusion. Doyle rejected Houdini's assurances, refusing to believe that Houdini's performances were mere tricks. Houdini eventually became an outspoken critic of spiritism, which led to a bitter falling-out between them. So, just as rich people aren't necessarily happier merely because of their wealth, smart people aren't necessarily good at thinking critically just because they're smart.
And third, Critical Thinking is not Critical Theory. While Critical Thinking upholds a set of classical values that include the idea that our decisions and actions should conform to objective reality, so-called Critical Theory is a set of academic doctrines that presuppose that decisions and actions should be in conformance with an idealization of what ought to be, particularly the ideal of fairness by equal outcomes, known as "equity", as distinct from the traditional liberal value of "equality", or equal opportunity under the law. One strand of Critical Theory divides the world into structures of power that include a class of ruling oppressors and (possibly numerous) classes of the oppressed. For Carl Marx, the oppressors were the upper and middle economic classes, or bourgeoisie, and the oppressed were the workers, or proletariat. To modern Critical Theorists, these concepts have progressed into social classes represented by traits such as race, gender, and sexuality. In this view, groups are held as villainous or heroic to the extent that their ancestral members have engaged in various forms of historical oppression, or been the victims of that oppression. This view nullifies the value of personal responsibility, and teaches people that their current misery is exclusively due to their inborn status as victims. Another strand of Critical Theory is due to the influence of postmodernism, which holds that truth is subservient to narrative, and that language itself is part of the power structures that hold oppressed classes in place. Thus, Critical Theory contains the purest modern manifestations of the Newspeak of which Orwell warned us, where terms that were once clear and useful, like "racism", have now become muddy and fraught, and terms representing new and questionable concepts like "equity" are chosen because they look good where the word "equality" used to stand. Critical Theory deliberately turns every aspect of language to the disingenuous use of ideologues who believe that all of society is but a zero-sum game of power, and those who control the narrative control the world. The result is that the goal and methods of Critical Theory are not about discovering and building on truth, or holding on to that which has lasting value, but are solely about tearing down existing structures of power by ruthlessly criticizing them; in essence holding a modern witch hunt for the "problematic" aspects of everything, and by asserting that literally nothing about modern society has any value worth preserving. Even the traits that Critical Theorists use to divide people from each other are held first to be immutable, then fluid, or both, shifting as needed to serve the narrative of tearing down power structures. At the core of Critical Theory is the magical belief that once those structures are gone, a new, utopian world will emerge that is free from all class distinctions. In classrooms where Critical Theory is taught, Critical Thinking is actively discouraged and even shamed as hegemonic. In short, Critical Theory is the exact opposite of Critical Thinking; it is an edifice of ideology designed to terminate independent thought.
So, what is Critical Thinking? Actually, it's several traits or behaviors you can think of tools in a toolbox, six of which strike me as particularly worth describing here. These tools are: the skills needed to think reasonably, a set of factual knowledge needed for a particular domain, a mindset that values truth and the courage to follow where it leads, a willingness to work at deepening one's understanding, the habit of reflection on the limits of one's knowledge and the quality of one's own thinking, and being able to be simultaneously open-minded and skeptical. Let's examine each of these.
The first tool in our toolbox is, "the skills needed to think reasonably" By this I mean what is in essence, scientific thought. This is the understanding of how to observe keenly, gather evidence, ask questions, perform tests and measurements, analyze the results, and draw supported conclusions. It is also the understanding of the interplay between what we can know through pure reason ("logic") and what we must learn by testing the world empirically. To be a good critical thinker, you have to know something about what good and bad arguments look like, and what good and bad evidence looks like. You don't need to be a scientist to engage scientific thought: you can use it on any claim that someone around you makes. All you have to do is ask yourself these questions:
The second tool is, "a set of factual knowledge needed for a particular domain." By this I mean a body of knowledge that has been proven useful in making decisions in a particular field. If you're trying to diagnose why a car won't start, the more you know about how cars work the better you are likely to be at figuring it out. As I mentioned earlier, people with deep knowledge in a field of hard science can make significant contributions, and then be entirely out of their depth when it comes to other areas; particularly where they are unaware of their own bias blind spots. A general knowledge of critical thinking can be applied to many disciplines, but without a good understanding of the particular discipline and the role one's own psychology plays in learning and interpreting facts, it's far more likely that our own ignorance will become our undoing.
The third tool is, "a mindset that values truth and the courage to follow where it leads." If you're the sort of person who values an uncomfortable truth over a comfortable lie, then you probably have the makings of a good critical thinker. For me personally, this gets back to my own low score on Trait Agreeability: while I do care about the feelings of others, for me truth is the higher value, at least where my own beliefs are concerned, but also where the beliefs of others impinge on my ability to lead my own life. The Gospels record Jesus saying, "The truth will set you free." But there's nothing recorded where he said that the truth will make you comfortable. Of course, we all want to be comfortable too, but the essence of living a values-based life lies in how we resolve the conflicts between our values: how we decide which takes precedence and in what situations. The truth, when you discover it, may make you very uncomfortable because you will then either have to discard it and live with knowing that truth really isn't as important to you as something else, or you will have to change and live by it, which as I mentioned can provoke a crisis around one's very identity.
The fourth tool is, "a willingness to work at deepening one's understanding." A lot of psychological research suggests that we possess a "dual process" system for decision making. System 1 thinking is fast, automatic, rule-based, highly available, and familiar. We use System 1 thinking where we have a lot of practical experience dealing with a situation, and it enables us to apply our prior knowledge effortlessly, and yes, even mindlessly. On the other hand, System 2 thinking is slow, deliberate, effortful, and requires a certain level of self-awareness to even recognize the situation calls for it. Skills that we learn using System 2 thinking can eventually become "a part of us" as System 1, and this is especially noticeable with physical skills like music performance and athletics. But this is also true with habits of mind: the way to become a habitual critical thinker is to practice critical thinking. One way to recognize opportunities to slow down and shift into System 2 thinking is to recognize when you feel emotionally "triggered." Emotions, including our fight-or-flight response, are part of our System 1 thinking. It's important to recognize that our ability to feel and act on emotions exists for good reasons. But unjustified emotion— that is, emotion not supported by reasons grounded in reality— is likely to result in bad decisions.
The fifth tool is, "the habit of reflection on the limits of one's knowledge and the quality of one's own thinking". This ability to reflect on our own thinking processes is called metacognition, and closes the feedback loop of learning. If you know something, and know that you know it, and especially know how you know it, then you are engaging in metacognition. I love to teach others what I know, partly because I enjoy seeing others deepen their knowledge of a subject that's dear to me, but also because it deepens my own knowledge of the subject. Teaching something often highlights where the limits of my knowledge lie; simple questions from someone I'm training can engage me in metacognitive questions and send me off to understand how I can know something well enough to actually explain it. In addition, knowing where one's limits and biases lie is an important aspect of intellectual humility, which is often regarded as a virtuous mean between arrogance on one extreme and lack of self-confidence or self-deprecation on the other.
Finally, the sixth tool is "being able to be simultaneously open-minded and skeptical." As goes the old trope, "Be open-minded, but not so so much that your brains fall out." To think critically, one must both be open to new input and perspectives, and also capable of distinguishing input that is useful from that which is useless, or harmful. This can be a double-edged sword, as people who are high in the personality trait Openness to Experience are often more able to successfully integrate new information into areas where they specialize, but they are also more likely to believe incorrect claims in domains where they are not as experienced.
Over his life, the magician and skeptic James Randi showed us that magicians have much to teach scientists about their biases and blind spots, because just as "it takes a thief to catch a thief," magicians are practiced at understanding and exploiting human blind spots. Complementing this, the famous physicist Richard Feynman said, "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool." Critical Thinking is the toolkit that enables us to make decisions that have the highest probability of desirable outcomes, and this is true in every domain: whether you are composing music, writing software, running a business, or managing your life.
Learn more about the world's premier critical thinking tool Flying Logic at FlyingLogic.com. Help spread the word by rating and reviewing this show on your favorite podcast platform. Discuss this episode at BewareOfWolf.com. And keep raising the bar, whether the world likes it or not.