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comment by user-inactivated
user-inactivated  ·  3152 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: How to think for myself and how to become a more critical thinker?

    Note that in a lot of cases, the answer is nothing more than "because that's the way we've always done it (or, we all implicitly agree to do it)."

Reasons for doing stuff are never that simple: there's always an underlying cause. Why do we stop at the red light? Because it's part of the order of the road, induced implicitly by the law of the government. Why do we need order on the roads? Because an orderly society is much easier to run and service: when people abide by the law, you can expect them to act in certain ways, which are, most often, designed to not hurt other citizens and/or their interests. Why do we need to protect their interests?..

And so on. Such an analysis is superior in that it both provides more information and allows for deeper research on the subject. Granted, not many subjects deserve such a research in the first place, but as long as you train, you can - and should - use this on everything you might gaze upon. Once you're settled on the general idea and critical thinking becomes a reflex, it's better if you drop constant analysis and let your background processes/subconsciousness/intuition/gut learn.





user-inactivated  ·  3151 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Incidentally that's one of my favorite analogies for Libertarianism.

"A Libertarian is someone who comes to a stop light in the middle of nowhere and decides not to wait for it to change."