Tips For Thinking Rationally?
How to transcend our biases and go beyond groupthink.
All humans must deal at one time or another with misdirected thinking built on the foundations of cognitive bias. Though this happens to all of us, many seemingly intelligent people may combine so many different biases that they can articulately state ideas that on the surface seem rational but when viewed a bit closer are irrational, improbable, and violate the basic rules of statistics, logic, and critical thinking (deductive, inductive, adductive).
Many individuals who are trapped in Idea Prisons build on foundations of cognitive bias and will do everything they can to support a concept that any truly logical thinker can see is flawed. In spite of this, the person who possesses those flawed ideas will hold onto them at all cost, cherry-picking facts, organizing low-hanging fruit, and other approaches all for the purpose of supporting an argument that is possibly correct but according to strongly objective statistical analytics unlikely so. In the end, these flawed ways of thinking can lead to frustration, anxiety symptoms, and stress vulnerability, and intellectual and social isolation.
“A truth that’s told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.”― William Blake, Auguries of Innocence
