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Thinking Critically Means Not Being Publicly Foolish

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Fake picture purporting to show rare alignment of planets with the pyramids of Giza

What’s wrong with this picture?

Seriously, you should be able to debunk this yourself, without looking anything up, right away, if you think about it.

If you know how and are willing to think critically.

Critical thinking happens after “Wow, neat,” and before “Let me Like/Share/Tweet this!”

What’s special about the picture? The planets are over the pyramids, but couldn’t you just figure out where to stand to do that almost any time? The apparent heights don’t match at all. The planets are in a nice line, but aren’t there a bunch of planets moving around the sky all the time? That’s probably not so rare. Internet hoaxes are common, so this is probably just that.

At this point, you could also check Snopes, but you know you probably needn’t bother. You haven’t proven anything yet, but you can tell the likelihood that the statement is true is pretty low.

If you won’t think critically, you will believe and repeat myth.

If you combine critical thinking with just a little bit of knowledge about reputable sites (yes, Wikipedia counts 99% of the time), you’ll be safe from believing myth. You’ll be able to be impressed by things which really are amazing.

Pop quiz: what if you saw this in your news-feed: a picture with the planets right at the tip of each pyramid and the caption “At midnight on 12/21/2012, the eyes of the Great Sphinx will be looking at this!”

Now, that would be a truly impressive claim. The details like the exact time, the more precise planetary positioning, and the fixed position and angle of the observer…that would be amazing! And there’s nothing inherently wrong about the statement on the face of it. But you should be able to dispense with it in about 30 seconds with a quick fact check. Hint: go here and just look…no need to read.

The best thing about thinking critically is that it gets faster and easier. Like any muscle, you can develop it, and the result is having a built-in BS detector. You use it like a filter, and your experience in life is more pleasurable, because there’s less noise in your FaceBook newsfeed, your Twitter feed, your email, or the ads you see.

Why Multiculturalism?

Got a question earlier, from a friend, as a response to my last post:

why would [we] give precedence to [celebrating other cultures] over efforts to celebrate what we have in common?

I’ll say this: we make special effort to celebrate our diversity because

  • it’s what makes us interesting,
  • because there’s often something to learn,
  • because celebrating what we have in common is all the richer in the context of our different backgrounds,
  • and finally because celebrating what we have in common happens without any effort. It’s easy to go bowling with your buddies who are mostly one race, political party, economic status, marital status, and age.

Doing anything else is always at least a little out of our comfort zone.

Facebook is only free because *you’re* the product!!

Perhaps you’ve heard that before. Perhaps you’ve seen this (hilarious) image:

Two pigs discussing why it's free to live in the barn.

Author unknown

But OH MY GOD relax! All that’s really being sold is a marketing profile of you. Never before in history have you ever been given so much in return for such information. Yes, before, it was obvious, when you filled out an entry form to win the beautiful car parked behind velvet ropes at the mall, that you were exchanging your address and phone number for a 1 in a million chance of winning the car. Now it’s not so obvious, but it’s the same thing and the service that Facebook provides is nothing short of amazing. Much better than a 0.0001% chance of winning a car.

So, yes, Facebook is free for perfectly capitalist reasons. It’s ok. Really.

All the other complaints in this article about how FB threatens to Zuck up the human race? They’re legit, but singling out Facebook is overreaching. These problems are the inevitable outgrowth of our increasingly connected technological environment. It was always going to be the case that we’d start to abuse that easy connectivity just as we abuse easy access to food. See Diseases of affluence on Wikipedia.

You might as well blame Cisco.

New Facebook privacy scare!

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Massive social network

from Rich Kid's Campus

I love social networking. Say what you will, it’s never been easier to keep in touch with friends and family.

As a technologist, I particularly love the “network” part of it. I’m really happy about the way the big companies have opened up their APIs, which allows third party developers to add all sorts of functionality that no one company, however large, could or would build on their own. I also roll my eyes when people complain that Facebook and other social networks are…GASP…exposing our personal information without our knowledge. Why? Because it’s not without our knowledge. You don’t even have to read fine print to understand that. Sharing personal information is the purpose of social networks after all. It does mean that people share more than they used to, and that can be embarrassing in ways that didn’t used to be possible, but I think it’s worth it.

Yet I’ve realized recently that I shouldn’t be quite so dismissive every time I see yet another “FaceBook Privacy Scare!” headline. There’s a valid point to the concerns about what happens to your data in social networks. Even though it should be obvious that saying/revealing/posting things on a free public site is by nature a public exposure, what isn’t obvious is that modern data-mining techniques have ramifications here that almost no one is truly prepared for. After all, sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic: Continue reading →

We Live In the Future

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Dan dressed as Neo from The MatrixI’m on a train from Washington, DC to New York, currently passing through Philadelphia. We’ll be at New York’s Penn Station in 90 minutes. I just looked up from the book I’m reading on my iPhone and saw a building with a sign on it: Penn Proton Therapy Center. Now I’m writing a blog entry on my iPhone. I don’t feel like spending a couple of dollars on 3G access (I live in Europe, so I’m roaming here) and WiFi hasn’t been installed on this train yet, so I’m writing this in the Notes app instead of directly to my blog, which is hosted in a data center in…er…I have no idea.

Stop and read that again. Only, this time, pretend you are the average human. Remember that the average human does not have access to the Internet and can’t get to this blog. In fact, the average human lacks running water.

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There’s no substitute for hands-on experience

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Imagine you’re building a car to spec. You can plan and design and draw and measure for weeks and months and build for more weeks and months.

AndSitting in a convertible, testing door and roof. 3 seconds after you sit in it for the first time, you will know whether the location of the ignition and headlight switch is obvious. 3 minutes into your first drive, you will know whether the steering wheel is too far away, whether the pedals have too much travel, and whether the rear headrests obscure your view out the back. 3 days into your ownership, you will know whether your elbow will spill your coffee when shifting into 2nd, 4th, and 6th gear, and whether you can adjust the volume without looking.

Even the technicians building the car would not easily notice these things. The audio engineer might hold the finished audio unit in her hands, but she’d have to work to imagine what it would be like to use while driving. Another technician can manipulate the transmission a hundred times, and never even know there will be a cup-holder behind it. After all, the interior designer only met with him to discuss the material and labelling on the shift knob.

Everyone on the team, the customer, the head engineer, the designers, and all the technicians, should try to sit in the car, in all the seats, many times during the process. What they learn will improve the functioning of all the components and their integration.

And if the production is delayed? A customer who can come sit in the car anytime he wants, and see and feel the progress, however slow, will be happier than one who has to sit through another presentation of what the car will be like when it’s finished.

One tiny action that will improve your life

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updated from the original article dated 8/24/2010

What gets measured gets managed.
–Dr. Peter Drucker

a tape measure

photo courtesy of gd365

This is an incredibly powerful statement. It’s why step one in any effort to lose weight should be to keep a food log…and it’s why that simple act is so often the turning point for people. If there’s any aspect of your life that is out of your control, or simply missing, you can make a great stride towards changing that fact simply by measuring it.

Do you feel you’re wasting your life away in front of the television or computer? Is your weight out of control? Do you smoke and wish you didn’t? Does being fit seem attractive, but getting there impossible? Start recording your behavior. Just doing it for a single 24 hour period will be illuminating. The knowledge you gain might encourage you to continue for a week, and then maybe three. If you do something consistently for 3 weeks, it becomes a habit.
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Welcome!

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Thank you for visiting!

I build collaborative analysis software systems, raise children, live overseas from my country of citizenship, and am a retired ballroom dance instructor. I blog as such.

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