what is critical thinking?
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My simplistic take is that critical thinking should try to ignore what our emotions want us to believe and to seek rational, logical truth, even if it leads to an answer we don’t want to accept. I don’t think someone can think critically without being open minded.
I think the most frustrating examples of people thinking uncritically is when you’re talking with a partisan Democrat/Republican and their first reaction to criticizing something their side did wrong, is to immediately say something like, “Well, the Christian Nazis/Libtard Nazis” did X WORSE!” and then close the discussion as if pointing out the other side does crappy things too excuses the poor behavior of their chosen political religion.
Sadly, this happens on Reddit far too often. Especially early on in a thread when the emotional argument gets promoted to the top, and the rational argument gets downvoted. Eventually good responses do tend to eventually make their way to the top, but for most heavy users of reddit, they’ve already had their biases confirmed and have moved on. When rational comments get grouped in with troll comments in the “Controversial” area, then non-critical thinkers assume the rational argument is also nonsense. Which then, unfortunately, creates a foundation of assumption that leads to, for the lack of a better term, religious thinking that can apply to secular thought as well.
Edit: My belief is that “wisdom” is the happy medium between pure logic and pure emotional thought. You very often need both to see the objective truth.
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