A Crisis of Critical Thinking

As a toddler, my son loved trains. We sat by the crossing and waited for hours for trains. Once, as we waited, he proposed a way to make a train arrive: activate the gate. If we turned on the flashing lights and brought down the safety bar, he thought, the train would arrive. From his point of view, it made complete sense: the lights came first, the train came second. When I tried to explain it to him, he was incredulous: I just didn’t want to wait with him any longer. I didn’t know how to turn on the lights and I wasn’t willing to admit it. He WANTED that train to come and my rational (and correct) explanation did not satisfy him. I was powerless to do an experiment. 

I call this toddler logic. It makes its own kind of sense. Toddlers want what they want and they want it now! They are good at figuring out how to get it, even when their methods defy logic, reason, or common sense. 

P.T. Barnum said that there is a sucker born every minute. Like Barnum, there are people who have made the exploitation of toddler logic into a business plan. They are growing rich and powerful making people believe that all it will take for their train to come is to turn on the signal. 

Robocalls, phone scams, phish emails, and other schemes are flourishing. I have written about strategies to prevent falling victim to this kind of nefarious traps. It is a sad statement that being trusting and open can be used for harm. 

It is more than falling victim to fraud. We live in the age of alternative facts and false news. Conspiracy theories and misinformation are so prevalent that it is understandable that some even bright well-meaning folks are deceived, duped, and deluded – because other people make it very difficult to distinguish toddler logic from reasonable, rational thought. This is a crisis of critical thinking. 

What are the barriers to critical thinking? What habits of mind must we practice so we and the people we love do not fall down the skunk hole of toddler logic or worse? 

Critical thinking takes effort and time. Sometimes we don’t want to work that hard. We are not willing to do the heavy thinking that is almost always required to sift through the cacophony of misinformation. It is quicker, easier, and more satisfying to grab the first reasonable or appealing idea and not ponder further. Critical thinking requires intellectual patience and power.  

We must not confuse what we wish to be true with the verifiable facts. My son was invested in a train coming. He wanted to see a train. He was aware that, if we waited too long, I’d take us home and he wouldn’t get what he wanted.  Often, it is not our logic that drives our thinking, but our desires. We aren’t thinking; we are feeling. Because we want a specific answer or conclusion, we rationalize a way to get it. We know the sum of the problem and we fudge the numbers so they add up. 

Complexity is unavoidable, frightening, and not as attractive as simplicity. When the problem is too big, when we are overwhelmed by the complexity of the issue, we are tempted to simplify it. We reduce the problem and thus eliminate the pieces that are getting in the way of solving it – or getting us what we want. How many times have people framed issues with something like, “this seems complicated, but is really simple.” Few important issues are really cut and dried, and while we may argue over them, the problems that are likely to turn us into suckers are usually ones that, when simplified turn us into simpletons. 

Even when they deliver bad news, we must both evaluate and embrace authorities. Remember at the beginning of the pandemic when it seemed like everyone was an expert in medicine? I found myself asking “How do you know this?” and “Is there some research to back this up?” all the time! Yet, experts often disagree. We can’t be expert in everything and thus must rely on specialists to help us. It takes work and is highly complex to evaluate the authorities and weigh their opinions. Reading technical journal articles is both time consuming and not nearly as fun as reading novels! Wading through the opinions of specialists and authorities is like, well, root canal sometimes. Dismissing experts because of their expertise is dangerous; we may not like what the doctor tells us, but if we don’t listen to her, we might pay with our lives. 

Humility allows us to use error to our advantage. People like to be right and hate to be wrong. If we stick our neck out and make a statement, it is embarrassing when we make mistakes. Critical thinking requires error. It requires a process where we evaluate, decide, and then apply our thinking. Sometimes, oftentimes, that means we are wrong. Unless we have the humility and resilience to admit our errors, learn from them, and then change our thinking, we will be stuck. We will be like that person who will not take directions on the road trip. It will be very long, not where you want to go, and there will be no bathrooms.

Thinking is hard work. Critical thinking is complex and intricate work. Without it, however, we turn into P.T. Barnum’s suckers trying to lure trains with our signals. Some might come – but we will not have called them, even if we think we did.