Critical thinking? Are you good at it?

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I once scored highly on Critical Thinking which was the first part of an interview test.Unfortunately at the second part of the test,which had a time limit,my watch stopped and my mind went blank amid the disorientation

I think I'm very good at it. I'm very logical and I can tell fairly well if something makes sense or not. And if it's a matter of studying the biases that go into making certain statements, I'm good at that too, but it requires building up knowledge so you know which facts that are being used to come to a given conclusion are incorrect.

I'm not good at ferreting out people's intentions when they act illogically, on emotion alone, or insist on facts that simply aren't true and I don't understand why they are doing it, so I'm hopeless at figuring out when people get offended, or even when they're trying to offend me. which I often miss it., But if there's an issue that tends to leave other people confused that can be figured out by logic, I'm better than average at sorting it out. I have strong sense for inconsistencies, for instance if someone said one thing last week and is now saying another.

I am very good at critical thinking when I have the focus. As long as I can concentrate on what I am reading I can evaluate it for logic. If my oncentrtion is not good- no way LOL!

That has probably been my problem.

psh......no. Never was good at it either....everyone (teachers/parents/tutors) always commented on that I had to "work on" my critical thinking....I totally sucked at it, and to this day, have no freaking clue what it is....but I think it's better b/c no one says anything about it anymore, nor have I had school issues since elementary.

critical thinking is my stock and trade. Every cent I earned was for the use of my brainpower in a critical way.

ruveyn

Crippled thinking topic

Same here. I dreaded getting "critical thinking" questions in school. They were too difficult for me to answer.

I'm extremely good at it, but not perfect. I can detach myself from my own opinion and think objectively, but even at my best I'm only as good as the information I've got to process and that's never perfect either. I can put myself in someone else's shoes and get pretty close to why they think the way they do regardless of my personal opinion of their beliefs.

There are areas that I can't do it well, but I'm usually pretty aware of these blind spots and acknowledge them. My children are the most beautiful wonderful people in the world and I'm never going to be that objective about them.

Exceptionally good. I rationalize everything. I was trained a scientist and work as an engineer, so it is part of my everyday life.

It really sets me off when technical decisions are being made with human equation in mind. "We can't do that! What will so-and-so think!! !!" Err I don't give a crap? THIS is the best way to do this, and I don't care what Bob in marketing will say. He doesn't know anything about this and can't make a rational decision to save his life.

No. Critical thinking is my weakness, and my lack of it is something that has made me very vulnerable in the past. I'm slowly learning how to do it, though, because being able to question things is a must in order to be able to get through life independently.

An idea may strike you as being logical or otherwise, and as far as you are appealing to your own logical intuition, good luck. If you want to go beyond your own intuition, you would have to move through a stage of formalisation, and if, a big if, your formalisation is compelling, and the idea, formalised, turns out to be, let's say, a conjunction of a proposition and its negation, then, certainly, by this formalisation, the idea is now, supra-intuitively demonstrated to be illogical. However, you would have to argue independently for that formalisation, which is not an easy matter. Of course, if you think highly enough of your logical intuition, you will not need to dirty your hands with such public matters as outright formalisation.

On a more serious note, in my experience, a lot of people over-rate their logical intuition, which is often easy to demonstrate, once you lure them out from their intuitive castles in the air. Moreover, what strikes you as an intutively illogical idea, could, and I would contend, often IS a token of your misunderstanding.

I've had it up to here, with wannabee logicians who haven't even bothered to learn the rules of the game. Let's meet on the formal plane and see what shows up!


J

Sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't. Some things that are counterintuitive are actually true (or reasonable). However, the internet is overrun with blogs full of crap ideas. These crap ideas are intuitively illogical and I think, wrong. Wrong, as evaluated by critical thinking. I don't think this is my wrong conclusion based on misunderstanding them. The internet is full of nonsensical ranting from conspiracy theorists of every stripe and people with counterintuitve, illogical and just plain wrong ideas about literally every subject. You can go ahead and believe everything you come across on the off chance it might be true. I'll stick with critical thinking.

What with "wrong ideas"? Most of what I find on the net I don't understand, much less believe. Although to my lights beliefs are not fundamental. What matters, to my lights, is the kind of expectations beliefs bring about. A belief that generates expectations that do not come out, is not very useful.

Of course, I could climb right up on my tall horse, vaunting my own intuition, but I find intersubjectively controllable conclusions a whole lot more interesting, than knee-jerk judgement of "wrong ideas".

I by "idea" you mean the same as, say, "factual belief", there IS an abominable snowman or what not, a great many ideas are amusing, but ultimately innocuous. I do not base my behaviour on any "ideas" I come across on the internet. And I see very little difference between fantastic claims and fantastic counter-claims. Both take place on a childish plane inured to anything on the order of critical evaluation.

Fantastic claims, fantastic counter-claims, THAT's what social intercourse IS 99% of the time. Reasoned argumentation is an acquired taste, and requires years of practice.

I note in passing the presence of twin terms to "criticize" and to "critique", both of which, I take it, represent some kind of evaluation. At the 99% level, critical thinking is the kind of thinking of which the speaker approves


J

a typical housecat has better critical thinking facilities than i do.

I have fairly good critical thinking skills, from what I'm told. I usually have to be prompted to initiate their use though, unless it's something very interesting to me. xD