Poor Critical Thinking

Post Reply New Topic

I find that I find it very difficult to go through different alternatives to a situation. I also find it hard to question things. I can only judge things by looking at them through rules I already know. If they go against the rules, then I'll be critical. However, with complex situations, I find it very difficult to make any judgements whatsoever.

I'm asking this because I've met two people with Asperger's who are very critical. They see all these different possibilities to things that would never strike me before. And again, I find it difficult to take my own stance. I usually listen to people's points of view, see which one I agree with the most, and then if someone else asks me about my stand on something, I end up repeating their ideas or even paraphrasing them.

I've also read that people on the spectrum are very opinionated about things, which is certainly not true about me, unless it is a subject I've been focusing on for a very long period of time. And even then, I often have trouble conveying my opinion of something to others, even though I've got it formed in my mind somehow.

Is anyone else like this?

If you don't mind my asking...do you have more trouble forming or expressing an opinion if you hear someone else's opinion before you make up your mind?

For me, that makes a huge difference. I'm usually pretty opinionated and I always think critically about academic things. But in certain sorts of social or practical situations where I don't feel very confident, if I don't already know what I think, I find that I agree with whoever I'm talking to because I can see things from their point of view as they're saying it. It's only later, thinking over the conversation, that I realize, "wait a second...I was overlooking a lot of things, and I don't agree with them after all!" Probably drives other people crazy, lol, and I'm always thinking after the fact, "I should have said blah blah blah." I seem to be able to empathize and enter into someone else's perspective, but I don't have the working memory to simultaneously process their perspective, think critically about it, and figure out how to respond. Diagnosis is NVLD rather than AS, FWIW, so YMMV.

I was told by someone that I seemed to have poor verbal skills, and later in college I found the English majors annoying with the way they would lord their supposedly superior critical thinking skills over me. Then I found something real, something that made sense, and I learned skills with physics, engineering and math, from courses not typically taken by the English majors. Critical thinking skills can be developed when a person is given something real to work with. In some cases, cultural exposure can lead to development of critical thinking skills when social experience comes up short.

I guess for me, if I learn about something from someone, then it would probably already come with their bias. So, it's possible that this is true.

It might be a matter of age and a lack of knowledge. I can have a strong opinion on something if I can compare it with something else and see the disparities. For example, I can make conclusions about what needs to be improved in a model if I see that the model is not achieving its supposed purpose very well. However, in order to do that, I need to compare it to another mechanism/model that works similarly. Otherwise, I cannot have any opinion on it.

The reason for my asking this is that I've just had a discussion with one of these two very critical people I know yesterday. He told me that I'm not as critical as he thought I would be since I've sent him something that he instantly criticized, and I didn't.
It might be that I'm not very confident about my own opinions, given that I've always had very low self-esteem as a kid. It might also be that I see that something is wrong about one individual thing, but cannot spontaneously make a thorough enough analysis to make conclusions about the whole thing.

There's something I've remembered today that I was very opinionated about, and that was the use of pesticides on lawns. I remember reading clearly that using pesticides is prohibited, and then walked by a residence where there was a pesticide sign on the lawn. I knocked on the door of that residence, asked about why they used pesticides, and then the owner was called up and I started arguing with him. That was back when I was in grade 7, though. I don't know what happened to me since then, but I'm not as passionate about issues anymore. Maybe there's just too much going on in my mind nowadays.

So I guess that's the problem of not having enough exposure to the practical side of things. I might be spending too much time remembering facts by rote, and not enough time actually applying this material to real life. No wonder I've always felt that I learn more during the summer than during school time, because during the summer, I have the freedom to work through everything at my own pace, by my own means, and indulge myself in one specific topic so that there are no constant switches and disconnects in the thought process.