A rabbit transfixed by headlights would be better off jumping left or right, than sitting there waiting to become road kill.
There is also ‘rule of thumb’, which involves making a highly uncalculated decision on the basis of similarity to past experience.
Like a maze, there can sometimes be more than one answer.
Incidentally I owe you a grudging apology, I was shocked to see that in the UK there is actually an ‘A’ Level in Critical Thinking
‘A’ levels are what you do about the age of 18 in order to get into University, in my days three goodish ones would do very nicely, nowadays people get ridiculous numbers - and are still rejected - on sound grounds.
“At any point in time, the best I can do is make a decision based on the information I’ve got.” And all that jazz…
Of course, that’s assuming people aren’t specifically doing something just to be stupid, which was coberst’s point. Teens will specifically make the wrong decisions just because, and then find themselves locked into that out of pride.
But, coberst, while your solution may very well be a solution to problems like this–it doesn’t do much good since the heart of the issue is that the people are ignoring their brain. You can’t ask people who are specifically being stupid to “hold off” on being stupid.
Well, I agree that there are many more miles to go but one has to start some where. We are dealing with something like a diamond in that there are multiple facets to be highlighted, examined, and made useful.
Better then to ask how to get people thinking then, period. Seems to be a bit more forward thinking than figuring out what they should think about if they ever did.
I suspect you cannot stop them from thinking except maybe with a 2X4 between the eyes.
Now if they want to have something worthwhile to think about I think they should find something that arouses their curiosity, develop a question about that matter, then go the the library and start reading books in an effort to answer their question. Once they start this process it will never end.
Coberst, you are overanalyzing a concept that is ridiculously simple. Of course there are more options to the vast majority of decisions in life than “accept” and “reject”. When the drive through jockey at McDonald’s asks what he can get for you, you don’t say “yes” and leave it at that.
You’re trying to make something binary that’s more akin to analogue. There aren’t just two or three, but a vast spectrum of options in all decisions. People can accept, reject, turn left, speed up, say “I’ll have the McNuggets”, TiVO the game instead of watching it live, hold, fold, raise, call, etc.
Drive through jockey: “Would you like to supersize that?” Coberst: "I neither accept nor reject your position. "
You’re the one who says that we need to do this because people aren’t thinking things through. I’m fine with either position, but you’re going to need to decide on which you mean if you want us to debate the issue.
But I see this yes/ no kind of thinking frequently at SDMB. It’s easy enough to say that “hold” (reserving judgment) is a desirable choice. But there are still many intelligent Dopers who choose close-minded skepticism rather remaining open-minded but unconvinced.
I disagree. I cannot think of anyone who knows even the slightest majority of everything. “Everything” would have to include such trivia as what song the music box on my desk plays. All of us are ignorant of almost everything. Even academics specialize.
How to get people to thinking about matters beyond the moment and the day-to-day conditions? Now there is the rub!
I suspect that thinking ‘out of the box’ is a rare happening in most of our lives. Probably because we have never thought that there is anything important existing outside of my box. Reading is the only way that I know of for a person to ‘see’ beyond the box.
I think that a person has to make a strong effort to step out side of the box. But once we have done it and then begin to let our curiosity take us we can quickly get the hang of it.
We might compare the turtle with the cat as each makes its way through the forest. The turtle ducks into its shell at the first encounter with an unknown while the cat explores everything within its perception. I think we need to become more cat like and less turtle like.
