People Are Sharing The Things They Blindly Believe 100%, And These 67 Thoughts Are Really Interesting

Some may argue that you should never let the facts get in the way of a good story. But we aren't living in a Hollywood movie. Nowadays, more than ever, it pays to remove your blinkers when walking through the corridors of life, and apply what's known as critical thinking. This means that instead of just blindly believing, you should question, analyse, interpret, evaluate and make a judgement about what you read, hear, say, or write.

"Good critical thinking is about making reliable judgements based on reliable information," explains the Monash University site.

According to the Foundation For Critical Thinking, we can hone our thinking skills. Just like we practice, or put in the time and hard work, to get better at things like sport, music or any other hobby, so too can we improve our critical thinking.

The foundation's site explains that there are six stages in our development as a critical thinker, and that we can only move through these stages if we a) accept the fact that there are serious problems in our thinking and b) begin regular practice.

The first stage is when we are unaware of significant problems in our thinking, i.e. The Unreflective Thinker stage. The second is The Challenged Thinker stage, or when we become aware of problems in our thinking. We move onto The Beginning Thinker stage when we try to improve but without regular practice.

Stage Four, say the experts, is The Practicing Thinker. At this point we recognize the necessity of regular practice. The Advanced Thinker is our fifth stage when we advance in accordance with our practice. And finally, after much hard work, we hit Stage Six: The Master Thinker. The foundation describes this as when "skilled & insightful thinking become second nature to us."

There are a number of ways we can improve our critical thinking on a daily basis. The foundation lists nine of them, including using “wasted” time, working through a problem a day, keeping an intellectual journal, dealing with our ego, redefining the way we see things, getting in touch with our emotions, and others.

When it comes to wasted time, there aren't many people that can say they haven't done so at one point or the other. "So why not take advantage of the time you normally waste by practicing your critical thinking during that otherwise wasted time?" asks the Foundation for Critical Thinking's website. "For example, instead of sitting in front of the TV at the end of the day flicking from channel to channel in a vain search for a program worth watching, spend that time, or at least part of it, thinking back over your day and evaluating your strengths and weaknesses."

According to the Critical Thinking Academy, not learning, or using, critical thinking can leave us open to fallacies, cognitive biases and poor reasoning.

"Our perceptions are imperfect, and we have many cognitive biases that we aren't aware of, or educated about. As a result our decisions are based on incorrect judgments and poor inferences arising from our cognitive biases," explains the academy. "A knowledge of cognitive biases helps us to guard against them."

Of course, not everyone believes that human beings should be critical thinkers. There's a whole group of people who are against schools teaching critical thinking... And then there are those who say that even if some teachers wanted to teach critical thinking, they wouldn't know where to start.

"The simple fact of the matter is that even though the term 'critical thinking' gets thrown around a lot in teacher education programs, most educators receive no direct training in how critical thinking is actually taught," explains The Critical Thinking Institute site. "So, we cannot blame educators for not teaching critical thinking."