Road to judgment (philosophy, Zen, Roman)

[coberst]

Road to judgment

A wealthy nation, just like a wealthy individual, can withstand great and numerous mistakes in judgment and still suffer no serious damage to its basic welfare. There is, however, a point in which this margin of safety is diminished to the point that the wealth becomes to small and the results of mistakes to large to withstand the damage suffered by mistaken judgment.

I suspect that such an insufficient margin of safety may be rapidly approaching the US. Due to the rapid acceleration of change and damage incurred by errors--because of technology that present and future circumstances portend--the US faces a need to make a rapid and fundamental adjustment in ability to make significantly better judgments.

In a liberal democracy like our own we cannot out-distance the general judgment capacity of the majority. If the US is going to make better judgments in the future then, by definition, our citizens must be able to make better decisions.

I consider CT for all citizens as the only avenue for improving the judgment of our society in general.

Everybody considers themselves to be a critical thinker. That is why we need to differentiate among different levels of critical thinking.

Most people fall in the category that I call Reagan thinkers—trust but verify. Then there are those who have taken the basic college course taught by the philosophy dept that I call Logic 101. This is a credit course that teaches the basic fundamentals of logic. Of course, a person need not take the college course and can learn the matter on their own effort, but I suspect few do that.

The third level I call CT (Critical Thinking). CT includes the knowledge of Logic 101 and also the knowledge that focuses upon the intellectual character and attitude of critical thinking. It includes knowledge regarding the ego and social centric forces that impede rational thinking.