Critical Thinking and Humanist Values

You cannot think well unless you have a goal in mind. Having a goal requires you to have values.

The reason we try to think critically is so that we can make good decisions that will benefit us and hopefully others. I am a Humanist, so the framework in which I make my decisions is, good for me, good for my family, good for my society and good for the world in which I live. And yes, I do consider all of that when I make my decisions.

My point is that in order to make good decisions, we have to have some set of values that allows us to deem certain decisions good and others bad. Those are value judgements that require a value system.

Most of us make decisions by weighing the pros and cons. And again, that’s about what is good and what is bad and those are value judgements and we  have to have a set of values that help us make those value judgements.

Moral judgement isn’t enough though. We also have to know what is true. Here’s why. Moral judgements don’t occur in a vacuum. They are determined by what you think is true and false about the situation you are judging. If you mistakenly believe something is true that isn’t, your moral judgement will be flawed as well.

Humanism values critical thinking precisely because it helps us to not only organize and prioritize our values realistically, but also because it encourages us and reminds to base our decisions on what is true and to change our minds if we find out we are mistaken.  Our goal isn’t to be right or to be seen as right, but to do good.

And this brings us back to the question of what is good. Humanism bases our values on compassion. But it isn’t enough to have a value system, you also need to prioritize certain values above others so that when you have a tough decision to make you know what you consider to be ultimately good. In other words, what is your ultimate goal?  For me, as a Humanist, my ultimate goal or good is to live my life fully, love other people and leave the world a better place. This is what I aspire to.

Knowing what my ultimate good is helps me make difficult decisions precisely because when all other things are equal – I can use these goals as a way to decide which path to take and feel pretty good about it.

To learn more about how a Humanist combines compassion based ethics, critical thinking and personal responsibility into a holistic approach to life, consider taking Living Made Simpler at Humanist Learning Systems.

3 Strategies to Help you Make Better Decisions.

Three ways you can eliminate bias in your decision making process.

Question: 

Do you have to make important decisions all the time? How does one get better at making them, and feeling confident with their choice?

Answer: 

I always encourage people to do their best to make reality based decisions. The task is to try and eliminate confirmation bias and figure out whether what you think you know about something is really true or not.

Something might look good in a brochure or in a commercial, but until you see it in person, your judgment may be clouded by wishful thinking.

Here are 3 strategies I use: 

My mother always encouraged me to make pro and con lists – consider the benefits and the downsides to all my options and then use those as a guide to help me prioritize what is really important to me.  This works wonderful.

Sometimes you just have to give it a little time. If all things are equal in my mind and the pro and con list didn't help, I will often decide not to decide right now, if I have that luxury.  What usually happens is that my true preference becomes clear within a few weeks as my brain relaxes out of decision making mode and starts to contemplate what the future might be like. And it usually really likes one of the options. So – that’s what I go with. Again, I only use this method when I have no other way of making a decision or when I find I’m too confused to make a decision.

Finally, there has been some recent research that suggests if you don’t have a good reason for making a decision, you may be better making a random decision. So, if all things are equal – go ahead and flip a coin and see what happens.

Feel like you don’t make good decisions. Learn how to integrate your ethics and science into your decision making process with my Living Made Simpler Course:
https://humanistlearning.com/livingmadesimpler1/ 

Stop Making Bad Decisions

2 strategies to learn how to make better decisions.

We all make bad decisions. Some of us more than others.  Being the uber rational person I am (stop sniggering), have rationalized WHY it’s worth the effort to learn how to make better decisions.  Here it goes.  We all make a ton of decisions every day. These decisions add up.  It’s a numbers game really.  If we can make a slight improvement in our decision making process, the impact of that improvement, over the course of our life time will have a exponential effect on the quality of our lives.

Sure, any given decision might not have a huge impact on our lives, but the cumulative effect of all our decisions will.  Which is why it’s worth learning how to think better and make better decisions.

Which is why I loved this article by FastCompany – on 7 ways to make better decisions: http://www.fastcompany.com/3027160/work-smart/7-ways-to-stop-making-bad-decisions There 7 tips are:
1) Get better information (obvious good idea)
2) Avoid pitfalls (learn the logical fallacies and try to avoid them in your thinking – again – good advice)
3) Look at your history – don’t repeat mistakes
4) Check in with yourself (ie: don’t make decisions when  hungry)
5) Take care of yourself (don’t make decisions when tired)
6) Make time to think. (you have to practice thinking to think well)
7) Analyze well (ie: learn from your mistakes)

This is a great list – and it’s a long winded way of saying – learn how to think critically.

Here is my way to make better decisions.  I’m not saying don’t do the FastCompany way.  I’m just saying, my way will complement their way and you will have more fun at the same time.

Think of Three.

The biggest fallacy we fall prey to is the false dichotomy. We limit our decision making to either or scenarios.  Either we are awake or we are asleep. Either we eat in or we take out.  Either I date this person or that person.  Our natural tendency to think in duality hinders our decision making.

So the next time you find yourself thinking either or. Think of three.  What are you going to do for dinner, eat in, take out, or .. go out to dinner.  Maybe you can skip dinner and just have dessert!

The point of this is to expand your options so that you don’t limit your solutions to the most obvious choices. Once you open yourself up to the other possible solutions to your problem, you will often find that one of those other options is actually a really good choice and will give you the best chance of success.

The world is not black and white and you should not limit your decision making to only the black and white options.  Think of three and then maybe four or five and then choose the option you think is best given – what’s real, what’s moral and what’s likely to work.

This little trick is easy, it’s fun and it will definitely improve your decision making.

So, which decision making framework do you prefer?  Mine or FastCompany?  Or both – ok there is three again.

Applied Humanism

After you decide what you believe about life the universe and everything, you now have to figure out how best to live your life given what you believe. That’s where Humanism comes in.

It turns out that deciding whether you believe in a god, gods or no gods or some amorphous deity or, that you just refuse to even think about it and make a decision on what you think (the apathetic agnostic option), is the easy part.

Once you know what you believe, you now have to get on with the business of living life, hopefully, in accordance with your beliefs, or in my case, lack of belief.  How do we make decisions?  How do we live life fully? Heck, what do we mean by living life fully?

These are the hard existential questions that aren’t actually answered when you decide how you feel about the god/not god question. Which is why Humanism is so important. Because Humanism helps us to not only find answers to these questions, but the answers are REALLY satisfying and very practical on a day to day basis.

Yeah – it’s not as sexy as a good old god off – but that’s ok.  Because learning how to life your life in a way you can feel good about and that can do good for others, is a lifelong task.  We never stop learning.

So, how can Humanism help you?  Well, you can decide to be a good person. Just because.  You can decide to try and make your impact on others as positive as possible. Again, just because.  To have a positive impact requires you to make good decisions and that requires you to learn how to think well so that you can make good decisions.

Having trouble with interpersonal issues, Humanism can help you there too.  The other person is human, just like you are and they can’t read minds.  This means, you should be compassionate with them and stop assuming that just because they weren’t acting in a way you think is perfect doesn’t mean that they are a horrible person incapable of compassion.

Struggling with fears of death?  Yup, Humanism can help with that too.  You are going to die. Stop wasting what little time you have alive worrying about the inevitable and get on with living life to the fullest while you still can. And if you still can’t stop worrying, go seek professional help!  There is a reason why early Humanists were active in psychology.  We realize that living isn’t easy and almost everyone needs help to maximize their potential and to be reasonably happy and satisfied in life. So don’t be afraid to seek out help when you need it. It’s the Humanist way.

Make Better Decisions

It’s amazing how much more effective decision making is when it is based in reality.

 One of the things I try to do with this blog is teach people how to think better so that they can make better choices.  The three skills I teach are how to combine critical thinking, compassion and personal responsibility into better decision making. Learning HOW to think better is the key to making better choices that you CAN feel confident about your choices.

The nice thing about the Humanist approach – is it is woo free – no magical thinking required. And this is important because reality based decision making is vastly superior to assumption based or fallacy based decision making. You are just going to have to trust me on this one – but I’m pretty sure if someone ever did do a scientific study on this – I’d be proven right.

(Note: I actually did try to find evidence to back up this assumption that reality based decision making is better, but it’s so obvious that if you base your decisions on evidence of what works and what doesn’t, you are going to have a better chance of success. This is so well understood that a search on “study – reality based decision making” turned up pages of studies on HOW to most effectively integrate evidence based decision making in medicine.)

Regardless, on when making a reality based or evidence based decision – you need to do your homework.  You need to find out what is factually true. What works and what doesn’t to solve your problem.

You see, we humanists are very aware that we have cognitive biases and that these biases can throw us off course. And of course, we also make a LOT of assumptions. To counteract these built in defects in our thinking, we have to work hard to challenge our assumptions and doubt whether what we think we know is actually so, so that we become motivated to find out so that we can base our decision making on evidence, to the best of our ability.

And this brings me to the next bit. You can’t ever have perfect information. It doesn't exist. At some point, you do have to make decisions with imperfect knowledge. And, you need to be OK with that. For me, I do this by accepting that I might be wrong and make a note that if I find out I was, to be humble enough to correct my mistakes. Quickly. Because the only thing worse than being wrong, is continuing to be wrong after you find out.

Finally, my rule of thumb with decision making is to do the most good and the least harm possible. Again, reality based decision making requires me to acknowledge that I don’t live in a perfect world.  All I can ever do at any time is what I think is right (Thoreau said that or something very close to that in case you were wondering).

So – to sum up – reality based decision making, coupled with a commitment to do the most good and the least harm with an acknowledgement that you may be totally screwing up but you are going to do the best you can anyway – oddly enough – leads to good confident decision making.  It really does.

Try it – you’ll see. The more humble you are about what you don’t know – the more effective you become at decision making. At least, that’s how it works for me. Someone ought to do a study to see if my personal experience translates into the rest of humanity. 

Why is Ethical Decision Making So Hard?

4 steps to ensuring your decision making is ethical.

It turns out that ethical decision making isn’t easy. If it were, people would not struggle with this.  Here are 4 tips to help you make better, more ethical decisions.

1) Decide on your ethics. You cannot make ethical decisions if you have no concept of how to judge whether something is ethical or not.  Most ethical systems are basically the same, so it doesn’t really matter which one you pick. As long as compassion is ranked high on your list of things to care about, your ethical system will be consistent with most of the rest of humanity, who are the ones who will judge whether your decisions are ethical or not.

2) Be Prepared to Make Hard Decisions. A lot of people seem to be under the impression that ethical decision making is easy. All they need to do is apply their ethics.  It doesn’t work like that.  The big decisions, where what is good and bad is obvious, don’t require you to decide anything. What is hard is deciding between the better of two goods or the lesser of two evils. Those are the situations that require ethical decision making. Accept that up front and have the courage to decide what you think is the most good or the least evil. The essence of ethical decision making is, after all, the act of making a decision. It is sometimes unpleasant, but be prepared to do it anyway, or admit that your decision making isn’t based on rational ethics.

3) Learn How to Think Well. In order to make good decisions, you have to have some basis of deciding. This is where critical thinking comes in. First, to be ethical, you have to know what is true and what is false. This is the foundation of ethical decision making. If you think something is true that isn’t, you could end up doing something unethical by mistake.

4) Use your ethics to decide. Think through your options and work hard to figure out what the best solution to your problem is. Use your ethics as a guide to what you think is the most good and the least harmful.

So there you go. Ethical decision making requires you to think about your ethics so that your decisions do the most good and the least harm. At the center of this is thinking. Take the time to learn how to think well and your ethical decision making should improve too.