From Mensagenda — January 2006

It’s Not What You Think, It’s How You Think!

I recently stumbled upon an interesting organization at the invitation of my brother-in-law’s brother. (Sorry about that, but there’s no easier label for him than brother-in-law’s brother. I tried working one out but gave up when I concluded that he might be my "aunt." "Brother-in-law’s brother" is long but correct. That said, I’ll just call him Ted for your benefit.)

The organization Ted invited me to check out is the Minnesota Critical Thinking Club (www.criticalthinkingclub.org). They meet once a month in St. Paul and have other chapters, too.

The meeting I attended had one of the more articulate and well-researched presentations I’ve heard in recent memory. The speaker (Dale McGowan, a prof at the College of St. Catherine and one of the founders of the club) first suggested that, because of the increasing complexity of the world, there is an ever-increasing gap between what any one person can reasonably learn in a lifetime and the ever-growing amount of knowledge there is to know. A renaissance man (or a renaissance woman, for that matter) could have a pretty solid grasp on just about all the known fields of the day: chemistry, biology, astronomy, Greek, and so on. But today a person can devote his or her lifetime to one very limited aspect of, say, nuclear physics.

The speaker then suggested that this requires us to rely on experts in many fields, and the crux of his talk was about how to critically question experts.

These are not original concepts. For example, Stephen Hawking has written about humans’ knowledge gap relative to the increasing complexity of the world, and Carl Sagan promoted bold, open-minded exploration tempered with a healthy dose of critical questioning of the experts. But it was good to hear these concepts put together so articulately, and good to hear a few examples of how so-called experts can be in the pay of various industries. (Of course that "scientist" in the white lab coat you see on tee vee will conclude that cigarettes are not bad for you!)

Here’s one memorable tidbit that has remained with me: The more anyone insists you trust him or her, the less likely that person is to deserve your trust. (Imagine the "expert" telling you he doesn’t have any research showing that these expensive magnets will heal your cancer — you just have to trust him on it. Or imagine the treasurer who can’t quite provide you with all the figures, but suggests you trust her when she says all the money’s there.)

I’m not much of a joiner of "clubs." But this one has no dues and no sign-up sheet. To attend, I paid ten bucks for a typical "hotel banquet breakfast" and got more than my money’s worth hearing the talk afterwards.

I had a hunch that a group like this would be made up primarily of atheists and I was right. I wouldn’t be drawn to a group of "angry atheists"; though I might agree with their basic worldview, I don’t have time for negativity. But they told me that theists attend also, and I saw two specific echoes of open-mindedness that I liked: When Ted invited me to this Sunday morning event I groaned and joked how I like to get up at the crack of 10:00 a.m. on Sundays and Ted gave an interesting reply: "You could change!" he suggested. I heard the exact same phrase in a similarly friendly context from someone else during the pre-talk breakfast. The club’s motto is the title of this article, and, at first glance, it seems they practice what they preach.

So I decided to write a plug for the Minnesota Critical Thinking Club in Mensagenda. It’s not a competing organization to ours (they don’t vie for our money or our time any more than the Guthrie or your local bookstore do), and I think it would be natural for some Mensans to enjoy cross-pollinating ideas with these folks. What do you think? (And how do you think it?)