What Is the Opposite of Critical Thinking?

Written by John Droz on June 28, 2024. Posted in Current News

In my last commentary, I elaborated on a proposed definition of Critical Thinking. Although there were a few suggested refinements, I received no major objections

Equally important is what Critical Thinking is NOT.

Towards that end, in my most recent article, I outlined a brief layperson overview of some actions that would be considered the opposite of Critical Thinking:

People accepting what is currently politically correct, going along with consensus, deferring to experts, supporting the conclusions of computer programs, buying into one-sided presentations of facts, etc., etc.

I thought I would again test out the new version of Poe AI: Claude-3.5-Sonnet, to see what it had to say about that question — and the answer was rather good:

“The opposite of Critical Thinking could be described in several ways, depending on the context and specific aspects of Critical Thinking being considered. Some possible opposites or contrasts to Critical Thinking include:

1. Uncritical Thinking: Accepting information or ideas without questioning or analyzing them.
2. Gullibility: Being easily persuaded or deceived, lacking skepticism.
3. Dogmatism: Adhering rigidly to preconceived notions or beliefs without considering alternative viewpoints.
4. Emotional reasoning: Basing conclusions solely on feelings rather than logic and evidence.
5. Impulsive Thinking: Making quick judgments without careful consideration of facts and consequences.
6. Confirmation Bias: Seeking out only information that supports pre-existing beliefs while ignoring contradictory evidence.
7. Groupthink: Conforming to popular opinion without individual critical analysis.
8. Magical Thinking: Believing in unnatural causality or disregarding logic and evidence in favor of wishful thinking.
9. Fallacious Reasoning: Relying on logical fallacies or invalid arguments to draw conclusions.
10. Closed-mindedness: Refusing to consider new ideas or perspectives that challenge existing beliefs.

These behaviors and thought patterns represent various ways in which people might engage in non-critical thinking — essentially doing the opposite of what Critical Thinking entails.”

Yes, those are all bad intellectual habits that should be comprehensively and objectively discussed, (particularly when teaching Science in K-12 schools), so that they can be studiously avoided.

However, in general, that is NOT happening (e.g., none of these ten items are covered in the NGSS)…

This is an enormous deficiency in our K-12 education system that needs to be properly fixed, yesterday!

Here are other materials by this scientist that you might find interesting:

Check out the Archives of this Critical Thinking substack.

WiseEnergy.org: discusses the Science (or lack thereof) behind our energy options.

C19Science.info: covers the lack of genuine Science behind our COVID-19 policies.

Election-Integrity.info: multiple major reports on the election integrity issue.

See more here substack.com

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