Wade Tavriss Guidelines for Critical Thinking You get

Wade & Tavris’s Guidelines for Critical Thinking You get one example. You have to come up with another.

Ask Questions. Be Willing to Wonder. People tend to become forgetful when they get old. It would be a waste of time to look for specific causes or ways to prevent the problem.

Define your terms. Define the problem. More intelligent people are usually also more attractive.

Examine the evidence. It’s pretty obvious that smoking pot makes people crave more potent drugs. Statistics show that almost all people who become addicted to heroin or cocaine smoke marijuana first.

Analyze assumptions and biases. Susan is opposed to a proposed law that would forbid discrimination against homosexuals in housing and employment. “Every gay person I’ve met is unhappy and disturbed, ” she says, “and I wouldn’t want to have to live near one. ”

Avoid emotional reasoning. • Amelia has moved to a new city and, after a few weeks of settling in, has started to date. Her first three dates are all disappointing. “This place has no interesting men, ” she tells herself. “I’ll never meet anyone I like. ”

Don’t oversimplify. Because we have never been visited by extraterrestrials, and have had no communication from outer space, we can safely assume that intelligent life exists only on our planet.

Consider other interpretations. • The increase in violence by adolescent gangs in this country is just another result of the liberal thinking that has more sympathy for criminals than for their victims.

Tolerate uncertainty. • I get disgusted with my science classes. We study the “principle of this” and the “theory of that. ” Why can’t scientists make up their minds and stop acting like they don’t know anything for sure?