Thinking Critically

Research is extremely important. Yeah, I know that sounds like a really bland opener and a pretty obvious statement too, but it’s true. Doing research helps us discover all sorts of new things we hadn’t learned before. It also helps us get a better understanding about something that we had an incorrect idea about. The classic example of this is found in history when people used to believe that the world was flat. After research and exploration we learned that Earth is actually round. If we didn’t research anything, we would have to rely on people’s gut instincts and ideas as fact. The problem with this is that everybody has different ideas and instincts, and without doing research to prove our ideas, we can’t really be sure that anyone is more correct than anyone else. For example, if I claimed that setting a clock five minutes fast helps people get places five minutes earlier, but someone else says that setting your clock fast makes people rely on the extra five minutes and leave the house later than they should, we can both claim to be right, but neither of us can prove this without research. By doing experiments, (in this case we might survey people who set their clocks fast to see how early and late they arrive places) we can understand who’s viewpoint is more true.
An example of research that is relevant to my life was found on Psyblog in an article called, “Ads for Unhealthy foods Increase Children’s Consumption by 45%. The article showed that kids that saw commercials for unhealthy snacks were more likely to want to eat unhealthy snacks. This is relevant to my life because this has happened to me several times. Earlier today I saw a commercial for Papa Murphy’s pizza. For Valentine’s Day they were selling heart shaped pizza, and I looked at it and suddenly really was in the mood to have pizza for supper. Before this, earlier today, my doctor told me that I needed to cut some calories out of my diet, and I decided that I wouldn’t eat as much anymore. However, after watching the commercial, all healthy thoughts left my mind and all I wanted was a nice restaurant style pizza. It’s scary how such simple things can affect our decisions and thoughts.
Another thing that I found interesting in the chapter was on page 18 in our text books. It talks about being overconfident in our self-ability to predict what is going to happen. I learned that there are a lot of times in life where we think we know more than we do. I think this is important because it shows us that we need to measure all sides of an issue before we jump to conclusions, assuming that we already know what’s right. Something else that I learned was the difference between causation and correlation. I realized that correlation can show us possible reasons why something could happen, but it can’t say that one specific thing is the cause of something else. For example, if we did an experiment on pollution in a big city to see what the cause is, and find out that people smoking on street corners adds to the pollution, we can’t just decide that smoking is the cause of pollution. It could be part of the pollution problem, but it isn’t the only cause. All we’ve really found is a correlation between smoking and air pollution. A third thing that I learned also has to do with correlation. I learned that we often have illusory correlations, where we think to things are connected, when really it’s just random chance. This is important because if we incorrectly link two completely separate ideas, it could affect our judgment on a situation, based on our incorrect views and ideas.
According to the New York Times article, our minds and bodies are connected in several ways. I really like the first example where they said that people tend to lean back when they are trying to remember something. I laughed because I do this all the time. On the flip side I liked the example where they said that people who thought about happier things were more likely to stay warm than people who were upset. I really don’t understand all of this stuff as well as I wish I could, but I do understand that our actions are often affected by what’s going on in our heads, and our thoughts are often affected by what is happening in the world around us. I think I am more in the Descartes view than Aristotle’s though. The mind and body are connected in certain ways, but I do think that there is a separation between soul and body.
One question I had is related to the article. I wonder how this whole connection between the brain and body works. Why do physical actions affect our minds? And the even more confusing idea, how can our brain and thoughts affect our actions? It’s not like when I have a warm thought I go “Okay body, you should be warmer now because I’m thinking warm thoughts.”