REALISTIC CRITICAL THINKING LAPSES & SUCCESS STORIES...

REALISTIC CRITICAL THINKING LAPSES & SUCCESS STORIES...
hemang
Saturday, June 23, 2007 2:16:25 AM
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REALISTIC CRITICAL THINKING LAPSES & SUCCESS STORIES

Recognizing critical thinking lapses, especially in yourself, counts as evidence that you are at least a good critical thinker, because there is research showing that people who are below average in intelligence and commit many critical thinking lapses are not even able to recognize their own inadequacies! Click here for an article about it.

· Lapse: Automatic flushing toilets. Do we really need toilets to flush themselves? This is a solution in search of a problem, and the technology is far from perfected. I realize the point was to deal with those rude, crude people who don’t flush in public restrooms, but the faulty technology usually leaves you standing there waiting for an uncooperative toilet to flush itself. And many automatic flushers keep us from flushing because they don’t provide those little buttons for manual flushing. It’s even worse when you’re
using the toilet and it flushes prematurely. I never saw a big problem with the old system. If you think germs on the handle are a great concern, you can use your foot. In fact, a great critical thinking solution (which remains quite rare, probably because it’s extremely low-tech and hence not a big money-maker for manufacturers) is the foot pedal flush-handle. Keep it simple, that’s my motto. Don’t go high-tech unless it’s absolutely necessary.

· Lapses: Denying human contributions to Global Warming/Denying civil war in Iraq/Denying the Holocaust/Denying the moon landing/etc.

· Driving: We could go on seemingly forever about critical thinking lapses that we see in drivers (other drivers, of course!), but there are a few focal points. A lot of bad driving is just nastiness or ignorance of the law, not critical thinking lapses. I do often see, however, variations of very uneven attention to other drivers, which is more clearly a thinking lapse. For example, someone who does not go right away when their light turns green in order to (politely) let a driver turn in front of them is simply not thinking about the dozen or more drivers behind them who are delayed and might not even make it through this green. In order to be polite to one driver (even against the traffic rules) this person is rude, probably without realizing, to many other drivers. This is just one of many examples I see of drivers who seem to notice only those things happening in front of them and simply not thinking about what’s going on behind them!

· Driving without headlights on while it’s raining. Not only is this illegal (as of July 1, 2005), but it also probably reflects the lapsed thinking that headlights are only for helping you see the road. Often headlights are necessary not to help you see ahead of you but to help other drivers see you. Recently during heavy rain and rather dark daytime conditions I counted a full 20% of vehicles without their headlights on.

· Here’s a good example of using critical thinking in your own defense. A student of mine working at Whole Foods claimed to notice something peculiar about their procedure of allowing employees to vote on their own benefits package. The employees were given an imaginary budget to distribute as they wished among medical, dental, retirement, etc. Whole Foods would then use the distribution that had the strongest support among employees. But my student noticed that the benefits package they already had added up to more than the imaginary budget employees were using to revise their benefits package. The employees would almost certainly not notice the difference and vote for some sort of change, and that would mean a net decrease in their benefits, but it would happen under the guise of “empowering” employees by letting them decide their own benefits.

· I saw a 76 gas station advertising reduced gas prices with the purchase of a car wash. It was called “WOW pricing.” The sign said you can save “.10¢ per gallon.” Well, that doesn’t “wow” me! (What a difference that little dot can make.) I’ve seen this mistake often, but it’s worse with regard to gas prices because they actually do price gas by the tenth of a cent, even though no one can possibly pay in tenths of a cent. I hope they’re not actually reducing the price by a tenth of a cent per gallon, because that’s not even worth noticing.

· Most of the time when I get change from a clerk, the clerk puts the bills in my hand first and then puts the coins on the bills. I think it’s quite clear that they should put the coins in my hand first. It’s much easier for the coins to fall out of my hand when they’re on the bills; it would be much easier for me to hold them if they were in my palm. The coins-on-the-bills routine is especially prone to cause problems at drive-up windows. Notice how bank tellers, more professional money-handlers, never put the coins on top of the bills in your hand.

· The last time I was at the Grand Canyon, I overheard and watched a group of what appeared to be high school students. One student had the others hold her by her feet over the edge of a cliff going down the canyon. According to her explanation, she wanted to hang upside down and take a picture while holding the camera upside down (relative to her head) to try to get the funny effect you get from taking a picture, holding your camera upside down, of a person hanging upside down. You get a picture that looks like they’re standing up but with their hair all standing up straight. In this case, however, she was hanging upside down but taking a picture of the Grand Canyon which, as far as I can recall, has no hair!

· Many of my examples have to do with nonsensical pricing structures. (I’m not sure why.) The latest example: at Starbucks, a double tall latte costs 5 cents more than a grande latte. Each has two shots of espresso. The grande has more steamed milk and costs 5 cents less than the tall, which has less steamed milk. The last time I was in Starbucks (6/16/05), I asked the blonde Barbie at the counter whether I could order a grande latte in a tall cup to get the lower price. (I want the two shots with less steamed milk.) The blonde Barbie didn’t know what to make of it, so she called in the brunette Barbie, and I was impressed to hear her admit that the price of the double tall latte compared to a grande latte “didn’t make any sense.” She said she would bring it to the attention of management. As cynical as I am, I have no hope that this bit of irrationality in Starbucks’ pricing will ever be resolved.

· Whenever I see someone on T.V. or in a movie careening out of control down a mountain road due to failed brakes or a cut brake line, I’ve wondered why they don’t try the emergency brake, downshift, or steer into an embankment (rather than going over the cliff). I had a student confess to me once that their brakes went out going down a hilly, curvy road. The student screamed for everyone to jump out of the car, which they did. One person injured her foot when the car ran over it. The driver didn’t think of using the emergency brake, but did think of turning into an embankment, coming to a stop with no serious injuries or damage to the car. Good thinking!

· Cashiers at stores, particularly grocery stores, have confided in me that they frequently see people buy more than they need of something, buying two of something when a person could only have use for one, just because it’s advertised as “2 for $5.”

· February 2, 2005. A student from Chico State University died after an unusual pledge activity at a fraternity house that involved drinking several gallons of water within a couple hours. Yes, drinking water can kill you. Just about anything can kill you, depending on what you do with it!

· Monday, August 23, 2004. A student at Santa Rosa Junior College felt like she needed a nap shortly after noon. So she crawled into her car trunk and closed the lid. Who wouldn’t? After about a half hour she woke up overheated because the car was parked in the sun. Trying to open the trunk with the safety latch, she discovered the safety latch was not working – probably because the car was recently rear-ended and not perfectly repaired. Tonja used her cell phone to call friends, but they couldn’t open the trunk with the trunk-release by the driver’s seat. Security had to come and rip out the back seats to free her.

· I used to warm up my baby daughter’s bottle in the microwave, getting exactly the right temperature in one minute. Sometimes, however, the milk would start to spurt out the nipple at the end of the minute, making a mess; sometimes it wouldn’t. It took me a long time to figure out that I should just heat up the bottle without the nipple on it. The critical thinking lapse is that it took me so long to figure this out, but I suppose it’s a critical thinking success story when I eventually took the nipple off!

· Late October, 2003: A student missed class but talked to me later, explaining that they forgot to change their clock on the previous weekend when we went off Daylight Savings Time. The only problem is that in October we “fall back,” setting our clocks back an hour. So if this student forgot to change their clock, they would have been and hour EARLY for class, not late!!

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· A student of mine, who shall remain unnamed, was riding in a car at night with a friend when they both smelled some gas fumes. They pulled over and popped the hood to check out what was going on. Thing was, they didn’t have a flashlight… You guessed it. They used a cigarette lighter to try to see the engine and ignited the gas fumes. Fortunately, no one was killed or seriously hurt.

· You all have probably seen this: Some Einstein is waiting for an elevator, pushing the button over and over. I doubt that if you push the button 50 times, the elevator will say, “Screw everybody else, I gotta hurry and get that guy!!” One push is all it takes, people. The same goes for the buttons at crosswalks.

· A guy stole someone’s credit card and decided to use it at Costco. Unfortunately, he had to present his Costco member card at the checkout and since his name didn’t match the name on the credit card and he was unable to even give the correct name that appeared on the credit card, the cashier caught him.

· I was getting in my car in a parking lot, which can be a long complicated process when my 3-year-old is with me. All the time, someone in another car is waiting for my space, even though there are plenty of empty spaces nearby, including an empty space only a few steps from mine. They just had to have the closest spot they could get but ended up waiting many minutes for me to get my daughter in her car seat, get the stroller in the trunk, etc.

· I have actually seen people in their cars in a parking lot of a health club circling the lot for many minutes to try to get a “good” spot near the health club entrance even though there were plenty of spots further out. Good idea!! You don’t want to over-exert yourself getting from your car to the health club.

· I saw a menu in a Subway sandwich shop that charged the same price for all value meals with a 6” sandwich, and the same price for all value meals with a 12” sandwich. I immediately realized that some of these would be much better “values” than others, because the prices for the sandwiches vary significantly. After doing a few quit calculations, I found a “value meal” that cost more than the parts of the meal added up separately!! What kind of a value is that? I guess it’s a value for the owner of the shop.

· I once saw a car in storage with its four tires sitting up on four concrete cinder blocks. It’s true, when you store a car for a long time, you should put your car “up on blocks,” as they say. But the whole point is to take the weight off the tires, so you don’t ruin your tires!!! The blocks go under the axle. I guess somebody told this guy he should put his car “up on blocks” to store it, and he mindlessly followed directions. This is the danger of following directions without understanding the point of them.

· Special deal at a sandwich shop: Buy one sandwich and get $1.00 off a second sandwich of equal or lesser value. Why do they have to take the $1 off the second sandwich? $1 off is $1, wherever it comes from! They unthinkingly included the qualifier (“equal or lesser value”) out of habit, because it sometimes makes sense. With a “buy one get one free” deal, for example, you need to indicate that the free one is the one of “equal or lesser value.”

· I once surveyed my Critical Thinking students in the first week of classes at Sonoma State and Santa Rosa J.C. regarding what grade they expected in my class and their overall college grade average, among many other questions. At SSU, the average expected grade for my class was 3.53 (A-), and the average overall grade point average was 2.79 (B-). Only 5% expected a grade in my class lower (only a third of a letter grade lower) than their college average. Only 15% expected the same grade. That leaves 80% who expected a higher grade in my class than their college average. At SRJC, the average expected grade for my class was 3.4 (B+), and the average overall grade point average was 2.7 (B-). Only 7% expected a grade in my class lower than their college average. Only 13% expected the same grade. That leaves 80% who expected a higher grade in my class than their college average. I think there’s some real wishful thinking going on here.

http://profmulder.home.att.net/LAPSES.htm