1.
Utilize your resources to gather information.
Resources are incredibly
important when trying to find information. We as individuals can justify our
own opinions for days, but what good is our opinion standing by itself? If
public schools and higher education have taught us anything, it’s that our
individual opinion doesn’t mean squat unless we can find people to agree with
us. (That’s why instructors create “topic paper” assignments and ask for some
ridiculous number of resources to supplement the “original” topic that you’ve
supposedly come up with on your own.) So it’s always good to really scour the
Interwebz – Google is a wonderful source,
and in all honesty Wikipedia is a valid
starting point for the basics of pretty much whatever you’re searching for. I
have even told the students in my classes that it’s alright to check out
Wikipedia FIRST if they have no idea what they’re looking for, but the idea is
to use the resources listed at the bottom of the webpage instead of starting
and stopping with the Almighty Power of Wiki. That’s where the Almighty Power
of Google needs to step in! As a disclaimer, the students I am referring to are
college undergraduates taking an introductory psychology course. Most of them
don’t know their medulla from their Broca’s area, so I figure it’s alright to
teach them how to investigate. Besides, I would be lying to myself if I said that
1) I’ve never used Wikipedia to successfully locate valid information, or 2)
these students will never use Wikipedia for any depth of information searching
in any class. My goal in advertising it is to try and remove the stigma
associated with less-than-academic websites.
Academic journals, research
experiments, news articles, and professional ‘blogs are also a wonderful source
of opinions that might match yours (or someone you know). If you’re in school,
the library databases are a fantastic way to access some of these sources
without paying for them. I’m all about free, don’t you know? I mean, that’s
where I am going to be looking for a lot of my information as I progress
through the year and attempt to answer seemingly unanswerable questions. It’s
worked for me in the past – I didn’t get through an advanced degree by sitting
on my hands… much.
2.
Access your own experiences.
Consider, for instance, an
attempt to answer the age-old inquiry: Which came first, the chicken or the
egg?
This is a question that many
people have tried to answer, and in all honesty it’s probably like a 50/50 shot
of whether you get it right… if there is a right answer at all. In order to
keep your brain from spinning out of control trying to answer this paradoxical
inquiry, I recommend breaking it down into smaller things that you can actually
relate to your own life. Like… your own experience!
In your experience, have you
ever:
-
Been on a
chicken farm, or a farm in general? If so, what did you see? If not, what
do you think a farm would be like? (If you answered no, I recommend you refer
to step 1 in the Strategist’s Guide and locate an agriculturally-minded
resource.) In answering this particular question myself, yes I have been on several
farms. It was only a brief period each time, but I did notice a couple of
things. First, I noticed that chickens all live together in a coop. And secondly,
you can’t have an egg without a chicken, because it’s the chicken… that lays…
the egg. Right? O_o Third, I noticed roosters are really cranky little buggers
and will chase small children and hens who can’t hold their own while they’re
waddling around picking up seeds and corn and whatever else it is that farmers
throw out for them to eat.
-
Studied
the genetics of a chicken? If so, what did you learn? If not, what do you
know about animals in general – their breeding and procreation characteristics,
origin theories, etc.? (If you answered no, I recommend you refer to step 1 in
the Strategist’s Guide and locate an avian biologist.) I happen to have done some
research on chickens, and I found out that Roth
and Lind concluded that the chicken’s optical sensitivity (how their pupils
react to bright and dark locations) has changed in proportion to their size as
chickens have undergone the domestication and selective breeding processes. (Full
citation below.)
Now, I’m not going
to get into these example questions too deeply, because I feel like it would
take away some of the “WHAAA?!” of my future attempts to answer a few questions
that center on these lovely dinner-foul. My attempt at asking more questions to
evaluate your own experiences boils down to this: When a question is too big to
answer outright, asking and answering smaller questions is a good idea. What do
you already know about the subject? What can you still find out? How can this
information fit together to help answer the big, potentially intimidating and
possible unanswerable, question?
3.
Access the Scientific Method.
I have no words for this one,
other than check out these videos. Disclaimer: I didn’t make them, and I’m not claiming any
rights to them at all… I just saw them and thought, “That’s perfect for my ‘blog!”
You’ll laugh, of course... but you might learn something, too.
4.
Utilize critical thinking to evaluate whether
your conclusions are valid on any plane of reality.
This is where you have to ask
yourself, “Could this really happen, on any plane of reality?”
Critical thinking is a process,
which manifests in the following ways:
-
Examining assumptions (hey, that’s step 2 in the
Strategist’s Guide!)
-
Evaluating evidence (well check it out, that’s
steps 1 and 3… now if only I would’ve arranged these steps in this order, it’d
be much easier to follow!)
-
Assessing conclusions (we’re on step 4 now)
-
Challenging yourself (that’s the idea of this ‘blog!)
There are some
barriers to critical thinking that must be identified in order for you to
understand the importance of looking outside of your own experience (although
that is very important to answering unanswerable questions) to gain insight.
Bias can be found in
our individual self, as well as in research
(full citation below). Things we have to watch out for with bias are our own
perceptions of reality, and how they might eskew the conclusions that we draw
when trying to answer unanswerable questions. These perceptions might have
developed through one of the following ways:
Personal experience – If we only “go with what we know,” how will
we ever expand our knowledge base, and broaden our horizons? What we know is a
good starting place, kindof like Google and Wikipedia… but it’s up to us to
acknowledge that we are not the end-all, be-all of data and that we must look to
others for their insight.
Confirmation bias – This means validating your opinion based on
information you have sought out that confirms what you already think you know.
It’s like the proposed firearms ban in the United States: opposing parties
rally behind statistics that confirm firearms are not as dangerous as
supporters of the ban claim them to be, and supporters of the ban rally behind
war cries of injustice and reports of accidental discharge that results in some
horrendous injury or death. I’m not starting a political debate, at least not
right now, but do you see where I’m going with this? David McRaney has a
wonderful piece on confirmation bias posted here –
check it out!! (Full citation listed below)
Hindsight’s 20/20 – Everything makes sense when you look back on it…
That is, the results of any incident can be justified when you play “connect
the dots” with events leading up to it.
Propensity – This is the tendency for people to assume that they
know all of the possible outcomes, and can essentially predict the future. It’s
like a reverse-hindsight situation.
So why is all this important? Why am I droning on and on about how to answer questions, when in reality we’re only asking more questions?
That’s precisely the point. Welcome to my world.
Sources:
Bennett, L. (n.d.). Research Bias. Social Work Research.
Retrieved January 7, 2013, from http://tigger.uic.edu/~lwbenn/jacswcourses/socw360/week14.htm
McRaney, D. (2010, June 23). Confirmation Bias. You Are Not So Smart.
Retrieved January 7, 2014, from
http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/06/23/confirmation-bias/
Roth, L.S.V., & Olle, L. (2013, June 12). The Impact of
Domestication on the Chicken Optical Apparatus. PLoS ONE, 8(6).
Retrieved January 2, 2014, from http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0065509
