In a past post, I talked about some things I’ve learned regarding to reason and rationality. Books such as The Righteous Mind, Thinking, Fast and Slow, and Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion have shown me just how irrational and unreasonable we can be without even realizing it. It’s fairly easy to see this in other people but much harder to notice in oneself. I’ve gotten better at seeing it in myself since I’ve read a lot about this stuff and have spent a great deal of time watching my thoughts. However, I still often miss the irrational aspects of my own thinking, especially when I’m sick, tired, or emotional. I’d like to get better at seeing these things within myself and do what I can to foster better conversations, so here are ten examples of logical shortcomings and irrational tendencies that are best avoided.
- Focusing on sources that affirm a particular position and ignoring sources that contradict it
- Mistaking disagreements over how to best arrive at the end goal for disagreements about the end goal itself
- Thinking that because something was a certain way in the past or is still that way in the present, it will necessarily always be that way
- Over-simplifying complicated things and over-complicating simple things
- Asserting that something is impossible without checking to see if anyone has accomplished it or thinking of potential ways to do it
- Attacking someone for holding a particular position instead of refuting or disproving that position
- Misrepresenting someone’s ideas and criticizing that misrepresentation as if it’s an honest depiction of what they said
- Thinking that something is automatically true or automatically false simply because it comes from a certain source
- Changing the meaning of something by taking it out of context and leaving out important clarifying information
- Holding two people to different standards; excusing a particular behavior in one person while condemning it in the other