By request, I am creating a series of Public Service Announcements (PSAs) about important concepts in critical thinking. These will all be short, about a minute or so, and will cover one topic each. This third one is about absolute truths and the importance of keeping an open mind.
Here is the transcript for this PSA:
We all have a threshold of acceptance, a certain point where we accept that an idea is true. Maybe it only takes someone we trust to tell us or we read it in a newspaper or we see it on Dr. Oz.
Others need more convincing. They won’t believe a story unless they see it corroborated in multiple sources. This can lead to believing an untruth simply because a lot of people are saying it.
Someone who uses critical thinking knows that no matter how many times they see or hear something or are told it’s true, that doesn’t make it so. Einstein said “No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.” In science and in critical thinking, there is no such thing as an absolute truth.
Critical thinkers have a high threshold of acceptance but also know that truth could come from any place at any time and are always open to new ideas. Any idea should always be open to being questioned.
So now you know.
I believe that the highest truth is also the simplest truth.
(i think)
…which makes Truth relatively simple to question.
As one must. To accept as absolute any truth means to adopt a belief.
Which is another way of saying, “giving yourself away”.
[Hey, I see one reply and it is me, mine.
Guess that’s ok, as that first was rather brief…
Hubbard does this recently described Truth Rundown (thx, Chris for the head’s up)
in which the patient is pummeled with bricks off the forehead until any attempt at thought or psychic function of the brain is just too painful to attempt. In that vulnerable condition the “preclear” is thus rendered for manipulation. Quite effectively.
All of which the subject individual, your son or daughter perhaps, would effectively avoid by asking, simply, what is the source of this truth?
Much credit for the way I see things goes to Mr. Chris Shelton, along with a whole lot of gratitude.
Mark