What chicks learn, first.

I'm talking about birds. Sorry if you expected something else.

When birds get out of their eggs, they memorize the first thing they see, and follow it, blindly.

Well, I'm not 100% sure if this is applicable to all kinds of birds nor for all individuals, but it seems this theory is widely accepted.

Are we better than those clueless chicks ?

Well, I think humans are somewhat similar to those chicks in our learning processes.

When we are young, we tend to take everything parents (or it can be teachers, adults, or any person of authority) said as the absolute truth.

Although some of us keep asking "Why?" for certain items, most of us still takes A LOT of thing coming from parents for granted.

In other words, there is NO thinking involved in this kind of learning.

It's just like those chicks, or cheap voice recorders.

And some people keep this type of learning all the life, without any doubt.

These are also the type of people who can easily become fanatic followers.

Unfortunately, they can blindly follow stupid things like fanatic religion or even terrorists, criminals, and so on.

Can we think ?

As we get older, many of us may start "thinking" a bit better.

We start asking the validity of what we blindly absorbed during our early childhood.

But most us don't know what is thinking nor how to think, at that stage, as we don't teach "How to think" in our school or family.

How to think?

Thinking, as I talk of purely logical thinking, is evaluations.

To evaluate something, we need a unit, scale, the basis of the evaluation, evidently.

I emphasized evidently because I thought it was evident but found out that it wasn't so for some people.

So shall I repeat. We need a valid and usable measuring unit/basis to evaluate something.

Without it, we cannot measure something.

ANY pretension of evaluation without valid bases is simply false.

Isn't is easy and evident?

Unfortunately, judging from the countless examples we can see everywhere, it's not very evident for many of us.

Identifying false evaluations

• The lack of bases/measuring units.

It's easy to spot false evaluations and we should practice doing it so that we don't do it ourselves in the critical evaluation processes.

As some of "thinkings" are done in less than fully conscious state, unless it becomes automatic habit to check the validity of evaluations done by ourselves and others, we will repeat making false evaluations, again and again.

We can ask ourselves, "what is the basis?"

Or we can ask that to others.

Usually, if we need to ask about the basis, it's a false evaluation.

An evaluation based on the valid measuring bases often literally obvious, since the thinker/speaker would usually state the basis of the evaluation along with the result.

We would do that because we know the importance of the bases for the given result, and providing the result without the bases feel like missing something and also it's more likely to cause misunderstandings without the bases.

In other words, if someone makes statement without any basis of the evaluation, it's highly likely that the person doesn't know how to think, very well, and what he says can be mostly a mixture of preferences/prejudices/random-impressions.

• The absolute or black and white thinking

Another very common feature of false evaluation is the absoluteness.

In the valid evaluation, as it's based on certain hypothetical measuring scale, we know and we are aware of the relative nature of any evaluations.

For those who don't understand this simple logic will present her/his evaluation as if something absolute.

I think this kind of tendency comes from the basic animal programming.

Just like the chicks, we are programmed to take things told by our parents and teachers as the absolute truth, to some degree.

Although some of us become conscious of this effect, other won't, and stay in the juvenile black and white absolute mode of pseudo thinking.

All our evaluations and theories are according to so and so, based on so and so and thus relative.

Anything evaluated is relative.

Anything with any attribute is relative and it requires valid bases to be true.

Anything defined cannot be absolute, and it needs the bases of the definition.

In other words, only attributeless undefined thing can be absolute.

As all words are made up of definitions, the absolute thing cannot be talked, other than in the negative form, such as this.

The absolute can't be neither true nor false.

It can't be good nor bad.

As soon as you give any attribute to something, you are not talking about the absolute but something relative and limited and defined.

So, if we think some of our evaluations to be absolute, we can be sure that we are wrong, as long as purely logical thinking is concerned.

Common tendencies of false thinkers

• Baseless evaluations
• Absolute/black or white evaluations
• Associative linking evaluations (name calling is an example of this)
• Big is better, larger number means truth
• Blindly follow things they consider as authorities
• Tend to act like gangs. Can't stand alone.
• When they feel bad, they look for mammy, daddy, elders, brothers.

How this happened to us ?

I see it as something similar to these chicks.

Also, I think we have something in us that urges to find "the absolute".

But it can't be found by proper logical thinking, as the results and conclusions are always relative in the logical thinking.

And, I think we are programmed to perceive relative matters as absolute.

For chicks, what they see first is their "virtual" absolute parent.

Often, it's their true mom, but not always so.

For most humans, what we learn from parents/elders/etc are our "virtual" absolute truth.

And when we learn that it's not so, many of us simply follow other one, as blindly as before.

Can we get out of this madness ?

The illusion of absoluteness seems to be the greatest drug in our history.

And I guess it's going to be very hard to get out of the comfortable dream of virtual absoluteness

Religions are mainly based of this principle of the illusion of the absoluteness.

Terrorists and politics use same tactics to get blind followers/voters.

Collectively speaking, I don't think we will see dramatic changes, any soon.

After all, we have been like this for thousands of years judging from our histories.

So, we can stay like this for another thousands of years, if we are still here

So what?

Well, if we feel that it's stupid to follow something blindly, we can always verify the validity by examining the bases.

Also, we can show the good example of valid thinking, by presenting the bases with our statements.

If you really do, you will see that it's much harder than you think, as we have so many blindly absorbed craps in our associative memory links and they try to misguide us in wrong direction with the power of virtual absoluteness.

In fact it's so easy to make mistakes (not just in this area, though).

Absolutely Clueless

As far as the logical thinking goes, I consider "Absolute cluelessness" as the only honest position, since all theories need valid bases to be true within certain limits defined by the use of the bases but there seems to be no absolutely valid bases.

To be a valid basis for the evaluation, it must have clearly defined attributes.

And anything with definition or attributes is relative to and depends on them.

So, if all bases are somewhat "virtual" and hypothetical, it makes all theories hypothetical, too.

As something with clues/definitions/attributes are limited and relative, absolute cluelessness can satisfy our need for the "absoluteness".

I mean, it's not the substitutes but at least logically real absoluteness.

If we like the taste of real thing, we don't want to take the substitutes.

The virtual absoluteness and dependency on it IS childish, immature, and stupid.

It makes us easily exploitable, and it can turn us into a fanatical blind followers or even terrorists.

For an absolutely clueless person, things cannot be 100% sure.

But at least we can be sure that we are not sure ... well, maybe not even that ... :)