When I was in grade 8 biology we were shown the scientific method. It really fascinated me. I thought about it constantly after learning it. In fact, it took me a full week to really understand it. Once I did, I felt a little stupid. After all, it is such a simple idea. There are a few basic rules, and you can expand these rules into critical thinking which is basically the same process.

This stuck with me, and always seemed to me to be obvious.

Now, that I am older and I use critical thinking all the time I am still shocked at how many people around are incapable of this basic skill. In fact, I only know a few people who I would consider to be extremely skilled at using critical thinking.

This does not mean that my critical thinking skills are always correct. You can get things wrong of course. Still, that goes right back to the scientific method again. If you get something wrong, that is good! And people don’t understand that. It is as if they are afraid to fail. Yet, the entire scientific method is bolstered by failure. Each failure is recorded and remembered. The things that work are the things that don’t fail. These are the things that remain, and science advances.

I published this back in 2006, and I knew at the time it was total BS. How did I know? Critical thinking and a basic understanding of thermodynamics. Could I have been wrong? Sure, but I would put the odds of thermodynamics being wrong being much greater than winning 10 different lotteries at once. And now, 2 years on? It turns out that I was right. It was a hoax.

Still, it is not the only one. There are so many others around, and people just don’t see them. I think it is because they don’t want to. They are afraid of being wrong, afraid of feeling stupid. 24 years ago I felt stupid in biology class because it took me a week to learn the scientific method. Others in the class had memorized that material in minutes. Yet, now I feel like I was one of the few who still remembers how it works after the test was over. Don’t be afraid to be wrong, or feel stupid because you don’t understand something, it will work in the long run.