Tuesday Sep 30, 2008
- Working from home? Make sure you're adding unique value
- Rules, incentives and Barry Schwartz's call for "practical wisdom" - and what of goals?
- Recommending "Managing Humans" by by Michael Lopp (aka Rands)
- The Knowledge Distortion Field
- Why security bugs are different to other bugs
- Happiness is a healthy social network
- Prototype Sun Ray laptops
- Father of three
- Teaching critical thinking in schools?
- links for 2008-05-17
aliases
announcement
birth
book
brompton
children
cloud
computer
croudsourcing
damage
datamining
decision
dtrace
ethics
family
fun
futurology
gapminder
geros
goalfree
goals
happiness
home
human
incentives
intel
internet
ipod
junk
kepner-tregoe
knowledge
life
loft
losug
mail
making
management
mdb
meme
methodologies
metro
mice
modelling
morals
mrgum
network
nfs
nis+
nis_cachemgr
nscd
opensolaris
performance
philosophy
photo
pizza
poverty
process
programming
psychology
rands
review
rodents
rules
security
seedcamp
sgrt
sigbus
signals
sigsegv
smart
smf
solaris
sprcfb
squirrels
sun
sunray
superhero
system
ted
teleworking
terminal
terminfo
thinking
troubleshooting
trust
wisdom
All
/Family
/General
/Internet
/Links
/Mac
/Management
/Palm
/Security
/Solaris
/Sun
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.
Today's Page Hits: 310
Tuesday Sep 30, 2008
Given my training in SGRT I'm interested in how critical thinking, call it rational management if you will, could be encouraged. In particular, now that I have children of my own, I'm wondering why problem solving, decision making and critical thinking in general is not taught in schools.
Lots of "joining the dots" here, I found a letter in New Scientist that suggests we should. Lynn Stoppelman, Reston, Virginia, US wrote:
... Improving risk literacy is more complicated than switching off the TV. To encourage more people to use rational, less emotional decision-making we must train youngsters in critical thinking skills before fearfulness born of insecurity becomes habitual - not wait until the last year of high school or the first year of college. Conscious parenting focused on raising secure infants who have benefited from a healthy attachment to a parental figure remains the fundamental way to ensure a clear-thinking society.
The original article requires a New Scientist subscription and is well worth a read.
There was a related article in the Guardian's "This column will change your life" by Oliver Burkeman which covered similar ground and is a shorter read - it gets to the point though:
... The researchers' basic point is this: when we lack definite information, we make very poor judgments, and we do so in predictable ways. ... The findings of Kahneman et al suggest a different approach: rather than trying to change that feeling in your gut from negative to positive, learn to be sceptical of your gut feeling, whether it's negative or positive - because there's good reason to believe your focus is completely wrong. (There are sound evolutionary explanations for why we ended up this way, but our brains were designed for an environment in which we no longer live.)
Fascinating stuff.
Update: Turns out there's a non-profit organization that supports the teaching of the basic KT principles in schools, check out http://www.tregoe.org/. Looks like it's aimed at teenagers - pass it on.
