First Thoughts on the ability to Critically Think.

This is my first blog post ever.

I've always had a fascination with human behavior and thought patterns, particularly in the area of society and the effect on it.
Though I'm not a scholarly individual, I've been noticing that my perceptions and predictions tend to play out more often than not.  These results appear to come from applying critical thinking.

The ability to critically think and analyze situations, seems to come not just by academia, but from life experiences.  That makes sense when we consider that what we learn from academia really is just a culmination of recorded experiences.  So it would seem we can learn to critically think from our own experiences or academia or a combination of both.  

This seems rather rudimentary and it is.  However, my perceptions of people seem to be that they are able to only critically think to a point, beyond that point, something in them prevents them from being able to continue this process properly and I often wonder why this is.

I'll use this following story as example.

I had a talk with a friend about Bitcoins back in summer of 2017.  In Dec 2017, BTC hit a record of $19,783.06 US.  I had been following the surrounding news and I told people around me that the value was going to drop under $5000 within a year, by Dec 2018, BTC had dropped to $3,689.56  No one believed me, particularly this friend.  Now I'm not saying I'm some kind of finance genius, as a matter of fact, I'm not.  I was following the surrounding news and just made predictions based on critically thinking about that information.

What I saw was the Price of BTC going up, but the actual Value was not.  The Value being the possible Usage which is next to nothing in most people's daily lives or even in a crunch.  Though my thought process was much deeper than my example here, my predication was that the Price would continue to drop until it meets the actual Value.

This friend I spoke too was able to follow the information I provided along with my thought process to how I reached my conclusion.  However, when it got to the conclusion, he disagreed because he believed it would only continue to rise in Price.

This puzzled me.  Unless he had additional information I didn't, I couldn't understand how he wouldn't come to the same conclusion.  So I asked him if he had other information to which he replied "no".  Thinking he might've not been able to follow the process, I repeated it and he acknowledged everything step by step until the conclusion where he disagreed again.  Again he said he felt the Price would go up.  That's when I clued in on it, it was his feeling.  Despite how much factual information was at hand, and despite that he agreed and followed each step of the thinking process, he disagreed because of his feeling.

This is one example, but I see many others in almost everyone I know and speak too on a daily basis.  The ability to Critically Think, ends when the Feelings reach a certain level.  For some people, that level is attained much sooner than others.

crit·i·cal think·ing

Dictionary result for critical thinking

noun

noun: critical thinking

1. the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgment