A video that everyone should watch. Some might need to watch it twice.

"Hmmm ... a true critical thinker would not see this as black and white. No one is either one or the other. It's a continuum and we all sit somewhere along the continuum. " This comment puts the video right back in balance.

Also, I find it a bit insulting. Moving so rapidly/with ease on subjects that aren't easy at all for us humans.
Tho I understand the idea you're bringing forward.

Sorry if I'm wrong, but isn't this kind of ignorant behaviour promoted in the USA by the media?

Yeah, I thought it moved a bit too quickly as well but it brings up a bunch of valid points.

Indeed, the USA media is horrible about promoting and encouraging simple minded thinking.

They want us smart enough to do our jobs but dumb enough not to ask questions.

That's why people make the videos and I share the videos, to try and turn that mentality around.

I wasn't nearly as critical of a thinker before I joined the Nexus. And this video helped me to realize some things I've been doing and ways I can improve my posts here.

I'm sure this is one of those videos I will watch several times just to help integrate it better.

"You can't fix stupid," or so they say. If more people would just take the time to do the critical thinking, more people would wake up. And that should be everyones goal, WAKE UP!!! It seems to be a frustrating never ending battle in most places around the world indeed because like you said MC they want us smart enough to do our jobs, but dumb enough not to ask questions. And yes I also think the media plays a HUGE role in this problem (practally brain washes some people). And I think the education system is holds it foucus in the wrong areas. Im not saying the system is completely screwed up, but it certainly needs to find a way to be more inspiring to each student to get them thinking in a way that benefits them and society positively. Enough critical thinkers could start a movement... but "its like turning around a battleship with a carved wooden oar"

Soulshine

George Carlin in his last routine said this exactly of what 'the true owners' of our society wants for us all... They want us to know just enough to run the machinery and do the paperwork of the work place, but not be capable of critical thinking.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYIC0eZYEtI

"It's a big club but you are not in it..."

LOL, Nice clip! Ive seen that one before (along with several others ), and i think he also says in a different segment of that stand up " Its called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.

This video is stoopid and wrowng.

Sounds like a child speaking, lol. Whats so "stupid and wrong about it"? Your post has no meat to it at all. If you don't like it then explain how so in a more rational way. And with a lighter tone would be nice.

Hey Purges, i didnt thinkk about it until i left the computer, but was that just a joke that went over my head, or were you serious?

@ Soulshine & Purges approaching conflict:
I think there's a miscommunication here Purges is being sarcastic/ironic and that's sometimes hard to read/notice.
Not everyone's english is A+ here

Back on track: To keep the current consumption system running, it's almost mandatory to have people who "man the machines&don't think"

I liked the video and put together a few quotes that seem to apply to people who would like to believe that they’re critical thinkers:

Heh, no conflict here. It was prob just a bit too early for me to be posting. I hadn't had my coffee yet. Its pretty funny now that i think about it.

... right on gibran2.

Yes, there were strong over tones of irony in there that you may not have gathered, I was hoping the bad spelling and would be a clue. I thought there were some good points, but it was a little too simplistic, and also a little confusing as you had to really focus on what their T-shirts were saying. Most things I say have an (attempted) element of humour, don't mind me

This video is so strange, it flows like a piece of propaganda, yet delivers the message of encouragement to make ones own assumptions based on evidence they find. Given this, however, most of the material we are fed as 'evidence' would indeed seem to be false, at least where our hobby (lol) is concerned. Making our judgments false if we believed such information.

What really separates the true independent critical thinkers (most of us here) from the poor fools who gobble up media biscuits, is SOURCE of the evidence. It's very easy to make a lot of people think something is valid. You would think you are a respectable critical thinker for being against such things as DMT for example, it shuts down the master gland! A professor guy said it, I dunno, he looked legit, must surely have evidence right???

Great clip. I was actually in the second row of the audience at this performance, and there's actually a moment earlier in the DVD where you can see my mug. Anyway, just a small matter of semantics, this was his second-to-last HBO performance and he had many other non-tv performances before he died.

Like others here have already said, this is fun but rather simplistic. The critical thinker vs. wishful thinker polemics in it actually violate the rules they themselves set out for critical thinking... hehehe. (reducing to an either/or argument)

Logic is an amazing tool that too few people know much about. A good place to start when writing, debating, or analyzing an argument of any kind is to learn the Logical Fallacies. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

You would be shocked at how many brilliant people put together terrible arguments simply by not understanding certain basics of logic. They touch upon a few of them in this video, but actually violate a number of clear fallacies as well.

I will say this. Critical thinking alone is not logic. And logic doesn't, in and of itself, make someone smart. Furthermore, there are elements of what they call wishful thinking that can lead to innovation... and innovators are generally considered smarter than people who happen to think somewhat critically. The captain of a high-school debate team or a run-of-the-mill lawyer tend to understand logic, fallacies, and critical thinking, but none of them usually wind up considered geniuses. The really smart people tend to have well developed right AND left brains that work synergisticly. They know how to use their critical faculties of course, and slice an argument apart to reveal whatever substance might be there... but they can also dream, fantasize and imagine things that people aren't even arguing about yet.

Another very interesting field of study for those who want to think with more umph, is Epistemology (the study of knowledge and what is knowable), and to a lesser extent, Ontology (the study of what can be considered real).

Anyway, thanks MC for spurring a thread on this topic. You might have just raised the bar on the quality of debate around here...

Nice thread, and a much needed topic of conversation around here in my opinion.

The following is certain to make me some enemies, but this is nothing too new, so here goes:

I have wondered from time to time whether the nature of the DMT experience actually contributes to the erosion of critical thinking. Could be that it just tends to attract those who are prone to a lack of it to begin with - but regardless, we are as a group, ENORMOUSLY challenged in this regard.

There's this huge subset of our community that thrives on easy answers, adopting an I see it, therefor it's real mentality, or worse, a position of if I don't understand it, it must (or must not) be true. This is especially difficult for me to understand, as the experience (for me) is so paradigm shattering that it illuminates the fact that I really don't know much about anything at all. In short, I feel it encourages me to think critically and generally question assumptions. On the other hand, it's so weird, unexplainable and outside of my frame of reference that I can at times almost get how people automatically assume they're hanging with elves and faeries, rather than taking the time to search for more complex (and less convenient) answers. I just wish that more people here would try and exercise a modicum of rationality, because frankly, the whole soul sucking entity thing is painfully embarrassing for the rest of us. Not understanding something is not a reason to pick the easiest answer, just as mistrust of the system is not a reason to gravitate toward ludicrous alternatives.

It makes me INSANE, for example, when someone comes here posting with a legitimate medical concern, and they're counseled to take some asinine home remedy in lieu of visiting a doctor. These are the same people spouting off about "sheeple" and claiming to reject dogma in all its forms, and they're the ones who will tell you that psychedelics are good and necessary for everyone on the planet. They'll insist that the experience is 100% real and not open to interpretation, that western medicine is a conspiracy intentionally designed to enslave the masses, that they're being evicted from their apartment as a result of bad hyperspace mojo, and so on and so on and so on and so on, blabbity blabbity blah. And for every well spoken, critical thinking psychonaut, there are 50 others who prefer to think that the world is flat simply because they haven't themselves seen the curve.

All I'm saying is wake up, trippers. You're like cavemen shaking a monkey bone at the moon to make it go away.

I can understand the need for people to concider that these are all just mental processes..but at the same time it is extremely arrogant to assume that anyone who might think otherwise has lost the ability to think critically..calling them cavemen doesnt help either

What we need is less people thinking they have the answer.

I'm not saying they are all mental processes. I'm saying that I don't know. There is in fact a great deal I don't know, and that admission doesn't make me uncomfortable in the least. What I'm saying is that those who claim to know by way of choosing the easiest possible answer (to anything) are like cavemen waving monkey bones. That's how I view the just eat fruit and avoid all doctors contingent of the Nexus, as well as those who constantly pose the question what are the entities trying to tell us?.

You can call me arrogant (and I probably am), but I generally prefer to think things through rather than choosing the most convenient default position. There are a great many here who appear not to, as the act of thinking is too taxing - which is puzzling to me as DMT provides a never ending challenge to get one's think on in new and previously unconsidered ways.

Great and important points Uncle Knucles, I wholeheartedly agree with you (as you probably know), and try to spread some critical questions and problems around here myself. Cool video too, though slightly annoying