THE FLAWS AND ERRORS OF HUMAN THINKING
[This is not a sort of "New Ideas". It is just a unique personal view of what is already set.]
TYPES OF HUMAN THINKING:
A – CONSTRUCTIVE THINKING
Human beings act to achieve specific goals. Any action performed incorrectly often fails to achieve its intended purpose.
Thinking is a mental activity carried out by the mind, and it must be done properly in order to be useful and productive.
The true purpose of thinking is to identify effective means for achieving our goals and solving our problems.
This type of thinking is called “constructive thinking” or planning thinking. It does not add new knowledge; rather, it proposes a sequence of steps or actions required to reach a specific goal or solve a particular problem.
Constructive (planning) thinking can only be performed correctly under three conditions:
1. The existence of a clear goal or problem.
2. Sufficient information (a knowledge base) to determine the means and steps.
3. Sound logic when constructing the plan, based on its most important axiom: the determinism between causes and effects (results)
B – ANALYTICAL THINKING
Analytical thinking is the original and fundamental form of thinking. It aims to acquire knowledge by understanding phenomena and discovering new facts.
However, no generation can rely solely on analytical thinking to rediscover all existing knowledge; otherwise, human progress would come to a halt. What distinguishes humanity is the transmission of knowledge from one generation to the next, allowing further discovery and advancement.
Constructive or planning thinking works in the opposite direction within the mind:
A person begins by identifying the direct means to the ultimate goal. Then, they treat that means as a temporary end, searching for the direct means that leads to it, and so on until they arrive at what is currently available or within reach.
This sequential process of identifying means requires accurate and sufficient knowledge. Some of this knowledge may already exist within your personal mental store, while additional information may be needed from external sources such as books, websites, research, or experts.
In some cases, you may need to discover the required additional knowledge yourself, or with the help of scientific or technical personnel.
Therefore:
Because thinking is one of the most important human activities, it is essential to avoid flaws and errors in thinking.
These flaws fall into three main categories:
innate, logical-cognitive, and psychological.
INNATE FLAWS
These include generalization and conditioned association.
Generalization: attributing certain characteristics to an entire country or family simply because you encountered one or two individuals with those traits.
Conditioned association: believing in a connection between two things that merely occurred together a few times, without any real link. This is usually driven by emotion rather than fact, such as feeling dread in cemeteries due to the association with the loss of loved ones.
LOGICAL AND COGNITIVE FLAWS
These are common among the general public and among individuals with poor education.
Examples include:
Errors in deduction.
Insisting on one specific interpretation of an event and rejecting all other possibilities without proper refutation.
A classic example is ignorance, e.g. arguing with uninformed people, where logic collapses and errors multiply.
PSYCHOLOGICAL FLAWS
These are the most dangerous because they affect both mind and psyche.
The most widespread among humans is FEAR, which leads to illogical conclusions simply because the mind is overshadowed by anxiety.
The second major flaw (no less common) is the unconscious control exerted by our desires over our judgments and actions.
These are conscious desires, fully known and acknowledged by us, yet they unconsciously influence our behaviour.
*** Note this carefully: the desires themselves are conscious, but the way they influence us is unconscious.
Examples:
A stingy person is fully aware of their reluctance to spend money. What they do not realize is the set of automatic behaviours that follow, criticizing expensive or average-quality items, exaggerating the advantages of cheap or wholesale goods, perhaps to persuade their children.
Another example is the student who dislikes studying. They consciously know this, even if they deny it to their family.
What remains unconscious are the automatic behaviours driven by this desire: opening the refrigerator repeatedly, becoming interested in trivial things on television, complaining of hunger or headaches, or creating distractions, all of which are escape mechanisms occurring without awareness.
"** The important lesson here is to learn and to teach our children to be all the time AWARE of "why we need this" and "why we think like that" .. This is important to be more psychologically heathy persons.
This must be distinguished from suppressed unconscious desires, usually sexual or aggressive in nature, which cannot be expressed or even acknowledged. They remain repressed and seek release, or transform into other legitimate motivational forces such as the desire for fame, success, or greatness.
The Most Dangerous Profiles: PSYCHOPATHS:
Psychopaths are criminals or potential criminals, They are not motivated by material need or by a simple lack of values. Their behaviour stems from deep childhood trauma caused by persecution, mistreatment, or even torture.
Such “victims” develop a mode of thinking that is entirely detached from logic and reason.