Critical Thinking And The Utility Of Facts
As I’ve discussed in the Thoughts on the Business section (Thoughts on the Fallacy of Facts) there is a limit to the value of a factual statement based on the underlying context. In the news this week has been a clear example, where competing statements of fact amply illustrate the point.
The pandemic has been marked by numerous challenges in understanding and relevancy. One of the questions that the U.S. has grappled with is our struggles with testing; we were arguably too slow to get in gear with testing, ineffective with the initial tools, and ultimately too limited in our applications. That said, there are two points made again recently: the administration has repeatedly proclaimed (assumed to be accurate) that we have tested more people than any other nation… while the counter fact was pointed out by the scientific and medical communities (also assumed accurate) that we’ve tested a far less portion of our population than almost any other major country. This has allowed one side to argue that we’ve been the leading testing nation in the world, while the other argues that we’re among the worst… with both providing simple facts to support their assertions.
Contradictory Conclusions
The answer to understanding these seemingly contradictory conclusions is to evaluate the relevancy of the underlying, unstated question: have we done a good job with testing, has it been effective for our purposes and needs? Sadly, the value statement for that question seems to be obvious; we have not. A “good job” would entail providing actionable information for a coordinated response… it would yield projections for the allocation of resources and the confirmation or dispute of behavioral responses… it would provide solid guidance for economic and legislative policy. According to virtually every part of the medical and scientific community, we have failed badly — and continue to fail today — in all of these regards. The utility of a context that fits the moment demonstrates that the measure of per capita testing (along with timeliness, and ignored subtext) is a far more important perspective than the overall number of tests provided.
This leads to an important follow-up question: why the disparity, why the lack of agreement on a meaningful context? Again, the answer is obvious and unfortunate: we need only look to what each side has to gain or lose in the adoption of their particular perspective to understand the motivation. The administration is not only fighting a pandemic; it is overtly fighting for its continuing existence, in light of an upcoming election season. The designation of our testing program as failure leads directly back to the choices and actions of this administration, and adoption of a negative value there portends a serious headwind against their successful continuation. They have a significant and potentially existential concern about the adoption of the counter-argument and must push back against that factuality as aggressively as possible. In that pursuit, they have found an ally — a fact that they can process, and that cannot be disputed. The counter side — the medical and scientific community — has no critically vested interest in subverting the actuality. It is neither responsible for the actions and policies, nor is its existence threatened by them regardless of their findings. Their most obvious self-interest is in their demonstrated proficiency and accuracy; those are the points on which they are judged, both historically and professionally. To the degree that their primary objective is in the success of response, their motivation most closely aligns with that of the population they are communicating with.
What is Critical Thinking?
Critical thinking is essential in understanding the omnipresent flow of information that reaches our eyes and ears. Competing “fact statements”, not falsehoods, are the frequent tools of misinformation and propaganda; falsehoods are most easily discovered and discarded, while facts require more wrangling. John Adams once said that “facts are stubborn things, and whatever our wishes… they cannot alter the state of facts…” suggesting that facts are permanent. That assertion is correct in so far as it goes, but the constructive meaning of facts, their efficacy in determining our actions and beliefs, their usefulness to our discourse, are anything but dispositive.
Our success as a people, both individually and collectively, requires that we consider the information before us more critically and more objectively today than ever in history. At no time in our past have we been inundated with as much information, from as many disparate and alternatively motivated sources, as we are today; at no time have we had as many choices available to us to make, with the impact on our lives of those choices as critical to our outcomes. Therefore, we must interpret that incoming information based on the context that is useful for the particular discussion, and to our best purpose… an interpretation that requires an assessment not only of the facts but of their relevancy and of the understandable motivations of their purveyors.