For What It's Worth

Shut Up And Think

(9 minute read)

Key Takeaways:

• Not all quick judgments are irrational. Snap impulses rooted in emotion differ from informed judgments shaped by study, experience, and disciplined reasoning.
• Understanding must precede disagreement. Intellectual maturity requires the willingness to grasp an idea fully before critiquing or dismissing it.
• Education trains recognition. A liberal arts approach develops the ability to detect weak arguments, logical fallacies, and unsupported claims without relying on mere instinct.
• Humility strengthens critical thinking. The capacity to entertain a thought without immediately accepting it is a hallmark of an educated mind.

In Decoding Lies 4 we saw that while perception shapes how we see the world, it is not the same as truth. Careful reasoning, intellectual humility, and a willingness to question our assumptions are essential for separating fact from fiction. By committing to thoughtful inquiry and open-minded dialogue, we not only improve our understanding but also strengthen our relationships and communication with others.

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”

–Aristotle, as expressed in Nicomachean Ethics

The Courage to Consider

As an educator, I have found Aristotle’s admonition to be among the most profound words ever offered to students. I have used it to help students determine how best to approach challenging subject matter.

Much of the advice students receive is packaged in familiar slogans. You only get out what you put in. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Visualize and succeed. The world is your oyster. It becomes an endless stream of “yada, yada, yada.”

Set all of that aside and remember only this: Learn to consider and examine what others have to say without immediately internalizing it.

Something seems to happen to students somewhere between high school and college. Trust in authority begins to wane, at best. At worst, it manifests as reflexive rejection. I understand this. I was that teenager myself.

What ultimately “cured” me was exposure to a liberal arts education. For some, those three words together—liberal arts education—can be an unsettling prospect. In reality, it is anything but.

Liberal arts is a teaching tradition developed by the ancient Greeks. It emphasizes the study of language, logic, public speaking, mathematics, music, and astronomy. It was adopted by many European universities during the Renaissance and continues today to influence universities worldwide.

A core principle of a liberal arts education is to teach students how to learn. The ultimate goal is to produce well-informed citizens by cultivating them as lifelong students.

Lifelong students: we never stop learning. Students are given enough foundational knowledge to explore their careers and the world, and they are equipped with the skills necessary to think critically. These skills help them solve everyday personal and professional problems.

Period. Full stop.

Contrary to some criticisms, it is not an exercise in ideological formation. Instead, it trains students to suspend immediate judgment so they can engage thoughtfully with new perspectives.

Liberal arts students learn to engage seriously with what others have to say while resisting the impulse to adopt every idea as their own. This, I believe, is a life lesson that transcends the liberal arts. Everyone can benefit from learning it.

As beginning students, we must learn not to feel threatened by knowledge. Our first scandal usually occurs in a philosophy class, when we are introduced to a wide range of thinkers.

“The bastards are trying to change us!”

It takes time to realize that they are not. They are paid to teach us these things. We are expected to observe and consider these ideas—much as if we were handed an apple and asked to examine and describe it in detail. Nothing more.

Once we accept that, things become much easier. We no longer feel under assault (we never were in the first place). I suppose that is a daunting prospect for some. Freedom of ideas does, in fact, threaten certain corners.

This brings us to an important observation. By the time students arrive in higher education, their “bullshit detector” is working overtime. Everything and everyone is suspect. This resistance is often the first “real power” a teenager experiences.

For the first time, they may be experiencing their autonomous nature naturally emerging. They are transitioning from childhood to adulthood, trying to figure out who they are and who they will become. Parents with teenagers understand this dynamic well.

Introducing—and then consistently reinforcing—the practice of suspending judgment takes time. Aspiring adults must consider concepts unfamiliar to them. But once they grasp this habit of mind, they can step out of their own way and allow an education to occur.

The most important piece of advice for students—and for anyone committed to being a lifelong learner—is simple. When someone presents you with an idea, thought, philosophy, creed, or tenet, accept it provisionally. Hold it. Examine it. Dispassionately, and without any sense of attachment, observe it as you would an object handed to you. Resist the urge to internalize it immediately.

At this stage, as teachers, we are not asking, “How does that make you feel?” We are only interested in, “Do you understand it?”

That is an interesting apple, ball, spoon, and so on.

I do not know why, but this analogy has always worked for me.

“It is just someone else’s thought, idea, or belief. I can look at it and inspect it without internalizing it. No one has yet asked me to change.” As an author and teacher that includes anything you find here on this website.

The mark of an educated mind is the ability to entertain a thought without yielding to internal pressure to accept it as truth.

This intellectual discipline—learning to suspend judgment and examine ideas without immediately internalizing them—may sound academic, but it is profoundly practical. In our world, saturated with information and competing claims, the ability to hold ideas at arm’s length becomes not merely a nice-to-have skill but a necessity.

It may sound easier than it looks, but there are perils that need to be traversed along the way. As we navigate through them we’ll see why this capacity for thoughtful, dispassionate inquiry is essential for distinguishing signal from noise, truth from fiction.

The Minefield

Every day, we are bombarded with news and information. As we have seen, some of it is accurate and valid, while some is misleading, deceptive, or even fraudulent.

Our ancestors have passed down to us the basic components of a logical, rational, and reasonable mind. Nevertheless, this inheritance is fraught with pitfalls and traps along the way (the “stick snake” discussed earlier in this series, for example).

We need to use this capacity more effectively and resist our tendency to rely uncritically on cognitive shortcuts. Distinguishing fact from fiction through the use of reason is a deliberate, disciplined, and learned practice. We have to choose to exercise it, learn how to refine it, and be intentional whenever we do so.

One of the most liberating aspects of being a lifelong student is the recognition that we cannot possibly know everything. In fact, we readily acknowledge that we do not have all the answers. 

Yet we know how to ask the questions we need to ask. We know where to look, and whom to consult. This enables us to develop solutions to the professional and personal problems we encounter every day.

The Discipline of Intellectual Patience

If we want to treat unfamiliar and even challenging ideas as worth considering, it helps to remember that “everyone has the right to be understood.”

The right to be understood doesn’t mean we have to agree with the idea.

But before we disagree, we need to do our best to understand what that idea really is and why someone believes it matters.

Of course, not all ideas are equal.

Someone might tell me the world is flat or that the moon landing was a hoax. As an educator, I can see that their understanding is limited and that the evidence clearly points elsewhere. Personally, those ideas don’t make sense to me, and I find it hard to imagine people sincerely arguing for them.

Yet there is a critical distinction between an instinctive reaction and a judgment grounded in evidence. Snap impulses—gut feelings that arise without deliberation—are notoriously unreliable. They can mislead us, especially when we are unfamiliar with a subject. A quick judgment is different. It is the product of prior study, trained recognition built through disciplined reasoning. When we reject a flat-earth argument swiftly, we do so not on impulse but because years of education have equipped us to recognize falsehoods at sight.

Still, it’s the idea I disagree with, not the person.

Unfortunately, in our society, we often treat people and their ideas as one and the same. You are your ideas. It can be hard to separate the two. So the first, natural reaction is to judge the idea.

Some ideas actually do call for a quick judgment — but only when they directly contradict well‑established evidence or rely on demonstrably false premises. A snap judgment grounded in prior knowledge is different from a snap judgment driven by bias or emotion.

It’s only after much conversation that I can begin to see whether someone is genuinely struggling with the concepts involved.

“Understanding is an intentional act of emphatic comprehension.”

That’s a careful way of saying we should work hard to grasp the idea being presented. It takes real mental energy to uphold the belief that everyone deserves to be understood.

The flat-earther or the moon-landing denier mentioned above? Those are clearly very unfamiliar—and, in light of the evidence, mistaken—ideas. However, it’s still important to try to understand why people choose to go against conventional wisdom, even when the contrary evidence keeps mounting.

At the very least, their persistence deserves a degree of respect. There are many reasons why people choose to go in that direction.

Perhaps a topic for a future article?

Editor’s note: This essay was originally published as Decoding Lies: Using Your Bullshit Indicator, Parts 1–8, on Jan. 16, 2023 – Jan. 24, 2023. The parts have been combined and edited for clarity and continuity.