Hello everyone. I'm Major Ben Bonafant and today I'm going to be talking to you about critical thinking. So first, critical thinking is using our intelligence and knowledge to reach objective and rational viewpoints. Using rational processes can lead to stronger arguments. Critical thinkers are better equipped to solve problems and support good decisionmaking. In this lesson, I'm going to define critical thinking. I'm going to summarize different methods for developing a critical thinking mindset. And I'm going to talk through barriers to effective critical thinking and techniques to mitigate those barriers. So critical thinking is reasonable and reflective thinking focused on deciding what to believe or do. Another way of saying it is thinking about your thinking while you are thinking in order to make your thinking better. Critical thinking is a manner of thinking that employs curiosity, creativity, skepticism, analysis, and logic. Curiosity means wanting to learn. Creativity means viewing information from multiple perspectives. Skepticism means maintaining a trust but verify mindset. Analysis means systematically examining and evaluating evidence. And logic means reaching wellfounded conclusions. Now, here are some things that critical thinking is not. It is not a predisposition to find faults or flaws. It is not a threat to one's individuality. It is not intended to make people all think alike. It is not a replacement for emotional thinking. It is not blind support of everything based on science. And it is not always the most persuasive. Critical thinking enables thinking outside of your comfort zone, making better decisions and stronger, more rational arguments, seeing other possible solutions. Using analysis and other problem solving techniques to refine ideas and identify long-term solutions. Now, we're going to go over three different methods. The methods are the nine intellectual standards, the six stages of developing critical thinking skills, and then the five steps to critical thinking. And we're going to be doing all of these in the context of creating courses of action for our leadership. So we've got the nine intellectual standards. Clarity, precision, accuracy, relevance, depth, breadth, logical, significance, and fairness. For clarity, is the information or task at hand easy to understand and free from obscurities? Precision. Is it specific and detailed? Accuracy. Is it correct? Free from errors and distortions. Relevance. Is it directly related to the matter at hand? Depth. Does it consider all variables, contexts, and situations? Breth. Is it comprehensive and does it encompass other perspectives? Logical. Does it contradict itself? Significance. Is it important in the first place in fairness? Is it free from bias, deception, and self-interest? So with all these different points, we create our courses of action and then we try to match it or relate it to each of these different points. And if if it doesn't meet clarity or precision, well then maybe it's not a good course of action. If it doesn't have depth or breadth, then maybe we need to come up with a different course of action. And all of these different standards make us think about the details, about the context, about our experiences. And the standards as the name implies you have standards that your boss has that the organization has and uh what the boss not only standards for you but standards for courses of action as they are. So if we were to sum up the nine intellectual standards, we have working through details, context, experiences, and standards. Then we have our six stages of developing critical thinking skills. So clarify your thinking using purpose and context. Question your sources. Identify arguments, analyze sources and arguments, evaluate the arguments of others, and create your own arguments. So arguments is used a lot in these different stages. And the overall goal is to create courses of action by going to your subject matter experts, hearing their arguments, hearing their sources, analyzing what they've given you, evaluating it, and then coming up with your arguments and how you want to phrase it to the boss in your funding view. so that you can have courses of action that the boss can take that are related to operational concerns with your funding piece. So to sum up this one is working through and creating arguments. And then the last one, the last process we're going to look at are the five steps of critical thinking. And you've got identify the problem, obtain information, evaluate the options, create and consider alternatives, and implement the decision. This one is very similar to the one before it. And there are also elements of the nine different standards. But what this one wants to focus more on is flexibility. When you're coming up with your courses of action, you want to make sure that the boss can react to changes in operations or changes in funding and can react according to those changes. and your courses of action can also be implemented accordingly and be useful in a changing environment. We know that what we do is not set in stone and there's always changes. We also know that our boss may not pick one of the courses of action that we put before them. And when they're not picking what we gave them, they can mix and match from different courses of action or they can pick something that was not brought before them because they have a different view from what we have and they have information that we don't. But having flexibility built in helps our leadership and helps get us into the conversation. So summing this one up is flexibility is key for the five steps of critical thinking and relating it to this course and the JFAM I found it interesting that I was able to link the critical thinking steps directly to each of the different steps of the JFAB. It was not my intent when I was going through and creating the lesson or when I was finding the different processes. Uh but it it was very it was a it was a good feeling when it when it happened. So it's very cool. So again we've got the nine intellectual standards which is working through details, context, experiences and standards. The six stages is creating arguments. Then the five steps is about flexibility. And all of this is about making a process, thinking through that process and then coming up with your courses of action rather than, oh, this is what I need to do. I'm just going to go with one thing and not think about it and just go forward. No. The idea of critical thinking is to make a process, run it through that process, and then your courses of action will be better developed and will have more backing to them and they will have more fidelity to them. Now, we're going to be talking about barriers and mitigating barriers. So, here are our list of barriers. We've got ego, pride, group think or social conditioning, universality of experience, personal biases and preferences, seeing the person and not the statement, cognitive fatigue and drone mentality. For ego and pride, there's uh sophistry, rhetoric, and then winning the argument. So, even if you have fancy words or even if you think you've won, that doesn't mean you've got your point across or that your uh audience got what it needed out of the argument or the debate. So, don't let pride or ego get in the way of your critical thinking or in delivering your message to your leader. uh group think. Don't always follow what you think needs to be done. Try to think about things in a different way, in a different light. Be willing to step outside your comfort zone. Be willing to step outside of what your organization has done in the past and be able to come up with a reason for why you have those changes or why you should do something new. A universality of experience. Not everyone uh has the same experiences. Not everyone experiences the same events the same way. So my past influences my experiences in a different way from someone else's past and their new experiences. For personal biases and preferences, you've got confirmation bias, anchoring bias, false consensus effect, and normaly bias. All of these can influence people and make people think about things in a restrictive manner. And we want to try to avoid all of these different biases and counter these biases for seeing the person and not the statement. We don't want to use ad homonym or a heavy reliance on IQ or IP appeals to authority. We don't want to say, "Hey, they're in charge. We're just going to go with them." We don't want to go with, "Hey, they're so smart. We're going to go with them." And it's not about the person. It's about the product. It's about the process. It's about your courses of action. So, don't always point to who came up with it. point to the result and the process. Uh cog cognitive fatigue. This one is a little bit uh less well known than some of the previous ones I think. Uh so for cogn cognitive fatigue, you don't want to always have your uh creative thinking happening at the end of the day or when you're really tired because you may run into a thinking block. um or you're just you've made so many decisions prior to this you can't think clearly. So you're going to run into your cognitive cognitive fatigue. And then drone mentality is if you're always doing the same thing over and over and over again and you have no basis for change or no basis for making your own decisions. Being creative, be thinking critically can be harder and can be can take longer. So try to get away from a drone mentality. Try to get away from cognitive fatigue. All right. So, as an exercise of what we've learned, we have the clock question. So, we have a clock that is set to 9:45 and we want to figure out what is the angle between the hour hand and the minute hand. So, first we're going to think of the circle of the clock and we've got 360° and in between the two hands it's a little it's less than an hour and each hour is 1112th of that whole circle. So we've got 12 and then 45 can be portioned into uh 34s of an hour. So each fourth of an hour is 15 minutes and 3/4s would be 45. So then you're going to divide by four and multiply all of that grouping by three and you're going to get your result. Otherwise, you're which means you've got 7.5 * 3, which is 22.5°. So another instance of a of uh the clock question. What is the measure of the angle between the hands of a clock when it is when it is at 9:15? So to help out, we're going to look at the clock again. So if you think about what would normally be thought of as 915, if it's directly at the nine and directly at the three, it's a it's 120°. No, not 120, sorry, 180 degrees. And we need to figure out what that difference is for the hourhand which is moving. So again, we've got our 360, we've got our 12, and then because it's 15, we've got 1/4. So 180 minus our calculation which is 180 - 7.5 comes up to 172.5°. And then here's a quote from Winston Churchill that relates to not just thinking but also to money. Uh gentlemen, we are out of money. Therefore, we shall have to think. Thank you for your attention and have a good day.