So you want that somebody teaches you how to think.
Really?
Unfortunately, nobody can teach you how to think. This is completely up to you, it's something happening in your head, between you and yourself. If someone claims otherwise, it means you'll become his or her puppet.
Nonetheless you can learn, and people can teach you, how to check the correctness of your reasoning, when it makes sense to talk about correctness. You can learn how to pursue rationality.
Emotions are bad counselors. Your path towards rationality doesn't leave room to emotions. Emotions aren't proofs. Emotions aren't arguments neither.
Be not tempted to sound rational because you want to win arguments: being rational means to be searching for a cognizable truth, namely a truth which is such because you have built rational correct arguments that brings to it.
Be prepared to be questioned by other rationalists: nobody can be always faultless.
The point is not to win or to lose
The point is to reach altogether a truth that can stand every check thinkable and feasable so far. And when it doesn't, don't be ashamed: it's how things must work. Take the newly traced path and find your (new) way towards truth. It's not a defeat but a new angle you will like to explore.
This is the foundation of the Science, sadly not of all the today science — no capital S — which too often drifts to dogmatism built on its past discoveries and certainties.
Be prepared to be laughed at or despised by non-rationalists.
You are also warned that if you pursue perfect rationality, you could be labeled as a cold, cynical, heartless idiot by emotions-driven common human beings.
Do not react:
rationalists must not be touched by non-rational arguments. Non-rational arguments are out of scope.
Rationality in your every day life
Your every day life experiences will teach you that you don't want to be always rational in every single moment of your life. Likely it would be boring (it would look so to many non-rationalists) and likely it would make harder to have new friends, or just to enjoy life as it comes.
You must be careful when you turn your strict rational mode on. Be sure you are talking to, or writing to another human pursuing rationality.
Remember that the vast majority of non-rationalists take confrontationally all kinds of arguments which aren't a plain nod to their expressed thoughts.
Non-rationalists usually will think you are worthlessly nitpicking because you have a different opinion about what they have said. Hardly they will respond rationally to your reasoning and understand how their opinions rest on really weak or badly faulty reasoning (if this is the case — if it isn't, they would be entitled to the name rationalist, even if temporarily, and they won't overreact to your well-formed nitpicking).
Resources
- Learn about formal and informal logic fallacies on fallacyfiles.org; the old taxonomy is better than new taxonomy, in my opinion.
- A place full of rationalists and want-to-be rationalists: Less Wrong; rich of interesting readings and interesting topics. I believe the mind-killer is a must-read; if you pursue rationality, Bayes is your friend; read e.g. Bayes' Theorem illustrated and all the other Bayes related articles, like Bayesian, the Bayes' theorem, and so on.
- Despite the name, rational wiki isn't as rational as it pretends to be by its name; it indulges too much in “blasting” bias-inducing topics (mind-killers), they call them “crank”, often failing to approach them rationally (and unbiasedly), so that it seems almost like if it is a think-tank for blind positivism and the scientific dogmatism I've already blamed above, or worse, a place for supposedly-rational bullies who think to fight pseudoscience and “anti-science” (point 1 of “About RationalWiki”); nevertheless you will find interesting resources here, too.
Other resources exist. Just be rational when you try to understand if they are really pursuing rationality or rather if they pretend to, in order to achieve other purposes.
Image credit
A brain By Allan Ajifo [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Thanks for sharing!! @xinta
keep it up, xoxo
Thanks to you for stepping by!
Reading this I'm reminded of Sheldon in 'The Big Bang Theory'. :-) You are right when you say that it is probably better to not be rational all the time (unlike Sheldon). An interesting post @xinta. Thanks.
Glad you've found it interesting. Sheldon is a genius imprisoned in his own geniality, which makes him not so socially intelligent. Luckly and paradoxycally, common people pursuing rationality have more options and they can find a better balance.
my that last line about whether they are actually rational or pretend to be. I love that a lot. Thanks for this!
Thanks to you for the welcome comment!
In these days, scientism (under the showy pretence of rationalism) is too often used like a cudgel to impose “the right thoughts” and “the right way of thinking” to people. The rule of thumb is: never trust blindly whoever says “I am rational, so you must believe me!”. Rationality is an observable, so you must analyze what has been said, disregarding completely the claim “I am rational”: if he really is, his words will speak in favor of that claim.