How Critical Thinking Can Be Used to Manage Information in the Past and Present?

According to Lynn (2013), his study has revealed that during the 20th century, individuals living in certain countries have experienced a sustained increase in average IQ every year. The results of this study were also confirmed by a series of other studies in several countries, giving rise to a phenomenon referred to as the "Flynn Effect".

However, this increased frequency of use of cognitive abilities can also result in the opposite. The more information that enters our brain, the more complex the cognitive processes become. This can result in information overload, the main result of which is that the individual's thinking process is increasingly distracted so it is difficult for the individual to focus on 1 thing about what he needs to do.

This is the main problem in thinking in the information age. Just as the problems of thinking in the past were simpler which also resulted in mindsets that tended to be simple as well, the complex problems experienced in this information age can also result in complex mindsets as well to encourage cognitive progress. Of course, this is inseparable from improving the quality of nutrition that is getting better, but of course, it is still inseparable from how humanity itself makes the best use of its cognitive improvement.

The problem is, that while humans still have the challenge of adjusting to their cognitive development, humanity has been hit with a truly massive increase in information in the early 21st century. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is at the stage where the technology is starting to show and enlarge the potential to take over the flow of information from humans.

Starting from Stephen Hawking's hypothesis (in Bradley, 2017) that humans will lose out to the rapid development of AI because human biological evolution develops relatively much slower, to the current reality where AI developed by Facebook and Google can create their own language that cannot be understood by humans. Therefore, there is a need for a special human cognitive ability that can support human evolutionary progress at a time when humans have reached the peak of intellect in such a situation. This cognitive ability is critical thinking.

According to Das et al. (1975), critical thinking is reflective reasoning that focuses on deciding what to believe or do. By developing critical thinking, individuals are able to:

1. Verify the credibility of sources properly.
2. Identify conclusions, reasons, and assumptions when obtaining dense information.
3. Assess the quality of arguments, including the acceptability of reasons, assumptions, and evidence.
4. Develop and defend an argument on an issue.
5. Draw conclusions carefully.

In the end, individuals who have advanced critical thinking skills will not be easily swayed in the development of a swift flow of information. Whether it is the past or the present, Critical thinking is a cognitive ability that humans have always had that can prevent them from going astray. How information technology is often misused in the present, such as propaganda that is massively spread on technological media, or propaganda in the past that was spread with various written media, critical thinking helps individuals identify how information is valid or invalid by analyzing the perspective and intention of the information disseminator or by using various points of view to gain a broad understanding of the information. The use of logic, which is the main tool in critical thinking, is also very involved because logic can help humans identify conclusions that are generated from various premises contained in information.

References:

Bradley, T. (2017, July 31). Facebook AI Creates Its Own Language In Creepy Preview Of Our Potential Future. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/tonybradley/2017/07/31/facebook-ai-creates-its-own-language-in-creepy-preview-of-our-potential-future/?sh=3c3400af292c

Das, J. P., Kirby, J., & Jarman, R. F. (1975). Simultaneous and successive synthesis: An alternative model for cognitive abilities.

Lynn, R. (2013). Who discovered the Flynn effect? A review of early studies of the secular increase of intelligence. Intelligence, 41(6), 765–769.