OK, I’m on a toot here about thinking styles, but it’s what’s on my mind and catching my eye lately.
I was reading an article about hedge fund managers, and Jim Leitner from Falcon Management said “the propensity to challenge conventions is one of the things that differentiates a hedgie, and it’s something that humans are not necessarily wired to do . . . When someone is bullish on oil, they tend to pick out the pro-oil arguments in whatever they read. Very few people train themselves to look for disconfirming evidence” (Bonaccolta, 2007, p. G1).
I caught myself doing that to an extreme recently. I was writing a paper, running up against my deadline, and I needed sources to support my argument. I went to a database of peer-reviewed articles (i.e., respectable references) and narrowed my search to find only those articles that contained support for my argument. About half way through the process it hit me that there was no intellectual honesty at all in what I was doing. So I returned to my search for respectable references and searched for the opposite of my argument. Voila – a host of reputable sources who completely disagreed with my point and all of the other resources that had originally been called upon to support it.
Not only was I standing on higher moral ground (finally), but I also gained a lot more insight into the topic. I ultimately felt good about my argument, not because it was what I wanted to believe, but because after reading all of the arguments for and against, I at least had a well-rounded view of the topic, and could successfully argue both sides of it.
Then I saw the same concept from a different angle. I use APA style for referencing all my written work. It’s one of a number of styles designed to accomplish two primary objectives – standardization of writing and proper crediting of other thinkers. A friend of mine is working on her MBA, and the university she is with requires their students to use MLA style. When you first learn one of these styles, it’s frustrating. The manuals are hundreds of pages long, filled with picky minutiae. And that’s all my friend could see, so she was concerned and frustrated. Now I don’t mind APA style any more, because I’m used to it. But in explaining it to her I realized its true value. When using one of these style guides, it is essential to credit all thought that is not your own. If you are paraphrasing someone, there is a way to cite it in your text. If you are quoting someone, there is a way to cite it in your text. If you are expressing knowledge of some sort, and it wasn’t your original knowledge, there is a way to cite it in your text. In fact, if you are citing a fact about something that is ‘generally’ known, you still have to cite where you got the information from.
Seems incredibly nit-picky, right? But here’s where it’s powerful. I no longer have any question about when I am doing original thinking and when I am expressing knowledge I have gained from somewhere else. Furthermore, if I cite knowledge gained from someone else, that’s a trigger to go looking for contrary knowledge. And from all of that referencing and citing, I begin to draw conclusions that I know are original and informed.
We live in an increasingly anti-intellectual society. Intellectualism is frequently perceived as an elitist pursuit. But that’s incorrect. One can train their children to be intellectuals without getting them beat up on the playground. Because what intellectualism is about is recognizing that the mind is a fascinating space filled with the capacity to deceive itself, and doing what one must to be an objective and informed thinker.
Getting our thoughts and ideas confirmed (or just followed) can be great for the ego. But it’s just so much refined sugar – a quick burst of energy followed by a crash and ultimately contributing to intellectual obesity. We’ve heard people talk about moral fiber, but what about a little intellectual fiber here?
Bonaccolta, J. (2007). Hedge fund confidential. Time 170, 3.
(c) Andrea M. Hill, 2007
