Translator: Milenka Okuka Reviewer: Mile Živković
I'd like to greet everyone present in the room.
Actually I'd like to talk about critical thinking
and its importance.
So let's begin.
On April 1, 1957,
TV company BBC showed on air
a story of unusually successful spaghetti harvest in Switzerland.
Eight million people watched that story.
And the following day, hundreds of them called the newsroom in order to ask
how and where they could get sprouts of macaroni tree,
and how they could grow macaroni at home.
As an answer to that, the newsroom responded
that it was necessary to put spaghetti in a jar with tomato sauce,
and hope for the best.
(Laughter)
Although this story today may seem funny and somewhat preposterous,
there's completely logical explanation for it.
An event took place in 1957.
At the time,
TV was one of few sources of reliable information.
It was impossible for the people to simply go online and check
how spaghetti was produced.
Besides, April Fools' Day pranks weren't as massively spread back then,
and the British themselves only saw canned spaghetti with tomato sauce.
Additional authority to that post
was provided by the off-screen voice of the famous speaker Richard Dimbleby.
In the contemporary world, we have a completely different situation.
We have many sources of information.
The amount of information which we receive from the outer world is also colossal.
But we wouldn't want to think
that we are capable of coping with its current,
because in truth we are only engaging in autogenic training.
Like the car driver
who doesn't fasten his seat belt,
and thinks that he will certainly never have an accident,
and that accidents happen to anyone but him.
My friend debater in one speech
said an audacious and interesting thought.
He said that the space of modern man
is probably even more mythologized
than the space of the medieval man who believed in paganism.
We can argue with that claim,
we can agree,
but one thing is clear -
myths and misconceptions are present,
and they follow us everywhere.
"Natural is beneficial, and artificial is detrimental,"
it is said in commercials and by salesmen.
Really?
Natural is different from artificial only in one thing:
the first we find in nature, and the second we don't.
Natural is not automatically beneficial,
just as artificial is not automatically detrimental.
Although, of course, for certain kinds of products
this claim is true.
However, this claim is trying
to extend the characterization to all the multitude,
when it is true only for a portion of that multitude.
"Alcohol warms."
Raise their hands, anyone who heard or read
this statement to be true.
(Laughter)
Thank you. In reality that's not true.
Alcohol really creates
a pleasant feeling in the stomach area.
However, it expands blood vessels,
that are situated closer to the surface of the body.
Blood rushes there,
and because of that body temperature drops.
That's the very reason why drinking alcohol
can cause substantial frostbites in freezing cold.
"Ostriches bury their heads in the sand."
We're all familiar with the claim
"To bury one's head in the sand like an ostrich,"
when we speak of a cowardly act.
But really there wasn't one
officially documented case
that ostriches buried their head in the sand.
And there's completely logical explanation for it:
They could not breathe that way.
(Laughter)
However, it exists in our lives.
Ostriches really lean their heads toward the sand in order to eat it.
It helps with their digestion.
And in case of danger, ostriches do
what anyone of us would do in their place,
if we could develop speeds of 70 kilometers per hour -
they simply run.
"Mice like cheese!"
"Napoleon Bonaparte was short!"
"Van Gogh cut off his ear!"
"Einstein was bad student!"
Those and other misconceptions we could list infinitely.
The existence of such judgments that we consider to be true,
but that don't exist as such, we will explain.
We would not be able to live in a world in which its every detail
we would have to learn by ourselves.
That is just physically impossible,
as well as it is physically impossible to critically comprehend
everything that happens around us.
Otherwise we would end up
like the ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes
who spent all his time philosophizing in a barrel.
We need a point of support
which we don't subject to doubt.
If anyone at this moment would ask me: "Why is the Earth round?,"
I couldn't answer.
Yes, indeed there is scientific explanation for it,
we cited it at school,
however, eventually it was erased from my memory,
and certainty in truthfulness of that fact remained.
However, availability of point of support
doesn't call off the necessity
of critically comprehending everything that occurs around us.
Because not everything in our world is so harmless
as information about growing macaroni.
Absence of critical thinking gives rise to prejudice.
It perpetuates stereotypes,
leaving us susceptible to manipulations,
and it inhibits our development.
It allows corporations to sell us goods
that we don't actually need.
It allows patriarchal society
to dictate us how we are supposed to be,
and what makes a good life.
It allows politicians to divide us
in opposing camps,
and to win elections on those divisions.
We created a world for ourselves
in which we are used to living in our chosen comfort zone,
in which the world is simple and clear,
in which we have answers to most of the questions,
in which we know exactly what is the truth,
and what we ought to do.
We've built a static world map,
and then we adapted it to a multifaceted
and ever-changing reality.
We believe that alcohol warms,
that ostriches bury their heads in the sand,
and the things that we are told by authoritative sources of information,
we don't necessarily bring into question.
We've built that world map, not with purpose of objective knowledge,
but with purpose of justifying our convictions
and our acts.
We love our little comfort zone,
and as soon as we step out of it,
we immediately tend to go back to it.
We become irritated if something is not clear to us.
We are suspicious of anything and anyone
that brings into question that which we behold as sacred truth.
Critical thinking urges us to put aside our ego.
It urges us to acknowledge
that we all make mistakes,
that mistakes - they are a natural phenomenon
on the path to critical awareness of what is happening around us.
It also urges us
to reflect and understand
that there are questions to which we don't have the answers.
Furthermore, there are questions
to which in principle there could never be right answers.
There is nothing wrong with that.
Acknowledging the pluralism of thought -
that is simply the acknowledgment of versatility
and complexity of our world
which had never been and never would be black and white.
I ask you
to practice critical thinking as often as possible.
I ask you to be curious and contemplative.
Analyze and interpret events on your own.
Create your own understanding about phenomena.
And, of course, let the logic guide you on the way.
It's the one and only way.
Thank you.
(Applause)