Three Flaws In Thinking That Mess Up Our View Of Ethics, History, Politics, & Everything Else.

One of the most helpful categories of going wrong in our thinking is Augustine's idea of temeritas (rashness), the tendency to assert as certain what is uncertain and what is uncertain as certain. To "assert the certain as uncertain" is to refuse or be otherwise unable to be appropriately moved by evidence. To assert the "uncertain as certain" is to achieve certainty prematurely. Often those who have very bad case of the first tend to accuse others of being guilty of the second, and vice-versa. Termeritas is the sin apologists toward which apologists of all sorts tend to be prone.

Then secondly, Vaclav Havel is often quoted as saying, "Education is the ability to perceive the hidden connections between phenomena.” I have no idea if Havel actually said this or where, but he is often quoted as saying it. But whatever the case, my experience would tend to lead me to the opposite conclusion, namely that "education is the ability to avoid perceiving what seem to be hidden connections too quickly." And thus potentially avoiding a next error.

The third is a big one: Insisting that unlike things are like and like things are unlike, which usually turns on featuring one or more points of similarity while suppressing differences or featuring one difference while suppressing similarities. This is illustrated by the current tendency of the political Left to equate any leanings toward the right (no matter how small) as advocacy of full-blown Hitlerian Fascism and on the political Right any leanings toward the left of full-blown Stalinist Communism.