- Robert Heinlein, Assignment in Eternity (1953)
Wednesday, 5 December 2012
"We defined thinking as integrating data and arriving at correct answers. Look
around you. Most people do that stunt just well enough to get to the corner store and
back without breaking a leg. If the average man thinks at all, he does silly things like
generalizing from a single datum. He uses one-valued logics. If he is exceptionally
bright, he may use two- valued, ‘either-or’ logic to arrive at his wrong answers. If he
is hungry, hurt, or personally interested in the answer, he can’t use any sort of logic
and will discard an observed fact as blithely as he will stake his life on a piece of
wishful thinking. He uses the technical miracles created by superior men without
wonder nor surprise, as a kitten accepts a bowl of milk. Far from aspiring to higher
reasoning, he is not even aware that higher reasoning exists. He classes his own
mental process as being of the same sort as the genius of an Einstein. Man is not a
rational animal; he is a rationalizing animal."
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