How To Teach a Healthy Dose of Skepticism?

c0d3h4x0r writes "It's no accident that 'whatcouldpossiblygowrong' is one of the most common tags applied by this community to stories about proposed ideas or laws. The ability to spot and predict faults is a big part of what makes a great engineer. It starts with having a healthy skepticism about the world, which leads to actual critical thinking. Many books and courses teach critical thinking skills, but what is the best way to encourage and teach someone to maintain a healthy dose of skepticism? Is it even a teachable skill, or is it just an innate part of the geek personality?"

Comments

Re:Read books on it

[richg74]

I don't think geeks are much more skeptical than other groups of people.

I'd question that assumption, too. It seems to me there are two "geeky" areas where the ability to have a skeptical viewpoint is important: debugging and security. Both require you to be able to think, not in terms of, "Well, let's see, will this work?" -- a perfectly natural perspective when you're trying to solve a problem -- but in terms of Murphy's Law: "How can this be made to fail?" I suspect anyone that's spent any significant amount of time with geeks knows that some are a lot better in these areas than others.

Is it even a teachable skill, or is it just an innate part of the geek personality?"

I think it's some of each. In some cases, at least, I think I've managed to teach a few people how to think more skeptically / critically. It's easier with people that have a basic grounding in some kind of scientific or mathematical discipline, I think because that tends to teach you that your intuition is not always a trustworthy guide. On the other hand, anyone committed to an ideology, whatever the flavour, is usually uneducable.