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There are two known habits that impede knowledge: assuming and guessing. Assuming is taking something for without a doubt, that is, arbitrarily accepting as genuine something that has not been demonstrated or that may sensibly be disputed. Since assuming is for the most part an unconscious activity, we are frequently ignorant of our assumptions and their influence on us. The main negative impact of unrecognized assumptions is that they stifle the curiosity that prompts knowledge.

Many individuals, for instance, never conjecture about the daily life of fish. They may occasionally stop at the pet store in the shopping center and gaze at the tank of tropical fish. Be that as it may, they may never display curiosity about the social parts and relationships of fish communities since they assume fish have no such parts or relationships. However the truth of the matter is, in the expressions of submerged sociologist C. Lavett Smith, There are fish equivalents of stylists, policemen, and farmers. Some are dependably progressing and others are inactive. Some work at night and some by day.

Guessing is offering a judgment on a hunch or taking a possibility on an answer without any confidence that it is right. It's a typical, ordinary activity. For understudies who don't contemplate for exams, it's a last-ditch survival technique. For a case of guessing, however, how about we take a more charming subject—drinking brew. Some time prior an educator of behavioral science at a California school led a brew trial among his understudies. The issue was whether they could truly tell a decent lager from an awful one or their favorite from others.

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Numerous understudies likely would figure they could, and various participants in the test really speculated they could tell. In any case, the test demonstrated that when the examples were not marked, not one understudy could identify a single brand. Since assuming stifles curiosity and guessing denies the importance of evidence, neither is likely to prompt knowledge.

The most reliable approach is to be cautious in asserting that you know something. Be conservative in your level of assertion at whatever point you are not as much as certain, talk about possibilities and probabilities. Let's assume, "I think" or "It seems to me" as opposed to "I know." Most important, be straightforward with yourself as well as other people about your ignorance. To admit you don't know something indicates great sense, restraint, and intellectual genuineness. These are not shortcomings but rather qualities. The admission of ignorance is the essential first step toward knowledge.

Does this mean you ought to be weak and fence everything you say with maybes and perhapses? Does it mean that to be a critical thinker you should neglect convictions? The response to the two questions is an emphatic no! It means just that you should esteem firm, strong statements so much that you hold them for occasions when the evidence permits. Similarly, you should esteem convictions so highly that you grasp them just when you have sufficient knowledge to do as such and that you modify them at whatever point intellectual trustworthiness requires.

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