“You can convince anybody of anything if you just push it at them all of the time. They may not believe it 100 percent, but they will still draw opinions from it, especially if they have no other information to draw their opinions from.”¹
Does this sound like a quote from Big Tech or one of the social media giants? Or maybe from the shot-callers in the mainstream media, higher education, or even a politician? Who said it might surprise you. It might even scare you.
Critical thinking seems to be going the way of the dinosaur. We have more information at our fingertips than ever in the history of humankind, and yet it seems that we have a real hard time thinking for ourselves. We live in the age of convenience, of ease, of influence. The source and basis of information becomes irrelevant as long as we don’t have to work for it.
A Luxury We Can’t Afford
As police officers we don’t have the luxury of being able to believe everything we’re told. Hopefully, that was not a shocking statement. No, our job is to gather the facts and to follow the evidence in search of the truth, all while setting aside emotions and assumptions. Anything less would lead us to baseless accusations, frivolous charges, and the end result would be a travesty of justice.
It’s true that it can be easy to get caught up in emotion, as people often do. They hear something, think they saw something, and then jump to conclusions without any proof. Victims of crimes are sometimes misled by their feelings or perceptions and blame the wrong person, and it’s our job to ground them in fact while we investigate the crime. We, as police officers, must be critical thinkers, both on and off the job.
Proof In The Pudding
I once investigated a shooting and, in the beginning, was convinced that the victim was lying. His car had been shot up and he claimed that he knew nothing about it. He told me that he had parked the car on the street several days prior, and when he went to use it that morning, he found it riddled with bullets. Sure. Sure it was.
After a close examination of the bullet holes it was a fact that the bullets had come from all different angles. And on top of that, it had obviously been a targeted shooting since it was the only car among many to get lit up like a Christmas tree. Plus, there was not a single bullet casing to be found. I believed that the car had been shot elsewhere and that there was no way that what the victim said had happened, had actually happened. There must be more to the story. He was holding back and I wanted to know why.
Classic Blunder
As the investigation continued, I did my due diligence and spent a lot of time collecting surveillance video and canvassing the neighborhood, despite my reservations. Anything less would make me the world’s crappiest detective — a title that wouldn’t look good on a coffee mug. So I did the right thing, doubting the entire time. I gathered and watched almost 72 hours worth of video, and was genuinely shocked when I found the shooting had been captured on video and that the victim had been telling the truth the entire time. My assumption had been wrong.
Two things saved me from embarrassment. One, I had kept my reservations to myself. And two, I followed through with gathering as much evidence as I could. Had I stopped gathering evidence too soon or went with my gut instinct, or a little of both, I would have committed the classic blunder of combining emotions with assumptions. The result, then, would not have been the truth.
Spoon Fed
Today, it seems, that we get bombarded with information from all different sources, data points, and statistics, which often comes from what has traditionally been considered reliable sources, and they all point to the same conclusion. We hear the same bit of information over and over again, but we never take the time to do our own research, to hear from both sides, to find the evidence, and follow it. The scary thing is, even if we don’t fully believe what we’re told, it can still influence our opinion, our decision making, and ultimately our actions.
Why? Because we are perhaps more easily influenced than we want to admit and have allowed ourselves to be spoon fed rather than to do the work and go out and launch our own investigation. When our information source is limited to a single voice, so too will our conclusions be.
Falling Prey
People who think that all police are murderers, racists, or systemically whatever the current accusation is, haven’t done the work. They are getting fed a steady diet of garbage by master manipulators and algorithms and then make assumptions without challenging the source. It’s not that they are bad people, it’s that they haven’t been thinking critically. And if we’re not careful, we can fall prey to the same kind of thinking — the kind of thinking that leads to the wrong conclusions.
It is our duty, whether at work or at home, to think critically by considering the source and weighing it accordingly, to seek alternative viewpoints and engage in thoughtful disagreement, to test conclusions against the facts and the rules of logic, and spend our energy on how to think not what to think. If we don’t, we will be like sheep led to the slaughter.
The Mastermind
So who’s the insightful person who said you can convince anybody of anything if you just push it at them all of the time. They may not believe it 100 percent, but they will still draw opinions from it, especially if they have no other information to draw their opinions from? A man who wielded his influence to mastermind seven murders in 1969: Charles Manson.
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- Are you thinking critically?
- Do you adopt a viewpoint without investigating?
- Are you willing to engage in thoughtful disagreement?
- How can you improve your thinking?
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¹Vincent Bugliosi, Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders (New York: W.W. Norton, 1994), 628.
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