Tips on Thinking: Be The Red Team

Here's some advice about thinking I give my students, and employ myself all the time: be the Red Team.

The Red Team, as you know is the team of (putative) good guys designated to pretend to be the (putative) bad guys. Many people tend to think that good reasoning is primarily a matter of technical expertise--being adept in logic or statistics or scientific method. It's good to be good at those things, but it may be even more important to inquire honestly. However, once you've become convinced that a position is true, it becomes increasingly difficult to get yourself to probe for its weaknesses. It's easy to fall into the role of unrelenting advocate for the position.

So, it can help quite a bit to step back and consciously take up the role of the Red Team, thinking yourself into the role of critic. The key question to ask yourself is "what criticisms would I raise if I wanted to reveal the weaknesses of this position?" This is, roughly: what criticisms would I raise if I were convinced that the position is false? This may seem like a trivial exercise, especially for those of us who are already inclined to be reflective about our beliefs, but I do find that it helps, especially if you engage in the exercise over a relatively long period of time, a period of hours or days.

Try it. I predict you'll agree.

If there is some position to which you are genuinely committed you should not only not fear this kind of criticism, you should welcome it. If you're afraid to engage in this exercise, then you probably have no right to be sure about the position in question. And discovering this is valuable in and of itself.