0722) It seems to me that a good imagination is a complement to critical thinking. Those that cannot imagine things any other way could have a hard time looking for better explanations of why they are that way to begin with.

0707) It seems to me that what influences one’s ability to think critically about a situation is the real or perceived personal impact of that situation. The scale of one’s ability to detach oneself from anything requiring critical analysis is, probably then, directly related to the final value of that analysis. But then that is a really long way of saying that emotional detachment from a problem tends to improve the outcome of the solution.

0258) It seems to me that nearly everyone wants to be considered a rational thinker, and in doing so frames their analysis of the world in such a way that they hope encourages others see them so. But, that said, it also seems that not everyone realizes the ultimate judge of what is rational and what is irrational is not an internal and/or a subjective measure, but an external and objective one.

0199) It seems to me that fame can be bad for critical debate. As a simple example look at the disproportion of voices when someone famous becomes a public figure on a social networking website. In these cases, very often, the person who is famous listens to the ideas of few but broadcasts their ideas to many. Critical debate of any value needs to take place on a scale of some equality, but fame unbalances that scale.

0510) It seems to me that if machines were to ever become (so-called) “intelligent” we would have no concrete way of proving or disproving it. Very few of us are able to prove that we are intelligent ourselves. But that said, I’ll start seriously considering the possibility that machine intelligence is close-at-hand when an artificial mind does something human-like, such as making a really bad decision despite having access to really good information.

Your turn… altercate, argue, bounce off, canvass, compare notes, confabulate, confer, consider, consult with, contend, contest, converse, debate, deliberate, descant, discept, discourse about, discuss, dispute, examine, exchange views on, explain, figure, get together, go into, groupthink, hash over, hold forth, jaw, kick about, knock around, moot, reason about, review, sift, take up, thrash out, toss around and/or otherwise weigh in in the comments below.