Title: Critical Thinking
Headings: 
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Critical  Thinking: Distinguishing Between Inert Information, Activated Ignorance,
Activated Knowledge
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Content: We must be analytically critical of the use  we make of our own experience. Experience may be the best teacher,  but biased experience supports bias, distorted experience supports  distortion, self-deluded experience supports self-delusion. We,  therefore, must not think of our experience as sacred in any way  but, instead, as one important dimension of thought that must, like  all others, be critically analyzed and assessed. The mind can take in  information in three distinctive ways: ( 1) by internalizing inert  information, (2) by forming activated ignorance, and (3) by achieving  activated knowledge. Inert  information. By  inert information, we mean taking into the mind information that,  though memorized, we do not understand-despite the fact that we  think we do. For example, many people have taken in, during their  schooling, a lot of information about democracy that leads them  to believe they understand the concept. Often, a good part of the  information they have internalized consists of empty verbal rituals  in their mind. For example, many children learn in school that “democracy  is government of the people, by the people, for the people.”