The learning outcome of Critical thinking and the problem-solving course has made us able to identify and reflect upon the logical fallacies, logical reasoning, cognitive biases, and assumptions. Before, getting all these critical thinking concepts I used to make hasty decisions without contemplating the situation. Contextually, coming to the end of this 8 weeks course, I made various decisions during that time. But, one measure decision I made was to sell my business firm. Further in this article, I will be analyzing this particular decision.
Before discussing the decision to sell the firm, let’s have a look at the background of the scenario that leads me to take this decision. I along with my best friend kick-started our startup project called “Pahal”, which is an IT company working in the field of digital payment in Nepal. We receive outsourced work from an Indian company and get the work done. All was going according to the plan until we decided to change our location. In this case, I opted to open the office just in front of the previous office but my partner strictly decided to change the location on his own without having a meeting. This decision of his without involving me made me feel bad, I realized that my partner was having “Bias blind spot” bias. This is one kind of cognitive bias where we see oneself as less biased than other people. After realization, I talked with him about the problem but he rejected my option. Being rejected, I now realized that I was suffering from “Exaggerated expectation” bias, it is a tendency to expect more extreme outcome than those happening. Though the location of the office was never a problem, I was not comforted by the way my partner decided without consulting me. This particular case caused the “Slippery slope” in our relation, after this, I overlooked many decisions of partner some caused us the loss too.
After realizing all this, I opted to talk with my partner. But, while having a proper talk, my partner always used “Red Herring” fallacy. He always diverted the topic of the talk to useless and funny topics. But after lots of tries, I felt like it was useless to keep talking with the one who doesn’t want to understand my feeling. I lost my calm, and we even argued with each other. The only option left for me was to quit the partnership and decided to separate from him.
I took this decision particularly to save our friendship. Our family is also close to each other, so by keeping that in mind I rather thought of family relation than work. But, after reading this course, I think that I could have taken those decisions differently. I could have chosen a different path which would balance our working and family relation. Later, I realized that my partner’s behavior was like this from the very beginning. He used fallacies, and cognitive biases while interacting with me from the time we met. With the help of this course, I was able to identify the fallacies he used upon me. All these were done to make his argument persuasive and get work done by bypassing me. Me being a straight thinker, I couldn’t realize the fallacies at first, but after this studying this course I was able to identify the flaws and took these decisions. If this was not the case, my partner could have treated me much worse and could have not shared profit with me as well.
The tools of critical thinking and problem solving gave us the skills we need to tackle our daily problems as well as the decisions we take in our life. If I hadn’t able to identify the persuasive skills and cognitive bias on my partner early I could have got into more mess and loss. So, the overall learning outcomes of this course has helped me a lot to make decisions.
Before discussing the decision to sell the firm, let’s have a look at the background of the scenario that leads me to take this decision. I along with my best friend kick-started our startup project called “Pahal”, which is an IT company working in the field of digital payment in Nepal. We receive outsourced work from an Indian company and get the work done. All was going according to the plan until we decided to change our location. In this case, I opted to open the office just in front of the previous office but my partner strictly decided to change the location on his own without having a meeting. This decision of his without involving me made me feel bad, I realized that my partner was having “Bias blind spot” bias. This is one kind of cognitive bias where we see oneself as less biased than other people. After realization, I talked with him about the problem but he rejected my option. Being rejected, I now realized that I was suffering from “Exaggerated expectation” bias, it is a tendency to expect more extreme outcome than those happening. Though the location of the office was never a problem, I was not comforted by the way my partner decided without consulting me. This particular case caused the “Slippery slope” in our relation, after this, I overlooked many decisions of partner some caused us the loss too.
After realizing all this, I opted to talk with my partner. But, while having a proper talk, my partner always used “Red Herring” fallacy. He always diverted the topic of the talk to useless and funny topics. But after lots of tries, I felt like it was useless to keep talking with the one who doesn’t want to understand my feeling. I lost my calm, and we even argued with each other. The only option left for me was to quit the partnership and decided to separate from him.
I took this decision particularly to save our friendship. Our family is also close to each other, so by keeping that in mind I rather thought of family relation than work. But, after reading this course, I think that I could have taken those decisions differently. I could have chosen a different path which would balance our working and family relation. Later, I realized that my partner’s behavior was like this from the very beginning. He used fallacies, and cognitive biases while interacting with me from the time we met. With the help of this course, I was able to identify the fallacies he used upon me. All these were done to make his argument persuasive and get work done by bypassing me. Me being a straight thinker, I couldn’t realize the fallacies at first, but after this studying this course I was able to identify the flaws and took these decisions. If this was not the case, my partner could have treated me much worse and could have not shared profit with me as well.
The tools of critical thinking and problem solving gave us the skills we need to tackle our daily problems as well as the decisions we take in our life. If I hadn’t able to identify the persuasive skills and cognitive bias on my partner early I could have got into more mess and loss. So, the overall learning outcomes of this course has helped me a lot to make decisions.
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