Because our schedules get busier and busier, jumping to conclusions happens more and more. We "know" a little about a lot of things so answer most questions without all the facts. Most scams use this knowledge to ease your conclusion over to one they want you to have. The media present some of the facts along with a faulty conclusion and people will claim it as truth because they heard it or read it. We're horrified when we hear Hugo Chavez in Venezuela has replaced all school books with versions from Cuba that teach what he wants Venezuelans to believe. How many of us know who picks the schoolbooks and what the content is for schools in our neighborhood? A leading U.S. education publisher, Houghton Mifflin was purchased in December 2006 by a newly formed Irish company headquartered in Dublin. Florida, Texas, and California combined make up 30% of the $4 billion spent on educational publishing and impact the national standards. In Florida, the Governor and Secretary of State sign 6 year contracts for instructional materials, and one is likely to be signed within the next couple months, even though both office inhabitants recently changed. Is it jumping to conclusions to anticipate a new contract between Florida and Houghton Mifflin? After all, in Florida 50% of instructional materials must be state mandated (the other half by local districts). The president of the National Association of State Textbook Administrators is from Florida. Surely these distinctly different facts couldn't be combined into a scenario where schoolchildren are taught material that could engineer a change in society. If we don't trust government we jump to the conclusion it will happen. If we do trust government we jump to the conclusion it won't happen. Note that neither is based on fact, because all the facts have not been researched.I've found most people when presented with scenarios like this explain they don't have the time to gather facts. This is despite the improvement in technology that allows so much information to be gathered so quickly. Assuming for a minute that life is too busy to gather facts about all decisions, shouldn't the highest priority ones be researched? This does not mean that varying opinions should be gathered. It means various facts should be gathered and assembled like a puzzle to see the actual "picture". By the way, if you're deciding about the last paragraph, remember two things. 1) The "facts" did not note their source so they should be suspect (even though I researched them). 2) Not enough "facts" were presented to make a determination, so unless you take time to research more, don't arrive at a conclusion. In my job as a Category Manager, a large part of the role is planning. Providing all the facts to a given situation has to part of a disciplined process that occurs before a decision is made.
Based on the meanings of the word, FACT, from Dictionary.com, a fact is described as these definitions:
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| 3. | something said to be true or supposed to have happened: (see how fast the description moves toward unknowns). |
| 4. | something known to exist or to have happened: (critical thinking skills are required to avoid groupthink). |
Note that I told you the source of the definitions so you can determine for yourself if the validity of the source is adequate for you. Many people go to snopes.com to see if so called urban legends are true, even though nothing I found on the website indicates why Barbara and David Mikkelson are in a position to recognize truth from fiction. Journalism used to be an industry where facts were held in high esteem and companies built reputations on being truthful. Alas, in my lifetime it has devolved to ratings and sales, so multiple outlets are needed for any one person to takes the news as presented and grasp the probable reality of the reports. Avoid mixing in your personal hopes and ideals or they will move you toward a conclusion that is not based on facts.
For most people, and me included, opinions come from previously learned facts. If a baseball pitcher has a high earned run average, my opinion is he'll be more likely to give up a hit in a given situation. This comes from the saying, the best prediction of the future is the past. I serve on the Long Range Planning Committee of my church so as well as the normal research that is part of my job, I've looked into how futurists work. Similar to studying history to explain what happened in the past, futurists study the present to see trends and conditions that will explain the future. This involves gathering facts, but not for the purpose of knowing the fact. It is for the purpose of calculating the probability that something will become fact. As in the pitcher's ERA above, it's not real but opinion, although an educated opinion. My job involves making fact based decisions. Some companies have decision based fact gathering, in other words after the decision is made, "facts" are found to justify the decision. The more facts that are gathered before a decision is made, the better. Please take enough time to gather facts in relationship to the importance of the decision. It may not be a priority to research all restaurants in the area before going to lunch. How about voting? What about marriage, college, large purchases, parenting, and a healthy lifestyle? What are your priorities? How many facts should be gathered about them before making a decision? I'd highly suggest the bigger the decision the more research is required (as in facts gathered).
A recent Fusion conference I attended (by the way, a GREAT conference I would highly recommend) suggested 3 rules for Biblical interpretation that is also true of fact finding results. 1) Context must be considered and understood. 2) A narrative is not normative. 3) It can't mean what it never meant. There may be principles behind the facts (or Scripture) that can be applied, but for a decision to be made on facts, nothing more can be added. As in #2 above, just pointing out it happened once does not mean the happening is normal. I saw a statistic recently that said the amount of knowledge accumulated in the last two years is more than the previous 5,000 years. With the exponential growth of data, it could be true. However, researching if it's factual could take more time than is possible, because if so, the accumulation after the beginning of the research could make the answer meaningless. Statistic is another strange word that doesn't mean the same as fact, but is related. A statistic could be true but not be relevant. The relevance of the fact determines if it has any meaning for the question at hand (see the first paragraph of this blog).
We all make decisions, but there are two distinct styles of decision makers. One struggles making the decision and is quick to change it if challenged. The second makes the decision relatively quickly and rarely changes despite criticism. I am very much like the latter and I believe it is because of the instinctive process of gathering facts before deciding. If that process is followed, only new facts could cause an adjustment to a decision. My hope for you is that this process of gathering facts, discerning the accuracy and relevancy of them, and then making an informed decision will be helpful in all the decisions you'll be asked to make, but especially those that can't or shouldn't be changed in the future.
