While I was staying at this hotel, my laptop wouldn’t boot up again after we returned from sightseeing all day. I pushed the buttons and nothing happened. I had properly plugged the power cord into the wall that morning and checked the cord was connected to the laptop as well. The battery pack itself was secure, but I pushed the releases and reseated it anyway. Still nothing. It had worked fine the night before when I watched a movie in bed but the battery was almost drained. That was why I plugged it in that morning. The laptop must be broken, right?
Computer problems can be the worst. Trying to figure out why something is not working is a prime example where we only have limited amounts of data or evidence, yet we need to come up with an explanation or solution. However, before we shell out money for repairs or a replacement, wouldn’t we like to know if our cognitive biases misled us first? It is quite easy to mentally ignore potential evidence, simply because we cannot see it.
In critical thinking, it is helpful to understand major factors in a situation as previously discussed. Also we should recognize when key information for our analysis is potentially missing. Just because we don’t have evidence that points to other major factors, we should not immediately discount those just because we don’t see any evidence. When evidence is missing, it doesn’t always mean it doesn‘t exist. Before settling on a conclusion it is helpful to check whether the absence of the information for a potential major factor is normal or not.
In the case of my broken laptop, a major factor to why its battery was dead was because it was not properly plugged into a power source. Sure, I had it plugged into an outlet, but was the outlet working? It turned out that the outlet was only active when the room’s keycard was plugged into the slot by the door. So when we went out for the day, the outlets in the room were all dead and the laptop’s battery never recharged. After being in standby for several hours, the little amount of life left in the battery had drained away.
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