Why Questioning Everything Is the Smartest Thing You Can Do

Do you want to know why questioning everything is the best policy in life?

It’s because humans are prone to error, including the smartest amongst us.

In fact, there’s a principle called “the curse of knowledge” that highlights this problem.

A popular example of how this plays out in life is in the exchanges between Dr. Watson and Sherlock Holmes.

Holmes often points out how Watson doesn’t see the simplest things simply because he doesn’t question the details enough.

It’s not that Watson isn’t a smart guy. He’s a doctor, after all. But because questioning things is such a small part of his mental activity, he misses both the big picture and the granular details.

As a result, Holmes shines as an incredibly bright individual and Watson seems rather dim, despite his credentials.

If you’d like to learn how to question things with greater frequency so you can observe the world in-depth, stick around.

In this post, we’re diving deep into why you should always question everything and different ways to do it well.

Why Questioning Everything Is Critical to Great Thinking

The ancient Greeks knew that asking questions was their best bet when it came to critical thinking.

A lot of people associate questioning as a tool introduced by Plato through the Socratic dialogues.

Although it’s true that Plato used the character of Socrates to highlight the use of questions to sharpen our thoughts, inquiry is much older.

The Pre-Socratics, for example, devised what is called Eleatic Philosophy.

Parmenides of Elea, from which Eleatic Philosophy gets its name, is sometimes considered the first of the Greeks to use questions to explore the nature of reality itself.

How Questioning Removes Errors Quickly

Here’s the most important point about these philosophers:

They preferred to use logic instead of their direct senses.

And this meant using language in particular ways.

In fact, a lot of their wording boils down to a kind of math though the use of syllogisms that help with thinking logically.

Here’s an example of a typical syllogism:

“All mammals are animals. All elephants are mammals. Therefore, all elephants are animals.”

To test the validity of this statement, the philosophers would use questions that remove their senses.

It might sound silly to us today, but put yourself in their shoes for a moment.

If you were to use purely your sense of touch to assess an elephant, you could conclude that this animal is a reptile based on its leathery skin.

So, before the Greeks developed classification systems, many of which we still use today, they needed to question everything in order to rule out errors that could mislead them.

Another way to look at the questioning process is to understand the difference between abstract thinking and concrete thinking. In each of these types of thinking, you use different kinds of questions to arrive at the truth.

The Dialectic Approach

Sticking with the ancient Greeks, let’s look at Plato a little further.

One of Plato’s main contributions is called dialectical thinking.

Through the use of questions, it allows you to reason effectively by producing multiple ways of looking at just about any issue or problem.

It works because you use questions to examine your thoughts and the thoughts of others before, during and after arriving at conclusions.

In other words, the process of questioning never really ends.

This process is the core of the scientific method, in which nothing is ever “proved.” Instead, we use our scientific questions to help us produce evidence that either validates or invalidates our assumptions about the world and reality.

Without being able to ask and answer questions as an ongoing process, truth fizzles up quickly. And this is why Plato’s recording of the dialogues of Socrates is such an astonishing document.

Whether Socrates is right or wrong, what matters is the freedom to debate and keep questioning things.

Other Traditions Based on Questioning Everything

Although the ancient Greek philosophers are very important, they weren’t alone in urging us to question.

The urge to question everything why as a repetitive practice is found in other ancient texts like the Upanishads.

These texts were influential in forming contemplative tr...