Having a keen eye for how to apply simple logic accurately in the complexity of human situations is very useful, much more useful than people who like to insult or dismiss logic believe. We live in a world of physics transforming information in regular patterns. It isn't that human concerns sidestep logic. It's that logic is more difficult and error-prone when it encounters this kind of complexity.
Possibly the best response to that is to keep your logic as simple, factually based, and open-minded as possible.
When you do that, you will find that logic rarely fails you, even when it's failing everyone else.
I've given you pretty much the whole secret! But I'll go into a little more detail.
Learn about IF-THEN and how it isn't reversible. IF the sun is shining outside, THEN it must be daytime. Great. But IF-THEN isn't reversible. (The reverse might be true, but that would be its own surprise.) IF it's daytime, that doesn't mean that THEN the sun is shining outside.
It seems ridiculous and people love to dismiss the usefulness of these basic logical constructs. But if you make sure you aren't intuitively reversing IF-THEN (seems easy to avoid here, but as soon as people get into things less familiar than sun and clouds, they go totally off the rails with THEN-IFs), you'll avoid a large chunk of the irrationality you see in the world. It's crazy how much craziness comes from reversing IF-THEN and thinking what you just did there must make sense. No, it doesn't.
That doesn't mean it must be wrong. There's a whole study of this called Bayesian statistics. Our brains, in fact, are very much Bayesian statistical machines. No joke. Absolutely true. But this also is a cause of enormous amounts of prejudice in every area, so we have to be careful. Bayesian statistics/intuition gives us some clues about when IF-THEN might be reversible. But it's highly fallible.
An excellent way to think about this: your brain knows how to make bets and present them as realities. But you need to know they are bets. You need to know your brain is a deeply evolved gambler, and the world you think you are seeing is its gamble. Never forget that, and the IF-THEN issue dissolves.
Get the very, very basics right. Understand that logic in the real world is quickly meaningless if it's based on facts that are even slightly inaccurate. Even slightly. You have to stay open to evidence and subtleties you've overlooked and assumptions you might be making (you are making assumptions, always, so stay open to looking into them).
The simplest logic you can use on the most bulletproof facts. And keep your eyes peeled and your ears tingling for the slightest defect in that logic or those facts. Thank me later. Happy holidays!
