Managed to Escape a Nuclear War & How

Lt Col. Stanislav Petrov, was on duty on September 26, 1983, in a high-secret Soviet military control room watching out for possible missile attacks on the country. Things are usually unexciting in the room, but not on that day when the word LAUNCH in all caps flashed on his screen. It meant with a high degree of reliability that a US ICBM (Inter Continental Ballistic Missile) with a nuclear warhead had been launched and was heading towards the Soviet Union. Soon there was another one, and another one, till five Minuteman missiles were powering towards the US, as per the computer system.

Lt Col. Petrov could report the attack, which would mean an instant retaliatory Soviet action launching its own nuclear missiles triggering an all-out war that could annihilate nearly 300 million people in the two nations. The Soviets then had 35,804 nuclear warheads, and the US, 23,305. He analyzed the situation, along with his team, looked at the facts, and decided not to report. It was a false alarm, he concluded. And it was; the system mistook the sun’s reflection off clouds for a missile.

His decision is an ideal example of ‘critical thinking,’ a term that we are finding in every list of skills that will become critical in staying relevant in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. If you take one critical thinking lesson from Lt Col. Petrov, it is about forming your own judgement based on the facts, and—once you’re sure of your ground—be willing to back it against all comers.

Critical thinking has become the most sought after skills in major organizations, specially now when we have an information overload, and must process things fast, figure out what to focus on, weigh the options and decide quickly. Critical thinking can help you in any profession where you must analyze information, systematically solve problems, generate innovative solutions, plan strategically, think creatively, or present your work or ideas to others with clarity. Critical thinking involves creativity; another in-demand skill today and for the future You might need to spot patterns in the information you are looking at or come up with a solution that no one else has thought of before.

While connecting the dots and making sense out of it is essential for critical thinking, one must accept the possibility of being wrong – it’s a quest for true knowledge and the way to it is testing every possibility. This would mean detecting inconsistencies and common mistakes in reasoning. Knowledge can't be created in an environment where everything is already known. It can only be created where we're open to the possibility that we're wrong. Sometimes you don't know what you think you do. Something to consider in the era of artificial intelligence and machine reasoning.