"Don't be so irrational!" Using these words in one's personal life,
towards one's spouse, is an excellent way to add fuel to an already heated
argument. In the workplace, rational reasoning can often be deployed with
much success. But not always so in the personal sphere of one's life.
As a supervisor over a car assembly line at General Motors, I have
come to appreciate this fact. For instance, if the line seems to be
operating in an inefficient fashion, one must consider the possible reasons
for this inefficiency in a step-by-step mannerâ€"is it a human or a
mechanical problem, for example' A supervisor uses the scientific method
to target the problem and find a solution. It has been said that "rational
thinking for developing claims about reality involves the use of the valid
reasoning such as logic and science for determining the truth about
reality," and "science attempts to use to determine the truth about
reality" by explaining that certain aspects of perceived reality are false
except for one hypothesis, after the process of elimination of all false
proposed solutions. (Hinrichs, 2004)
In plain English, if one worker seems to be slowing down the cogs of
the line, one examines the working procedures of him, her, and him, until
the supervisor finds out, through eliminating the possible culprits the
worker is operating in an inefficient fashion. When the firm I work for
designs a new product or gives advice to consumers like "never leave your
child unattended in a hot car," on its Website, it too is operating
according to rational reasoning, assuming that the objective of safety is
paramount, and that all operations must be subsumed to that rational goal
of the preservation of family and one's self. (GM, 2004)
One's experiences at home, however, do not always operate according
to the scientific principles of rationality, as any father ...