Critical Thinking on Phillip Büchler

Knowing When to Stop

Thu, 22 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The gorilla debate never ended. Nobody won it. People just got bored and moved on to the next question.

In the first post of this series I argued that this is a problem with taking a question apart. It has no natural end. You can always split it once more. In the second I looked at the people who go first into the unknown, and ended on an uncomfortable observation: they often don’t come back out.

Both endings point to the same gap. Programmes are good at planning the programme, with milestones and go-live dates. What’s often missing is a definition of done for the single topic inside it. When is this question answered well enough? When is this person’s part finished? That gap applies to thinking, and it applies to people.

100 Men and a Gorilla

Tue, 20 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I was walking my dog the other day and asked myself how I would explain critical thinking to students. Not the textbook version. The version where you take a question apart and find out it was never one question. My dog had no opinion on the matter.

The example I landed on is a bit embarrassing: 100 men against a gorilla. If you missed it, the question started as a Reddit thread in 2020 and went properly viral in late April 2025. Could 100 unarmed men beat one silverback? TikTok argued, zoo directors gave interviews, and at least one US senator shared his view on the record.¹

Climbing in Place

Wed, 26 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Picture two versions of the same person. In the first, hands on the rung above, one foot pushing off the rung below, golden light spilling down from somewhere unseen and clearly worth reaching. In the second, the camera has pulled back far enough to show the ladder was bent into a wheel a while ago. Same grip. Same posture. Nothing about the motion changed — only that “up” quietly stopped meaning anything, and the light turned out to be an ordinary bulb hung just out of reach, doing exactly what it was installed to do: keep the climbing going.