TTC - Your Deceptive Mind - A Scientific Guide to Critical Think

Your Deceptive Mind: A Scientific Guide to Critical Thinking Skills

Professor Steven Novella, M.D., Georgetown University; Yale School of Medicine

MP3 original webrips + Course Guidebook + Starter Materials

24 Lectures, 30 minutes / lecture

Course Lecture Titles:

The Necessity of Thinking about Thinking
The Neuroscience of Belief
Errors of Perception
Flaws and Fabrications of Memory
Pattern Recognition—Seeing What’s Not There
Our Constructed Reality
The Structure and Purpose of Argument
Logic and Logical Fallacies
Heuristics and Cognitive Biases
Poor at Probability—Our Innate Innumeracy
Toward Better Estimates of What’s Probable
Culture and Mass Delusions
Philosophy and Presuppositions of Science
Science and the Supernatural
Varieties and Quality of Scientific Evidence
Great Scientific Blunders
Science versus Pseudoscience
The Many Kinds of Pseudoscience
The Trap of Grand Conspiracy Thinking
Denialism—Rejecting Science and History
Marketing, Scams, and Urban Legends
Science, Media, and Democracy
Experts and Scientific Consensus
Critical Thinking and Science in Your Life


Synopsis:

What should you think? Who should you believe? Could you be deceiving yourself? These are questions that all critical thinkers of any age must constantly ask themselves.

There is no more important skill in today's world than being able to think about, understand, and act on information in a way that is both effective and responsible. Critical thinking transforms you from a passive member of society into an active participant in the ideas and issues of the day. It empowers you to better understand nearly every single aspect of everyday life, from health and nutrition to science and technology to philosophical and spiritual belief systems.

What's more: At no point in human history have we had access to so much information, with such relative ease, as we do in the 21st century. Information is literally everywhere around you; in newspapers and magazines, on the radio and television, and across the Internet. But as the amount of information out there increases, so too does the amount of misinformation. So it's more important than ever before to become a better critical thinker—someone who can analyze and construct arguments and arrive at more sound, more informed opinions. And the key to success lies in

understanding the neuroscience behind how our thinking works—and goes wrong;

mastering the fundamental skills behind logic, reasoning, and argumentation;

avoiding common pitfalls and errors in thinking, such as logical fallacies and biases; and
knowing how to distinguish good science from pseudoscience.

======