In the real world, people of all kinds insist that we do what they say because they know best what we should wear, what we should eat, what we should buy, and what we should believe. What they claim is the truth, we must accept. They kept saying they wanted to help us. They refused to let us go, leaving us alone to figure out who we should be. Worse still, those trying to convince us are not above board in their efforts to shape our behavior. What they say is, at best, a mixture of truth and falsehood.

We listen to them in order to construct our own answers, rather than listening to them and immediately doing what they say, as if we were a helpless lamb or a puppet with strings.

Critical thinking encourages you to listen to others, learn from others, and weigh what others say to see how they carry weight. In this way, you will understand that we must rely on others, but we cannot refuse everyone who comes, we must make choices.

The term critical thinking refers to assessment skills activated by the following three dimensions:

Sponge thinking - absorbing a large amount of information, which lays the foundation for complex thinking in the future; more passive, no need to rack your brains or meditate.

Gold-digging thinking: Take the initiative and choose what to absorb and what to ignore. To make this choice, you have to read with a special attitude, that is, an attitude of constantly asking questions. This way of thinking requires you to actively participate in interactions. The author is constantly selling you ideas, and you should always be prepared to debate them, even if the author is not physically present.

Weak critical thinking is using critical thinking to defend one's current beliefs.

Strong critical thinking is the use of critical thinking to evaluate all assertions and beliefs, especially your own beliefs.

Definition: Values ​​are ideas (often unstated) that people consider valuable.

They establish certain rules of conduct by which we measure the quality of human behavior. Values ​​are the standards of behavior that we ourselves recognize and that we expect others to behave in a manner consistent with them.

You can treat other people as your most valuable resources and as the basis for the facts, opinions, and conclusions you ultimately have. Other people are part of the “family” from which many of your conclusions emerge. They are integral and continue to have an impact. The theme of this family is interconnectedness.

The role of your interactions with other people is shaped by your values ​​and the values ​​you experience from those with whom you interact.

Often, our preferred goals, experiences, and actions stem from the very ideas we value.

The most common social connection brought about by values ​​is similarity. Those who regard personal responsibility as an important value will inevitably seek out and sympathize with others who also believe that better personal choices can solve most of humanity's problems. It turns out that many of our most valuable social interactions or learning experiences begin with interactions with people who share similar values.

Manipulative Arguments: Anyone who is determined to cling to his or her conclusion is likely to find many reasons to support his or her point of view.

An argument is made up of two forms of statements joined together: a conclusion and reasons that seem to support the conclusion. It is the close connection between reasons and conclusions that constructs one's argument.

A topic is an issue or controversy that triggers dialogue or discussion. It was the driving force behind all discussions that followed.

The conclusion is the message the writer or speaker wants you to receive.

Descriptive issues refer to questions about whether various descriptions of the past, present, or future are accurate (what something is objectively like in the past, present, or future).

Prescriptive issues are questions about what should be done and what should not be done, what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is bad.

1. Direct type. The title, the beginning of the article, or the thesis stated by the author.

2. Indirect type. The author's response to the event; the author's background is the social institution to which he belongs.

3. Find the conclusion first, and then confirm the thesis.

Start by asking "What is the author or speaker trying to prove" or "What is the point they are making". Any answers to the questions asked by the writer or speaker are also conclusions.

A statement or series of statements that a writer or speaker wants you to believe.

Based on the various points presented by the author, infer what he wants to prove.

Supplement: The conclusion is inferred and derived from the argument. Conclusions need support from other perspectives. We call assertions without evidence a mere opinion.

Clue 1: Ask what the thesis is.

Clue 2: Look for indicator words.

Clue Three: Look at possible locations. The beginning or end of the article.

Clue Four: Remember what the conclusion is not.

Clue 5: Check the context of the communication and the author’s background.

Three cornerstones of the argument building

Argument Components

The argument itself requires our attention

The basic structure of the argument is "A is true because of B."

Here are some prompt words for reasons

Try to organize the material, separate reasons from conclusions, and rearrange it in a logical manner.

What is a good topic? What is a good conclusion?

How to organize a writing or speech well

Elusive polysemy (we always think that the meaning of words is obvious).

Find the right keywords.

obstacles to overcome

First identify the thesis, conclusion and reasons, and only the ambiguous words that appear during the argument are important.

Think about the picture of reality that these phrases represent. If it cannot be imagined, it means that the meaning of these phrases is unclear. If different images lead you to evaluate his reasons differently, then you have found an important ambiguity.

• Vague statements, often the only clue you can rely on is the context of the words.

multiple meanings of words

If you cannot find a meaning that fits the context in the context or dictionary, imagine the specific image that the word represents in your mind.

In the writing process, the meaning should be clear and reduce ambiguous words or phrases.

Reasons include superficial, stated reasons and inner, unspoken thoughts.

Unstated ideas are called assumptions.

An important reason for different conclusions is conflict of values, or different values ​​derived from different frames of reference.

value assumptions

How to find value assumptions

descriptive hypothesis

Write and speak like a critical thinker

Integrate the process of identifying values ​​and descriptive assumptions into your own writing or speaking

Personal attack fallacy, targeting people rather than things.

Narrative fallacy, confusing story with reality.

Slippery slope fallacy, taking action A will lead to doing the same thing B.

The fallacy of pursuing perfect solutions

appeal to public fallacy

appeal to dubious authority fallacy

appeal to emotion fallacy

straw man fallacy

The fallacy of labeling

planning fallacy

whitewash fallacy

red herring fallacy

Circular Argument Fallacy

Facts can be strong or weak, and their possibilities can be big or small. The truth is more complicated than right and wrong.

Opinions are often contrasted with facts, as they should be. Opinions are of little value, and expressing them is effortless.

Evidence is persuasive when it approaches fact and moves away from mere opinion.

Evidence comes from the systematic collection and organization of facts.

The greater the quantity and quality of evidence supporting an assertion, the more trustworthy we can be in that assertion, and the more we can call such an assertion a "fact."

The biggest difference between opinion and fact is the state of the relevant evidence. The more evidence supporting a belief, the higher the “degree of truth” of the belief. We can also say another way about what facts are: they are more or less likely to be true.

Determine how reliable a factual assertion is

Evidence is clear information provided by the arguer to support or prove the reliability of a factual assertion.

Fallacy of Generalization: A person draws conclusions about an entire group based on the experiences of only a very small portion of the group.

A typical case is to depict or shape one or more characters (or events) in detail and vividly to prove a certain conclusion. Such descriptions are usually based on observations or interviews, and their formats vary from in-depth discussions to shallow descriptions.

Note: The specific, vivid and touching plot can easily create images in our minds.

Testimonials, the words of specific parties, especially celebrities, are used to prove the quality of an idea or a product, or to prove that extraordinary things have indeed happened. These are all based on their personal experiences.

Note: They are generally not very useful unless we can identify more relevant expertise, interests, values, and biases behind them.

Experts ask the following questions

What we “see” and say is what remains after being filtered through a set of values, biases, attitudes, past experiences, past training, and expectations.

What we see and hear is what we want to see and hear

For an experience, what we select and remember are those aspects that are most consistent with previous experiences and backgrounds.

Influencing factors

Well-done scientific research is an excellent source of evidence.

Fallacy of forced certainty: Believing that a research conclusion should be discarded if it is not 100% certain.

It mainly depends on the sample size, coverage and randomness of the events or populations studied by the researchers.

The process of selecting events or groups of people for study is called “sampling.”

What measurement methods were used in the study, and were they satisfactory?

“Are there other ways to measure this concept, and if so, are they likely to provide different results?

Whether there is a conflict of interest behind it; limited qualitative expression; limited scope of application; supported by other research; subject to critical review in other fields; sufficient critical discussion, etc.

Find convincing evidence to support our claims.

Don't rely too much on experts or authorities.

Another limitation of turning to experts is that we tend to trust experts who agree with us and feel the same way.

Find high-quality evidence, such as from your school's online library.

No matter how strongly you feel about a conclusion, or how much you like your reasons, if there isn't enough good evidence to support your opinion, your best option is to treat it as a learning experience and pack up and move on.

A plausible alternative explanation for why a particular outcome occurs.

If you find that there may be an alternative cause, you can ask the following questions

A combination of causes occurs more frequently than a single cause.

Different people may have completely different reasons for performing the same behavior.

Oversimplification of causality fallacy: Relying on causal factors that are insufficient to explain the entire event to explain an event, or overemphasizing the role of one or more of these factors.

"Confirmation bias" is the search for and reliance on evidence that is consistent with our beliefs.

We are born with a tendency to "see" events that are related to each other, or events that occur together, as events that are causally related to each other.

Because there is a relationship between feature A (such as the number of energy bars eaten) and feature B (such as performance in a sports game), we say that A causes B. There are at least four different hypotheses for this association

Remember: correlation or correlation does not prove causation!

Causal Confusion Fallacy: Confusing the cause and effect of an event, or failing to recognize that two events may influence each other.

Ignoring the Common Cause Fallacy: Failure to recognize that two events are connected because of a third factor at play.

Post hoc attribution fallacy: Assume that event B was caused by event A simply because event B occurred immediately after event A.

Fundamental attribution error refers to our tendency to overestimate the importance of personal tendencies and underestimate the role of environmental factors in explaining the behavior of others.

1) Many types of events can be explained by various alternative causes.

2) Experts may examine the same piece of evidence and find different reasons to explain it.

3) Most arguers provide only those reasons they prefer, and readers or listeners with critical thinking skills must find alternative reasons on their own.

4) Coming up with alternative causes is a creative process, and usually, such causes are not immediately obvious.

5) Finally, the certainty of a causal assertion is inversely proportional to the number of plausible alternative causes. Finding multiple alternative causes therefore allows the critical thinker to achieve appropriate intellectual humility.

Find out as much information as possible about how this data is collected.

Average: Add the individual values ​​and divide the total by the number of added values.

Median number: Arrange all the values ​​from high to low, and then find the middle value.

Mode: Calculate the number of times each different value occurs or the number of times each different value range occurs, and the value with the highest frequency appears.

Full range: The difference between the minimum value and the maximum value.

Value distribution: the frequency with which each value appears.

Use data that proves one thing to prove another thing of a completely different nature.

Two strategies for spotting this type of deception

When encountering attractive numbers or percentages, other information is needed to determine how attractive these numbers are.

When only absolute numbers are in front of you, ask whether knowing the percentage might help you make a better judgment.

When only percentages are in front of you, asking whether absolute numbers might enrich their meaning.

Some clues for evaluating data

Almost every piece of information you encounter has a purpose, and the purpose is for it to influence the way you think.

Note: Important omitted information is that which affects the course of the argument.

The limitations of time and space on the production of arguments;

Due to limitations in attention span, arguments must be completed as quickly as possible;

The knowledge of the arguer is always incomplete;

Arguments are often designed to deceive;

Argument writers often have different values, beliefs, and attitudes than you do.

1) Common counter-arguments

2) Missing definition

3) Missing value preferences or perspectives

4) The source of the “facts” mentioned in the argument

5) Details of the procedures used to obtain the facts

6) Alternative techniques for collecting or organizing evidence

7) Missing or incomplete figures, charts, tables or data

8) Omitted results

9) Omitting information about failed predictions or miscalculations when defending particular forecasting techniques

Which part of society does not benefit from the proposed action? Who suffered losses? What do people who have suffered losses have to say about it? ·

What impact does the proposed action have on the distribution of power? ·

What impact does this action have on our health? ·

How does this action affect our relationships?

How does it affect our relationship with the natural environment?

NOTE: When considering omitted information, remember to ask: “What are the potential long-term negative effects of this action?”

To include important information in the argument whenever possible, we should list arguments that support and refute the position.

Selective filtering, after collecting all the information we might want to include, we must decide which information is most important, which is less important, and which is unimportant.

Dichotomous thinking: Prevents us from considering multiple possibilities

Grayscale thinking: two sides or many sides

importance of conditions

Not everyone likes to have their arguments challenged.

The discomfort you may make others by asking the right questions.

When thinking about important things, you must "slow down"

“What exactly do I rely on to support my beliefs and conclusions?”

Once an issue or dispute involves these people, we immediately have stereotypes in our minds. Stereotypes will definitely intervene in advance and take advantage of rational analysis.

Stereotypes can block our path and prevent us from carefully considering what others are saying. It always shuts down our thinking early, causing us to ignore valuable information.

halo effect

fixed belief

availability heuristic

Not answering the question

We give our world a central place relative to the experiences and perspectives of others.

By preferring to believe concepts or facts that he wishes were true rather than those that have been proven to be true, he is being true to his heart rather than to the truth.

reason

Miraculous thinking means that for some things, when science cannot provide a convincing explanation, people will rely on miracles to explain their ins and outs, or try to use miracles to control things that science cannot control.

Fundamental values ​​are self-determination, curiosity, courtesy and respect for good argument.

A critical thinker: