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Creative Commons License
Where the stuff on this blog is something i created it is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License so there are no requirements to attribute - but if you want to mention me as the source that would be nice :¬)

Tuesday 11 September 2012

critical thinking no. 1: a valuable argument



script by mike mcrae and james hutson, recording and music by audrey studios, animated and directed by James Hutson, produced by Bridge 8found via brainpickings 

in summary

to make sense of things the brain has some clever tools and tricks
- it can turn experiences into symbols
- recall sensations
- and identify patterns

and it also takes shortcuts
- seeking out ideas that confirm what you already suspect
- finding the ideas of those you trust more appealing
- treating your own experience as evidence
- blurring the line between what you feel to be the case and what you know to be the case

most of the time these tricks serve us so well we are hardly aware of then
- but sometimes they mislead us
- the bias that are so useful can also blind us
- and in a complex world with differing opinions its hard to decide when to think using shortcuts and when to think using our heads

but thinking doesn't need to be hard
- logic is a useful way to identify ideas that are likely to be helpful - its a way of combining ideas to come to a conclusion
- e.g. on convincing somebody to let you go to an event  - instead of arguing all people are allowed to go so why can't I?  - a logical argument would be 
1) all people are allowed to go
2) I am people
3) therefore I should be allowed to go
- logic is a useful way to combine established ideas to of using established ideas to support the existence of a new idea
- looking for logic in an argument can help you decide whether you should agree with somebody or wait for more information







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