Three Core Thinking
Principles — Truthseeking, Fallibility,
and Bias
Three principles underlie a solid critical
thinking process: Truthseeking (ensuring accuracy-driven
decisionmaking); Fallibility (remembering
that any conclusion can be wrong, replacing
the notion of certainty with Adler’s
“degrees of confidence”); and
Bias (recognizing that all players in a decision
process bring conscious and unconscious preferences
with them). This presentation defines the
three principles, explores their implications,
and offers strategies for critical thinking
in light of those principles.
Avoiding Groupthink
— the Critical Role of Dissent in Organizations
Should organizations enforce conformity and
encourage “yes” men and women
in their ranks? Not if they want to survive
and thrive, says Harvard’s Cass Sunstein.
From boardrooms to social movements to governments
to the conduct of war, dissent has proven
again and again to be the lifeblood of organizational
strength. When conformity is prized and dissent
suppressed, organizations and initiatives
tend to fail, often spectacularly. When dissent
is fostered and critical thinking encouraged,
success most often follows.
Rapid Cognition
and Thin-Slicing
The human mind is a powerful computer functioning
on two levels: one conscious and deliberative,
the other subconscious and intuitive. This
presentation looks at the “rapid cognition”
taking place in the first moments we meet
another person, hear an idea, or confront
a challenge. We can achieve great insights
in those opening moments – or commit
catastrophic errors. The difference is in
understanding the principle of “thin-slicing”
– using small slices of experience to
make important decisions.
Storming the Silos
of Expertise
Human knowledge has grown so explosively
in recent generations that it has divided
and subdivided into ever-more-specialized
disciplines, rising like separate silos above
the common ground of our shared knowledge.
Life is too short to become expert in more
than one or two fields. To gain access to
the knowledge in a field outside my own, I
must rely on the experts standing like sentries
before their respective silos. The task for
the modern critical thinker is distinguishing
between the genuine experts and the counterfeits.
Humor and Critical Thinking
“Stop laughing, this is serious!”
But is that the right approach? There is mounting
historical evidence that humor can play a
vital role in critical thinking, putting problems
in a new light, reducing conflict, and establishing
common ground. This presentation focuses on
humor as a facilitator of cultural and intellectual
progress through humorists as divergent as
Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut, Whoopi Goldberg,
Charlie Chaplin, Tom Lehrer and Jon Stewart.
The Fallacy Files —
Ten Mistakes We Love to Make
It’s somehow comforting, I guess –
we’ve been making the same logical mistakes
for so many centuries that we’ve developed
specific names for these errors. This presentation
looks at ten of the most common fallacies
– ad hominem, ad populum, begging the
question, the argument from authority, correlation
and causation, false dichotomy, the straw
man, the slippery slope, observational selection,
and the undistributed middle – and suggests
ways of avoiding them.
Getting a Grip on
Slippery Statistics
Far more people die each year while sleeping
than while bungee jumping – so for safety’s
sake, get out of bed and head for the nearest
bridge! Maybe it’s not too hard to spot
the misleading twist in that statistic, but
crafty stat-twisters can generate fear, excitement,
votes, or buying frenzies by telling the “truth”
in an utterly deceptive way. This lively presentation
looks at the classics of statistical deception,
including hyperaccuracy, fudged averages,
skewed reporting samples, dangling comparisons,
opportunistic percentages, false inferences,
undefined terms and uncontrolled variables
– and the ways to avoid such statistical
traps.
Building Confidence
by Degrees
We can never be absolutely certain of any
conclusion. That’s one of the three
foundational principles of critical thinking.
But if nothing is certain, how do we ask or
answer any questions? How do we get out of
bed in the morning?? By replacing the illusion
of certainty with the useful concept of degrees
of confidence. Our goal is to build confidence
in a conclusion by examination and questioning
– or to reject it for lack of confidence.
This presentation explores the concept of
confidence degrees and how it can inform critical
thinking.
Thinking About Health
Care
What could be more important than thinking
well about staying well? Yet the clamor of
media hype, corporate interests, HMO purse
strings, and the competing claims of scores
of alternative therapies make it harder than
ever to think straight when it comes to health
care decisions. This presentation identifies
and defines key issues in health care decisionmaking,
including the placebo effect, the mind-body
connection, assessing the claims of alternative
and complementary therapies, weighing the
value of evidence types (anecdotal, ad hoc,
double-blind, etc), understanding the nature
and progress of disease, and keeping an eye
on shifty statistics.
Survey Techniques —
Good, Bad and Ugly
Surveys are a staple of modern life. Knowing
that X percent of Americans believe, love,
or buy something has a powerful effect on
the rest of us. Politicians and marketers
alike exploit the power of the popular consensus
by constructing surveys that give the impression
of popular support for their cause or product.
But is the support real – or manufactured
by a slippery survey? We’ll look at
survey techniques including the stairstep
poll, the false choice, the selective report,
and the leading question to see how surveys
can inform or mislead with equal power.
The Art of
the Counterargument
Making an argument in support of your position
is one thing, but countering an argument is
another. This presentation looks at time-tested
strategies for making a convincing counterargument,
including the counterexample, the absurd example,
the fog defense, the traditional weak-link
response, Popper’s “link strengthener,”
and the common ground approach.
Smoke and Mirrors
— Dealing with Non-Rational Persuasion
As hard as it is to believe, everyone will
someday encounter an argument being made irrationally.
Even more troubling is that irrational arguments
can be quite convincing. This presentation
acquaints critical thinkers with the most
common non-rational persuasive techniques,
including loaded language, loaded questions,
unwarranted confidence, observational selection,
appeals to pity, to force, and to authority,
and suggests rational and effective ways to
counter such tactics.
Mission-Based Reasoning
“Eat, sleep, and breathe the organizational
mission.” It’s one of the cornerstones
of leadership advice in the 21st century.
Organizations can be well-served by following
such advice – or they can go down in
flames. This presentation looks at the wonders
and horrors of mission-based reasoning from
a critical thinking perspective, suggesting
ways to avoid the pitfalls and reap the rewards
of a tight focus on visioning principles.
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