Critical Thinking - Blog Posts

America is an oligarchy led by a fascist president. Eco's Ur-Fascism is a good read. So is Animal Farm.

We are fucked because of a giant cult and the lack of critical thinking and media literacy.

I've been learning not to be suicidal just so I can be taken out by someone else? Great...

At least my suicidal thoughts have the ability of critical thinking.

I hate people.

Something I have noticed is that so often in media and in real life, is that we push around this narrative that having a “dark side” or being someone who “you don’t wanna see mad” is a good thing.

If you have a “dark side” you’re dangerous, someone who could hurt others and be cruel, and that makes you strong. That being good in a fight, having the ability to be scary when your angry, those are things that push authority.

I don’t get it.

Why must being benign be seen as a weakness?

Being harmless does not make you fragile.

Violence and strength have been so interwoven to the point people mistake one for the other.

Being violent does not make you strong, and being strong does not mean you have to be violent.

One of the greatest ways to show strength not in a character but in life in general is to choose forgiveness (seriously, like watch ATLA and see how Aang shows great strength by forgiving others instead of lashing out).

Anger is a valid and real emotion that you are allowed to express, but it is not one that should be wielded as a weapon. Anger is a secondary emotion, morphed from pain and sorrow.

Anger is like fire. It’s okay to light a fire, as long as it is safe and contained. You can keep a fire in a fire pit going for as long as you want, just don’t burn a forest.

Do not fear your anger and do not use it to strike fear in others. Being kind does not make you weak, being forgiving does not make you soft.

Generosity, honesty, fragility with your emotions—these can bring you strength. To be open with who you are and how you feel is a tremendous feat.

It takes courage to cry, to ask for help, to forgive.

Know that being loving is not a weakness, understand that forgiveness takes strength.

It’s easy to kill a fly, but it takes effort to capture it and bring it home.

Reading is fundamental, but critical thinking is essential. -Me :)

Being able to read journal articles critically is also such an important skill. I’ve been reading journal articles since late high school, but it’s only been in grad school that I’ve learned how to approach them critically. Fortunately there are a few questions you can ask about any study that will help you decide how much you trust the results even if you know nothing of the field.

What journal was the article published in? Some journals are far more reputable than others. Usually a quick Google search can inform you of if a journal is considered reputable.

Do the authors list any conflicts of interest? Conflicts of interest aren’t an immediate red flag, but if the author has a strong incentive to only publish certain results then I’ll definitely be taking a second or third look at the study.

Who funded the study? If Coca Cola funded a study that says drinking one soda a day is beneficial to your energy levels, I’m not trusting that implicitly.

Is it peer reviewed? Peer review can fail, but this is the quickest test for if a study is good or not.

What are the limitations of the study? This plays into the assumptions the author made. Were the experiments only done on white men (often the first standard in medical research though it’s getting better)?

Similarly do the authors list their limitations? The best articles will have a short section on limitations or a paragraph in the discussion about limitations. I am always slightly wary when no limitations are listed.

What is the sample size in the study? This number will usually be found in methods. The bigger the number, the better. However, there are a lot of standards for what the minimum sample size should be. In small animal research, you’re usually looking at a few dozen mice or rats. In larger animal research, you may be looking at less than ten animals (pigs, horses, cows). In human trials (also known as clinical research), it tends to be dependent on what the study is on. Knee replacements probably 15 people or so. Spinal cord trauma would be more like 5 people. (Social science will also have different minimum sample sizes but I’m not familiar enough to give estimates. In general subjective surveys require a lot of people. More objective testing done by researchers will have less people involved)

How many citations does the study have? This one can be a little more hit or miss. An article published a year or two ago may be great and have no citations. While an article published fifty years ago may have a hundred citations but have incorrect information (in this case it’s usually that methods have improved and new information was discovered instead of poor research quality). Niche topics may also be hardly cited despite being good articles.

There are other questions you can ask like “Can I follow the methods?” “Does the interpretation of their results logically follow from their results?”Etc. but those tend to be harder the less familiar you are with a field. And if you’re reading about a study in a news article like CNN, Apple News, etc. there are different tricks to determining how much you trust them (I tend to look for hyperbole and rhetorical devices. One time I found a news article saying physicists had figured out faster than light travel. They were referencing a theoretical mathematics paper that stated using several assumptions hyperluminal travel is mathematically possible)

What I learn from Science & Technology Studies is that you shouldn't blindly trust science because there's a fair amount of fuckery (mostly unintentional but sometimes not) going on in the background, but you also shouldn't *not* trust science in the way that most people who don't trust science don't trust science.

Anyways, hope that helps!

Critical Thinking Cheatsheet

A lot of propaganda is not actually misinformation.

A lot of propaganda is not even half-truths.

A lot of propaganda actually is telling you the truth, but is feeding you a specific conclusion that the author wants you to draw from it.

This makes it a lot more robust, because if you go searching for sources to confirm the information, you'll find them!

So an important thing in evaluating information is not just "Is this true?" but also:

"Wait, does this lead inevitably to the conclusion this person is presenting? What other conclusions could I draw here? What other reasons for this piece of info could there be? How does this information fit into what I already know?"

"What are the motivations of the person who wrote or created this? Why did they want me to draw that conclusion? Do they themselves believe the conclusion they're drawing, or are they just trying to convince me? If they do believe it themself, why? If not, why are they trying to convince me? What's going on for them here?"

"What other pieces of information might I be missing? What am I extrapolating without noticing? What did this person deliberately leave out, or want me to ignore or gloss over? What other contexts and comparisons are applicable here?"

"How does this information with in with not only the specific conclusion that is presented, but with the author's overarching thesis? When I use it, how well does it fit into my thesis? When I take a step back, does this piece of information actually make any sense as supporting evidence for this person's thesis?"

Hopefully this is helpful, and can help your skills at evaluating information and arguments become more robust!