Critical thinking

HOW OUR BRAIN WORKS

Our brains are comprised of two characters, one that thinks fast, System 1, and one that thinks slow, System 2.

System 1 operates automatically, intuitively, involuntary, and effortlessly—like when we drive, read an angry facial expression, or recall our age.

System 2 requires slowing down, deliberating, solving problems, reasoning, computing, focusing, concentrating, considering other data, and not jumping to quick conclusions— like when we calculate a math problem, choose where to invest money, or fill out a complicated form. These two systems often conflict with one another.

The following video explains how our brain works https://goo.gl/nroMO4



TOPIC: #Explanations
SOURCE: Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

TENDENCY TO IGNORING THE IMPORTANCE OF HAVING A LARGE SAMPLE SIZE

Suppose this happened to you:

After months of deliberation over a new car purchase, you finally decided to buy the fuel-efficient Ford Focus. You found that both «Consumer Reports» and «Road and Track» magazines gave the Focus a good rating. It is priced within your budget, and you like its “sharp” appearance. On your way out the door to close the deal, you run into a close friend and tell her about your intended purchase. “A Focus!” she shrieks. “My brother-in-law bought one and it’s a tin can. It’s constantly breaking down on the freeway. He’s had it towed so often that the rear tires need replacing.

What do you do?

Most people would have a difficult time completing the purchase because they are insufficiently sensitive to sample size issues. The national magazines presumably tested many cars before they determined their rating. Your friend’s brother-in-law is a single subject. You should place greater confidence in results obtained with large samples than in results obtained with small samples (assuming that the “experiments” were equally good). Yet, many people find the testimonial of a single person, especially if it is someone they know, more persuasive than information gathered from a large sample, especially when there is preference for the results obtained from the small sample.

We tend to ignore the importance of having an adequately large sample size when we function as intuitive scientists.


TOPIC: #CognitiveBiases
SOURCE: Thought and knowledge: an introduction to critical thinking by Diane F. Halpern

THIRD-PERSON EFFECT

A person exposed to a persuasive communication in the mass media sees this as having a greater effect on others than on himself or herself. Each individual reasons: “I will not be influenced, but they (the third persons) may well be persuaded.” In some cases, a communication leads to action not because of its impact on those to whom it is ostensibly directed, but because others (third persons) think that it will have an impact on its audience. Four small experiments that tend to support this hypothesis are presented, and its complementary relationship to a number of concepts in the social sciences is noted.

The third-person effect may help to explain various aspects of social behavior, including the fear of heretical propaganda by religious leaders and the fear of dissent by political rulers. It appears to be related to the phenomenon of censorship in general: the censor never admits to being influenced; it is others with “more impressionable minds” who will be affected.



TOPIC: #CognitiveBiases
SOURCE: The Third-Person Effect in Communication by Davison, W. Phillips 1983

Audio book - https://goo.gl/e3kMdG

HARRY POTTER AND THE METHODS OF RATIONALITY

Hello everybody,

Today, we want to recommend you to read a very helpful and intresting book: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality written by Eliezer Yudkowsky.

Eliezer Yudkowsky is an AI researcher, blogger, and exponent of human rationality. And in his book we can see the world of Harry Potter from a position of rationality. Petunia married a biochemist, and Harry grew up reading science and science fiction. Then came the Hogwarts letter, and a world of intriguing new possibilities to exploit. And new friends, like Hermione Granger, and Professor McGonagall, and Professor Quirrell.

We share .mobi and .epub formats and the link for the audio book.


TOPIC: #Books

P.S.: IT’S NOT JUST ANOTHER STORY ABOUT HARRY, IT’S REALLY HELPFUL AND SERIOUS LITERATURE

RECIPROCATION*

In social psychology, reciprocity is a social rule that says people should repay, in kind, what another person has provided for them; that is, people give back (reciprocate) the kind of treatment they have received from another. By virtue of the rule of reciprocity, people are obligated to repay favors, gifts, invitations, etc. in the future. If someone receives a gift for their birthday, a reciprocal expectation may influence them to do the same on the gift-giver's birthday. This sense of future obligation associated with reciprocity makes it possible to build continuing relationships and exchanges. Reciprocal actions of this nature are important to social psychology as they can help explain the maintenance of social norms.

A person who violates the reciprocity norm by accepting without attempting to return the good acts of others is disliked by the social group. Individuals who benefit from the group's resources without contributing any skills, helping, or resources of their own are called free riders. Both individuals and social groups often punish free riders, even when this punishment results in considerable costs to the group. Therefore, it is unsurprising that individuals will go to great lengths to avoid being seen as a moocher, freeloader, or ingrate.

The rule enforces uninvited debts and can trigger unfair exchanges.


TOPIC: #Psychology
SOURCE: Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini

* The subject is related to psychology, but we decided that it would be helpful if you knew it.

ILLUSIONS OF TRUTH

Anything that makes it easier for the associative machine to run smoothly will also bias beliefs. A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth. Authoritarian institutions and marketers have always known this fact. But it was psychologists who discovered that you do not have to repeat the entire statement of a fact or idea to make it appear true. People who were repeatedly exposed to the phrase “the body temperature of a chicken” were more likely to accept as true the statement that “the body temperature of a chicken is 144°” (or any other arbitrary number). The familiarity of one phrase in the statement sufficed to make the whole statement feel familiar, and therefore true. If you cannot remember the source of a statement, and have no way to relate it to other things you know, you have no option but to go with the sense of cognitive ease.


TOPIC: #CognitiveBiases
SOURCE: Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

COGNITIVE BIAS CHEAT SHEET

Buster Benson made several different attempts to try to group 20 or so cognitive biases at a higher level, and eventually landed on grouping them by the general mental problem that they were attempting to address.

Every cognitive bias is there for a reason — primarily to save our brains time or energy. If you look at them by the problem they’re trying to solve, it becomes a lot easier to understand why they exist, how they’re useful, and the trade-offs (and resulting mental errors) that they introduce.


TOPIC: #CognitiveBiases

http://telegra.ph/Cognitive-biases-02-27

HIGH QUALITY - https://goo.gl/Le2MQ1


#CognitiveBiases

EXPERT INTUITION

We have all heard such stories of expert intuition: the chess master who walks past a street game and announces “White mates in three” without stopping, or the physician who makes a complex diagnosis after a single glance at a patient. Expert intuition strikes us as magical, but it is not. Indeed, each of us performs feats of intuitive expertise many times each day. Most of us are pitch-perfect in detecting anger in the first word of a telephone call, recognize as we enter a room that we were the subject of the conversation, and quickly react to subtle signs that the driver of the car in the next lane is dangerous. Our everyday intuitive abilities are no less marvelous than the striking insights of an experienced firefighter or physician—only more common.

The psychology of accurate intuition involves no magic. Perhaps the best short statement of it is by the great Herbert Simon, who studied chess masters and showed that after thousands of hours of practice they come to see the pieces on the board differently from the rest of us. You can feel Simon’s impatience with the mythologizing of expert intuition when he writes: “The situation has provided a cue; this cue has given the expert access to information stored in memory, and the information provides the answer. Intuition is nothing more and nothing less than recognition.”

We are not surprised when a two-year-old looks at a dog and says “doggie!” because we are used to the miracle of children learning to recognize and name things. Simon’s point is that the miracles of expert intuition have the same character. Valid intuitions develop when experts have learned to recognize familiar elements in a new situation and to act in a manner that is appropriate to it. Good intuitive judgments come to mind with the same immediacy as “doggie!”

Unfortunately, professionals’ intuitions do not all arise from true expertise.


TOPIC: #Explanations
SOURCE: Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

THOUGHT AND KNOWLEDGE: AN INTRODUCTION TO CRITICAL THINKING

Diane F. Halpern’s text on critical thinking covers a broad range of topics related to the acquisition, retention and translation of knowledge. Although the book is commonly used as a teaching text, Thought and Knowledge is equally suitable as a reflective tool for instructors from many disciplines. Halpern challenges the teacher as well as the student to develop skills necessary for “knowing how to learn and knowing how to think clearly about the rapidly proliferating information with which we will all have to contend” . In just under four hundred pages, Halpern presents a well-organized discussion of strategies for meeting this challenge. The book cites the cognitive psychological literature extensively but not superfluously, and in such a way that the general reader is informed rather than overwhelmed.
If you do not have time to read Thought and Knowledge cover to cover, individual chapters are fairly self-contained and may be digested independently.

We share with you .pdf and .epub formats.

Poster "Logical Fallacies № 2"
The link to download in 4961 x 3508: http://obraz.io/posters/downlaod_poster/2/en/

Poster "Logical Fallacies № 1"
The link to download 4961 x 3508: http://obraz.io/posters/downlaod_poster/1/en/

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