In part 1 of our series, we looked at people who make things seem too good to be true and then spoke about the opposite: people who make things seem too bad to be true. We have a similar dichotomy for this next subject: there are people who make complicated things sound simple, and there are those that make simple things overly complicated. Both should be red flags, but let’s start with the former: making complicated things seem too simple.
Life is complicated
A good starting point for...
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We’re continuing our series on Critical Thinking Red Flags, where we look at ways you can more easily spot dodgy content. In Part, we looked at people who make something seem too good to be true, so – fittingly, we’re going to dive into things that seem too bad to be true.
Fearmongering
Making something appear too bad to be true can be summed up by a single word, fearmongering. The speaker is trying to create as much fear in her audience as possible to get as much attention...
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One of the simplest but most underrated skills in critical thinking is knowing when to switch on your scepticism. When we hear information that sounds false or misleading, our scepticism kicks into gear and we question what we’re hearing. That way, we can check to see whether this information is credible. The trouble is, our scepticism doesn’t always switch on when it needs to and we can’t have it running all the time; that’s just too tiring and inefficient. What we nee...
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Is critical thinking the most important skill you’ll ever learn? To put any one skill into that prestigious position would take quite a sound argument. After all, there are so many skills that you rely on daily to get through work and life, how could you possibly pick anyone above another? My simple reason is that critical thinking influences everything we do.
Have you ever wondered why people believe things that seem blatantly crazy or get sucked into business ideas that are clearly a...
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Any crime thriller or detective show enthusiast knows that there are two main kinds of detective: the methodical one who processes and puzzles over information, connecting dots and formulating opinions from there, and the insightful one who has the sudden moments of revelation. A classic example of the former is Sherlock Holmes: “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.” Holmes’ methods are exhaustive and focuse...
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