Developing critical thinking skills

A useful handout that talks about reading, writing and thinking critically with examples of how to achieve this.

via http://sydney.edu.au/stuserv/documents/learning_centre/critical.pdf

Critical Thinking Skills (pdf)

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It’s all About Perception

Via here

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Language as a Window into Human Nature

Another excellent video from RSA Animate

http://comment.rsablogs.org.uk/videos/

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Critical Thinking – An Introduction (Alec Fisher)

This ebook is widely available for download on the web.  I got it here

 Critical thinking introduction (pdf)

A good resource for referencing what we mean by critical thinking.

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The power of the non sequitur

From www.dilbert.com of course…

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Anecdotal Evidence cartoon

via smbc

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How Anecdotal Evidence Can Undermine Scientific Results

Why subjective anecdotes often trump objective data

By Michael Shermer  | July 25, 2008 | 27

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-anecdotal-evidence-can-undermine-scientific-results

The recent medical controversy over whether vaccinations cause autism reveals a habit of human cognition—thinking anecdotally comes naturally, whereas thinking scientifically does not. Continue reading

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Philosophical Health Check

This is a fabulous online interactive to see how coherent your beliefs and values are as a whole (tpm online)

Check your [philosophical]Tension Quotient!

To take the philosophical health check (PHC), go through the statements below, selecting for each one ‘agree’ or ‘disagree’. If not sure, select the response which is closest to your opinion. When you have answered all the questions, click the ‘submit’ button and the results of your check will be generated.

Philosophical Health Check

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Simpsons – post hoc ergo propter hoc

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Happiness, Philosophy and Science

By GARY GUTTING  NYTimes ‘The Stone’

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/author/gary-gutting/
 
Extract below (useful bit)

The new research has both raised hopes and provoked skepticism.  Psychologists such as Sonja Lyubomirsky have developed a new genre of self-help books, purporting to replace the intuitions and anecdotes of traditional advisors with scientific programs for making people happy.  At the same time, there are serious methodological challenges, questioning, for example, the use of individuals’ self-reports of how happy they are and the effort to objectify and even quantify so subjective and elusive a quality as happiness. Continue reading

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Three Minute Philosophy: Rene Descartes

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Universal intelligence: One test to rule them all

It’s time to abandon the idea that we are the gold standard of intelligence. Take a test using a more fundamental scale of smarts

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128296.100-universal-intelligence-one-test-to-rule-them-all.html?full=true&print=true

Download Universal intelligence (pdf)

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The Meaningfulness of Lives

By TODD MAY  NYTimes ‘The Stone’

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/11/the-meaningfulness-of-lives/

Who among us has not asked whether his or her life is a meaningful one?  Who has not wondered — on a sleepless night, during a long stretch of dull or taxing work, or when a troubled child seems a greater burden than one can bear — whether in the end it all adds up to anything? On this day, too, when many are steeped in painful reminders of personal loss, it is natural to wonder about the answers.

The Meaningfulness of Lives – NYTimes (pdf version)

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Peace of Mind: Near-Death Experiences Now Found to Have Scientific Explanations

Seeing your life pass before you and the light at the end of the tunnel, can be explained by new research on abnormal functioning of dopamine and oxygen flow

By Charles Q. Choi Scientific American

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=peace-of-mind-near-death

Near-death experiences are often thought of as mystical phenomena, but research is now revealing scientific explanations for virtually all of their common features. The details of what happens in near-death experiences are now known widely—a sense of being dead, a feeling that one’s “soul” has left the body, a voyage toward a bright light, and a departure to another reality where love and bliss are all-encompassing. Continue reading

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Ockham’s Razor

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Homeopathic leak threatens catastrophe

What is the role of humour here…?

http://www.newsbiscuit.com/2011/09/09/homeopathic-leak-threatens-catastrophe/

An accidental release of highly dilute homeopathic waste from a research institute in Swindon has led to calls for the centre to be shut down.  Plant operators have admitted responsibility for massive safety blunders after a spilled drop of an enormously dilute test product was cleaned by a caretaker, and in complete disregard of all safety procedures, allowed to enter the water system after he emptied his mop bucket down the drain. Continue reading

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Conditional Happiness

If you can read the fine print….. Discuss.

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Japanese Linguist Helps Revive an Aboriginal Language

What does it mean for the world to lose a language?

http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2011/s3310650.htm

TONY EASTLEY: It’s taken 40 years but from almost the ashes of extinction, an Aboriginal language has been saved and is again being spoken on Palm Island in North Queensland. The last living speaker of the Worrongo language is a Japanese professor who created a dictionary after learning it from one of the last native speakers in the early 1970s. Continue reading

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A Utilitarian Decision – Sacrifice Lives to Save Lives

Would the lives of the people on board have been worth it…? Discuss.

AN F-16 pilot scrambled on 9/11 to prevent another attack on the US capital says she was prepared to ram her plane into a hijacked aircraft, as there was no time to arm her plane with missiles. Continue reading

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20 Awesomely Untranslatable Words from Around the World

There are at least 250,000 words in the English language. English – or any language – could never hold enough expression to convey the entirety of the human experience  Continue reading

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