What Happens When Critical Thinking Goes Wrong?
🔍 Key insights
Questioning Everything Is Not Thinking Critically – Doubt without a method leads to manipulation, not wisdom.
Trusting Experts Isn’t Blind Faith – True critical thinking requires knowing who to trust and why, not rejecting everyone by default.
Admitting “I Don’t Know” Is Powerful – Intellectual humility is the foundation of real understanding, not a sign of weakness.
📚 Go deeper
🎥 Related videos:
“Why Do So Many People Believe in Conspiracy Theories?” by SciShow Psych — An investigation on why people believe conspiracies.
How to Argue by CrashCourse – A beginner’s guide to the art and structure of argumentation.
📖 Further reading:
Believing Bullshit: How Not to Get Sucked into an Intellectual Black Hole by Stephen Law – A sharp toolkit for spotting flawed reasoning and resisting manipulative arguments.
Conspiracy Theories and the People Who Believe Them by Joseph E. Uscinski – Insight into how people fall into distrustful thinking without critical examination.
💡 Think for Yourself
Do I apply my skepticism evenly, or only to ideas that challenge my worldview?
What sources do I trust most, and why? Have I ever truly examined their reliability?
☁️ Thought Experiment
Imagine you’re told a new scientific breakthrough contradicts everything you believe about health, history, or politics. Would you investigate it fairly, or dismiss it immediately?
What if it came from a source you normally distrust?
Cheers,
Kevin