Critical Thinking For Everyday Life

How to Navigate Deception and Misinformation and Become a Persuasive Communicator

What you'll learn

Protect yourself from misinformation and disinformation

Become an elegant and persuasive conversationalist

Create robust arguments that hone your persuasive skills

Detect and counter lies, bullshit and dogwhistles in everyday conversations

Define the essential attitude for an effective Critical Thinker

Learn practical techniques to deal with pushback from liars and deceptive people, policies and organisations

Identify and defend against 'logical fallacies' - the tricky, error-ridden ways of deception

Requirements

No previous experience

A cool head and a desire for the truth

Description

I developed this course on Critical Thinking For Everyday Life because I'm fed up with the amount of lies, misinformation, disinformation, deception, and abuse that’s so prolific in today's world. And we're all affected by it, no matter how much any of us thinks we're immune.Critical Thinking For Everyday Life takes a (sometimes) complicated or abstract process and makes it easy to pick up and actually use in everyday interactions. I'm extremely pleased with the balance I've struck between theory and real-world application.Critical Thinking is a skill; it takes a little time to grasp – but the payoffs are immeasurably worth it! As you go through this course, you'll realise just how pervasive poor and erroneous thinking is and how much misinformation we are exposed to on a daily basis.Critical Thinking For Everyday Life will protect you from deceit, allow you to see the world as it really is and avoid false information. You'll be able to detect conspiracy theories, bring reasoned and rational thinking to solving problems, see the truth of situations and avoid manipulation. So Critical Thinking in your day-to-day life is essential for decision making, detecting and avoiding lies and deception.Critical Thinking is necessary for effective arguments. It’s needed for policy evaluation and recognising when (and just how much) something or someone is right or wrong. So, this course is great for activists, politicians, lawyers, and businesspeople alike. But of all the immense benefits of critical thinking, the one that I love best and value most is that it stops us from deceiving ourselves!I love the power of language, as is obvious in most of my other courses. The skills of Critical Thinking are exceptional in defining, clarifying and expressing language; and by extension the wonderfully deep, diverse and creative contents of our minds – our ideas, emotions, thoughts, and the values and beliefs we hold so dearly.Without words and structured sentences, you not only can’t communicate with others – but you can’t even think or organise your thoughts in your own mind. So language and Critical Thinking are essential in every aspect of everyday life from relationships with other people, to self-understanding.There's a saying, ‘the map is not the territory’. The territory refers to the outside world where you live your everyday life, the places you go, the people you meet and everything you do. The map is what's going on in your mind, the thinking, feeling, beliefs and values, and the words you use in your own mind, and with other people, which reflect who you are, and are the means by which you navigate the territory.But just as words are incredibly powerful in clarifying, explaining, defining and expressing the truth and beauty of reality… There is a dark side to language and thinking. The dark side is that words are just as powerful at deceiving, manipulating, and destroying. Learning to think critically is absolutely necessary for your resilience, so you can maintain your resolve in the face of adversity and deception. This course is going to help protect you from falling foul of the dark side of the everyday world – when shady organisations, or unscrupulous people try to take advantage of you!I've purposefully kept this course practical and easy to understand and made sure to include techniques and tips in each lesson to help you detect and counter bad/misleading arguments. Critical Thinking can be complex and involved. But this course is for the non-academic, and although it's not an exhaustive exploration of Critical Thinking, it's extremely valuable for the person who wants a practical, everyday tool kit to uncover truth and recognise and expose deception – whether that’s self-deception or the deceptive/manipulative behaviours of others.If you’re ready to see the world how it really is, this course is for you

Overview

Section 1: Introduction

Lecture 1 Introduction - Life & Death

Lecture 2 Course Overview

Section 2: Attitude & Terms

Lecture 3 Essential Attitude

Lecture 4 Defining Terms

Section 3: Structure… This is important!

Lecture 5 The structure of Critical Thinking.

Lecture 6 Valid & Sound

Lecture 7 A sneaky trick!

Lecture 8 Checking Reasons (premises)

Section 4: Dealing with Pushback & Dirty Tricks

Lecture 9 Dealing with Pushback

Lecture 10 Lies, Bullshit & Dogwhistling

Lecture 11 Loaded Language

Lecture 12 Appeals to Emotion

Lecture 13 Personal attacks

Lecture 14 Appeals TO authority, or arguments FROM authority

Lecture 15 Confirmation Bias

Lecture 16 Correlation-Causation Confusion

Lecture 17 Gish Gallop

Section 5: Summary

Lecture 18 Key Points

Lawyers and others involved in the legal profession,Business owners and entreprenurs who need to negotiate effectively,Police officers who need to maintain cool, rational conversations with irrational people,Sales people who want to be more influential,Parents who want to be positive rolemodels for their children,Coaches who want to develop their effectiveness and help their clients think more clearly,Trainers and public speakers who want to become more impactful in their delivery,Teachers and communicators of every kind