Your Deceptive Mind: A Scientific Guide to Critical Thinking Skills

I periodically re-listen to this audiobook to reeducate and improve my critical thinking skills. Dr. Novella educates on the influence of cognitive bias and ideologies, and how to be scientifically skeptical while keeping pre-existing beliefs in check.School curriculums would benefit greatly from these teachings. People can be become experts in specific disciples but still be lacking in certain critical thinking skills. For example, years of confirmation bias can lead people to be very ingrained in certain beliefs that are unsupported by scientific consensus.The teachings in this book are more relevant than ever given the abundance of misinformation, conspiracy theories, etc.

Fascinating should be read especially if you think your past is not influencing your present. Memory is not like many believe an actual recoding of events. Jurors Judges and this testifying should read this. Unfortunately criminal attorneys will never be interested because they know everything.

Professor Steven Novella does a great job of narrating this material. He's a delight to listen to and I found myself excitedly looking forward to each new chapter. His material on this subject is insightful and comprehensive. This really should be part of every high school curriculum. It's that important!

Excellent

This course was a great disservice to the cause of rational scientific skepticism.Blinded by cognitive and emotional biases, and motivated by an almost religious fervor, the author set out to delineate the pitfalls of the deceptive mind and debunk the misuse of critical thinking by his ideological opponents. Along the way he fell prey to the very pitfalls he so articulately described.Professor Novella discussed the logical fallacy of “poisoning the well" in which an argument is refuted not by examination of its merit but rather by associating the argument with an unsavory individual or idea. His used the example of discrediting a position by merely saying " Adolf Hitler believed the same thing”. in a subsequent lecture he disgraced the practice of iridology in great detail and then proceeded to debunk acupuncture by claiming it was a similar modality to iridology. He made no attempt to establish the ways in which acupuncture it was similar iridology, nor or did he engage in any critical analysis of acupuncture itself; he merely employed logical fallacy of "Poisoning the well” to make his case.I believe this was intellectually dishonest and I feel cheated as a reader. I know very little about acupuncture and would have benefited greatly from a genuine analysis by a qualified medical practitioner.The professor went into great detail to explain the logical fallacy of creating a “strawman”. In this fallacy the opponent’s position is replaced with an argument the opponent does not make or an argument not critical to the opponents position. The “strawman” is then shown to be false or untenable.The professor fell prey to this trap by refuting the “pseudoscience” (remember the “poisoning the well” fallacy) of PSI research by creating a “strawman” of methodologies that were used 60 years ago in PSI research. He then proceeded to find fault with those outdated methodologies. Attacking the “strawman" he avoided legitimate discussion and critical analysis of methodologies presently used in contemporary PSI research. Again, he cheats the reader. I would have appreciated the opportunity for an intellectually honest and unbiased analysis of PSI research as it is practiced today.Similarly he articulately describes the "False dilemma" logical fallacy. In this fallacy an individual finds holes in his opponents position and then makes an illogical leap of concluding that since the opponents position is untrue then his position is the only possible alternative.In the process of debunking the rather implausible theory of a government cover up of an alleged UFO crash in Roswell New Mexico, the professor resorted to the "false dilemma" logical fallacy. He stated that because the UFO theory is unproven his personal theory must be correct. He believes that the cover-up was actually the cover-up of a Cold War Era spy plane. This is absurd, his theory does not become automatically correct because he can find fault with a competing theory. He offered no proof to support his pet theory and ignored the possibility of other theories which might account for the events in question.This was not the work of an open-minded skeptic. It was an intellectually dishonest tirade more reminiscent of the Salem witch hunts than of legitimate scientific inquiry. I believe that scientific rational skepticism has rightfully made great headways in the past few decades and I personally consider these lectures a significant setback.

I enjoyed reading this book, and learned so much from the high value lectures of a serious and educated person in his field. Dr. Novella educates on the influence of cognitive bias and ideologies, and how to be scientifically skeptical while keeping pre-existing beliefs in check.This book would be a great benefit for everyone, for schools, to develop their thinking and overcome preconceptions.

Speaking as a former high school teacher, this Guide might be an interesting exercise in teaching students to discriminate between (1) an author's opinion on an issue and (2) what he has to offer on critical thinking skills.Lecture 4, in particular, is a good example. As most high school teachers know, about 22% of their students will be sexually assaulted, as defined by state RCWs, by the time they reach age 18.This author says a book by Bass and Davis, "The Courage to Heal," created an epidemic of false memory syndrome (false memories of childhood sexual abuse) . The book was a prescription, he says, that led thousands to manufacture memories of sexual abuse. Children are particularly susceptible to false memories, he adds. (p. 31)What type of critical thinking skills will the teacher encourage in his or her students in order to evaluate this author's claims--which, unfortunately, are not supported by page numbers from the book, or by research citations. Should students be advised to try a word search of the book at amazon.com? It's a self-help book. Should they be asked to think about at what point people might read a self-help book? Can they track down a study showing that reading a book can make someone think they were raped as a child by a family member?Perhaps most importantly, should students be asked to consider what a classmate who was molested might think after reading what this author has to say? Would this classmate be more, or less, likely to tell someone about the abuse.

As a scientist for 40 years, this course reiterates all the key lessons I have (re-)discovered along my own journey throughout my career. It is a great reminder what to pay attention to in our daily lives. You do not have to be a scientist to listen to this course, only a sentient human being that has decided not to be taken advantage off by con-artists and who wants to maintain or acquire the skills necessary these days for not being taken to the cleaners by the increasingly polarized and sound-bite driven popular press.