The glory days of Antiquity where a single person could aspire to hold the entirety of human knowledge within their own mind are long over. Even the polymaths of the Enlightenment realised the limits of their own abilities and often…
What is the “rabbit hole”? In the words of Mick West: “The phrase comes from Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”. Alice enters the bizarre Wonderland by following a white rabbit down a hole. In recent times a more specific…
Every day we are bombarded with various information. Every day there is an unprecedented battle on social networks for people’s hearts and minds. Part of this information is rooted in reality – facts, data, real events. The other part of…
Trainers from 6 countries gathered for a course in Riga in order to prepare for the upcoming national piloting activities. We’re tackling the 6 chapters of the Critical Balance e-book for youth workers on critical thinking and conspiracy theories, and…
Let us look at some of the errors that regularly occur during thinking – hindsight bias, illusion of transparency, predisposition of approval and bandwagoning. Knowing about these common errors will be the beginning of a journey to “better thinking”, because…
According to studies on the functioning of the human brain, psychology distinguishes between two levels of human brain activity — fast and slow-thinking mind systems. The first level is automatic, fast, emotion- and intuition-based. A second level of thinking requires…
One of the important parts of critical thinking is the awareness that no one is perfectly critical and thinking logically all the time. Anyone can make errors in the process of thinking– unconscious errors that lead to misinterpretation of information…
The latest trend in our media landscape is that AI is taking over much of the textproduction being published on internet blogs and news outlets. Many news outlets are in reality just publishing articles to generate clicks and income from…
An important part of fact checking is to know what you’re reading, and who wrote it and why? In other words you need media literacy. The role of fact checking and verification has changed, professionals are no longer able to…
Apart from the studies supporting the necessity of fact checking, another argument beside it is that it is still a better option than regulating the rights of free speech. And as we arrive at the topic of free speech the…
Debunking, verification, and fact checking are often used interchangeably, sometimes causing confusion, but there are differences. Many of us might be familiar with the series MythBusters, which specialised in testing urban legends, popular myths, and movie scenes. Each episode disproves…
When we come across theories that differ from our worldview we are faced with two alternatives. Either we can embrace the new theory and change our worldview, or we can reject the new theory. Normally most people will do the…
Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, focus on, and remember information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions. What this means is that we tend to remember things that we already know and agree with, whereas we seem…
It is well known that there are a lot of well described and well understood psychological mechanisms in play when we consume information and try to understand the world based on them. Researchers believe that some of the psychological mechanisms…
Breaking out of the information bubbles is essential for maintaining a healthy public discourse and democracy. It is important to raise public awareness about the algorithms used by search engines and social media platforms and their impact on our lives.…