by J. Jerrald Hayes | Oct 8, 2017 | Critical Thinking
Conspiracy theories make people feel like they’re special Conspiracy theories and the people who disseminate them are no longer on the fringe. Don’t believe me? Ask yourself this: How many people on my Facebook friends list have shared and bolstered...
by J. Jerrald Hayes | Oct 7, 2017 | Brain Science, Cognitive Bias, Critical Thinking, Irrational Thinking
Dr. Steven Novella Talks About Why Our Brains Really Suck at QED 2011 in Manchester. At approximately 37:00 minutes in he explains how the reasoning powers in our prefrontal cortex can evaluate the interpretations from other areas of our brain and use “Critical...
by J. Jerrald Hayes | Oct 6, 2017 | • Politics, Cognitive Bias, Critical Thinking
Via March for Science on FaceBook… It bears repeating and emphasis: “THIS IS WHY WE ALL NEED TO UNDERSTAND THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD.” and People having an uninformed opinion about something they don’t understand and proclaiming their opinion as...
by J. Jerrald Hayes | Sep 22, 2017 | Critical Thinking, Psychology
Facts Don’t Change People’s Minds. Here’s What Does Changing others’ minds, or our own, is a tricky business. Here’s how to make it happen. If you had asked me this question-How do you change a mind?-two years ago, I would have given you...
by J. Jerrald Hayes | Sep 10, 2017 | Critical Thinking, Irrational Thinking, Religion
Aron Ra did a good take-down of one of Prager U’s videos RationalWiki on Dennis Prager and his Prager U: Prager “University” actually presents history and politics from a hard-right point of view. This includes rampant New Dealdenialism, promotion of...
by J. Jerrald Hayes | Sep 6, 2017 | Cognitive Bias, Critical Thinking, Irrational Thinking
The full speech from which this shorter video was...
by J. Jerrald Hayes | Jul 18, 2017 | Critical Thinking, Pseudoscience
Defense of Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop offers case study on how to sell snake oil This week, Gwyneth Paltrow’s high-profile lifestyle and e-commerce site, Goop, gave birth to a beautiful gift to the Internet-and it wasn’t a moon-powered vagina egg that...
by J. Jerrald Hayes | Jul 16, 2017 | Critical Thinking, Science
A nice treat I stumbled upon this Sunday summer...
by J. Jerrald Hayes | Jul 16, 2017 | Cognitive Bias, Critical Thinking
The Scout vs.Soldier Mindset (Motivated Reasoning) I’ve wanted to write my own article here about what Julia Galef has written and spoken about the Scout vs.Soldier Mindset but I can’t do much better than this article here: Why do some of us have better...
by J. Jerrald Hayes | Jul 11, 2017 | Critical Thinking, Science
Even when proof exists that the moon landing was a hoax, why do school textbooks continue to glorify the Apollo mission? Patrick Germain’s answer: It has been suggested that Stanley Kubrick, the truly gifted director who was responsible for such classics as...
