Your Deceptive Mind: A Scientific Guide to Critical Thinking Skills

By: Steven Novella, The Great Courses

Narrated by: Steven Novella

Length: 12 hrs and 39 mins

Publisher's summary

No skill is more important in today's world than being able to think about, understand, and act on information in an effective and responsible way. What's more, at no point in human history have we had access to so much information, with such relative ease, as we do in the 21st century. But because misinformation out there has increased as well, critical thinking is more important than ever.

These 24 rewarding lectures equip you with the knowledge and techniques you need to become a savvier, sharper critical thinker in your professional and personal life. By immersing yourself in the science of cognitive biases and critical thinking, and by learning how to think about thinking (a practice known as metacognition), you'll gain concrete lessons for doing so more critically, more intelligently, and more successfully.

The key to successful critical thinking lies in understanding the neuroscience behind how our thinking works - and goes wrong; avoiding common pitfalls and errors in thinking, such as logical fallacies and biases; and knowing how to distinguish good science from pseudoscience. Professor Novella tackles these issues and more, exploring how the (often unfamiliar) ways in which our brains are hardwired can distract and prevent us from getting to the truth of a particular matter.

Along the way, he provides you with a critical toolbox that you can use to better assess the quality of information. Even though the world is becoming more and more saturated information, you can take the initiative and become better prepared to make sense of it all with this intriguing course.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

©2012 The Teaching Company, LLC (P)2012 The Great Courses

well worth the time

as a scientist I should be an expert at the topic covered in this course. however I found the material very beneficial and it now has me thinking more critically about my work as I continue to seek out truth in my work and life.

Time Well Spent

Some of the best information came in the first five chapters. Keep a note book and pen handy. I guarantee you will want to use them.

time well spent

I enjoyed the lectures, easy to follow, understand ill listen to the lectures again. As far as what I knew and thought I knew, these lectures corrected, confirmed and added to my knowledge. will have to find more material on the subject.

Let there be light!

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

I listened to the audiobook awhile ago, so the material isn't fresh in my mind, but I will try my best to review it. I definitely would recommend this to my friends, and any other member of the human race, specifically. Some of the key terms have faded from memory, but the good news is, the modes of thinking have largely stayed with me. If I wasn't skeptical and reasonable before, these lectures have undoubtedly sharpened these faculties to the point where it's developed into more of a science, as opposed to what previously felt like guesswork. These broad stroke lectures are applicable to anyone who values truth. They offer the equipment necessary to navigate in a world often shrouded by smoke screens.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Your Deceptive Mind: A Scientific Guide to Critical Thinking Skills?

The most memorable moment for me was when the professor explains what's called the availability heuristic. I've always thought of this phenomenon but never knew quite how to conceptualize it. He often illuminates phenomena that are right under our noses, but that our brains seem to innately struggle with. He's essentially teaching us how to process information through a sieve. Very useful if you like your information without pulp.

What does Professor Steven Novella bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

He has great passion, and it shines through every lecture. That's all I've ever required from a teacher.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

I was practically moved to tears when I was listening to this audiobook while cutting onions.

Excellent!!! Should be required for any diploma

What made the experience of listening to Your Deceptive Mind: A Scientific Guide to Critical Thinking Skills the most enjoyable?

Dr. Novella encourages the listener sort through his/her own ideas and the ideas of other people by various rational methods to uncover inconsistencies and ideas unsupported by evidence. It is like spring cleaning for the mind.

Any additional comments?

I will listen to this many times in order to integrate these methodologies into my life.

informative lectures.

thorough explanations. these were nice to listen to on the way to work. I definitely learned something

brilliant book

It's a brilliant book. The material is not new if you read Daniel Kanneman or Nassim Taleb for example. This book is very structural and put together many things which I learned from many books. I only doubt that it will make ignorant and stubborn people less ignorant. It's a good read for an intelligent person, but a source of rage for a believer. In that sense the book doesn't have a secret sauce to convince people lacking logic, as by definition they wouldn't be willing to put an effort in understanding.

enjoyed

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It is an easy listen easy to follow and the narrator did a great job

Improve your thinking skills!

A very good book about cognitive skills. The author uses an easy to do understand (and listen) language and a lot of illustrative examples.

Great Book!

Any additional comments?

This is a review of an audio book I bought, and I immediately had buyer’s remorse because of a few negative reviews. I could not have been more wrong. I have always admired those who can think clearly, and I felt this book was a great step towards becoming a clear thinker. After listening to the book, I reflected that the number of logical fallacies and flaws in thinking we encounter every day is astonishing. We have many logical fallacies and cognitive weaknesses, from how memories are constructed and being horrible at probability to trusting “experts”—what is an expert? With the advances in bioengineering, people think of engineering the perfect athlete or the next Einstein, but if I want my daughter to become anything, I want her to be a thinker, a clear thinker.

The first problem with our minds is the flaws and fabrications of memory. When we think about memory, we think of a video recorder, which could not be further from the truth. What really happens is that every time we try to recall something, we re-construct that memory from scratch, contextualizing it with new information and adding to it our own biases. For example, if we come across a small car accident, and, later that day, we hear about causalities in a car accident, we might reconstruct that same car accident to include deaths.These interesting research findings show that the more confident we are of a memory, the less likely we’re able to accurately recall what really happened.

It is good for us and bad for us. Another cognitive weakness is pattern recognition, which can also be a strength. We have evolved to construct patterns that served us well: in the wild, if we observe that anyone that visits a certain area becomes lost, then we notice the correlation between going to that area and getting lost, which helps us to survive. The downside is that our brains can detect patterns that aren’t there. Another good example of this are dreams: when one dreams of a certain animal and, immediately after, encounters a bad experience, then one’s brain tends to link that dream to the bad experience. We notice this a lot with athletes: when a tennis player plays exceptionally well while wearing a certain kit, that player links that outcome to wearing that kit rather than more likely reasons, such as training very hard or exploiting the opponent’s weaknesses.

Other problems include confirmation bias—that is, we choose the conclusion with which we’re comfortable and then read books and listen to experts who confirm this pre-determined conclusion without examining other views objectively. Another fallacy is the familiarity bias, which is a big issue for experts. For example, a biologist is more likely to attribute a phenomenon to a biological reason while a sociologist is more likely to attribute the exact same thing to the society, something with which he or she is more familiar. Then, there is the hidden power of mass delusion. For example, when, in certain parts of Africa, more and more people testify about seeing a human with a donkey’s leg, an increasing number of people believe the mythology despite the lack of evidence. Then there is the issue of experts, even if they’re discussing something out of their expertise. An example of this is Lord Kelvin's assertion that the earth’s age is 100 million years, which he later reduced to 20 million years, which is still far from the accurate figure of 4,543 million years.

Good books are everywhere, but great books that make a lasting impact in the way we construct our reality are far between. Professor Steven Novella does a great job at explaining cognitive weaknesses and logical fallacies and how we can be aware of this and mitigate these shortfalls.