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

A great guide

What did you love best about Your Deceptive Mind: A Scientific Guide to Critical Thinking Skills?

IT covered a lot of ground and did so well.

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

I do a lot of driving and it covered the topic without the need for visuals.

hours of awesome material

What did you love best about Your Deceptive Mind: A Scientific Guide to Critical Thinking Skills?

it really felt like a college class. each lecture was full of theory and interesting anecdotes - kept you engaged.

Any additional comments?

definitely gets you thinking. really useful if you're interested in the scientific process and want to learn about 'real-word' applications for scientific reasoning. he moves very fast, but keeps bringing back material from previous lectures which definitely helps to reinforce the concepts.

Critical Thinking is a must

This was a very good read. I think that the art of questioning everything and being more of a skeptic was a good theme that I picked out, there were a lot of things that made me feel uneasy about what was being talked about in the book but then I realized that the se feelings that I'm having were due to the fact that The information being provided to me was opposite of what I always thought was true. This is a very good book to read and well worth the time.

Great lectures

I have thoroughly enjoyed and learned a lot. I would recommend these lectures to anyone.

Does your brain work the way you think it does?

As usual, The Great Courses series nails it. If you’re truly interested in the physiological and emotional consequences of your decisions, ideologies, choices and more this’s the book for you. I’ve been interested in our thought processes for a long time. This book covers it all. “Would you wear a shirt previously owned by a serial killer?” showed me how deep emotional responses are the result of a part of the brain that has nothing to do with our “logical “ brain and everything to do with the “emotional “ processes from which superstition, prejudice, and cognitive dissonance come from. Highly recommended.

Fantastic

This is now required for my students in the college courses I teach. An absolutely thorough and well tempered exploration of critical thinking, scientific skepticism, and cognitive bias. For me the lecture really picks up momentum when it reaches informal fallacies, and from then on out I felt totally engaged with the speaker. A fantastic reminder of our own fallibility and the need for systematic analysis of our own beliefs.

Excellent and enlightening

One of best courses I've listened to. Prof Novella over delivers in the course. I will definitely revisit this time and time again in the future.

So good that i'm sad it ended

A great guide on using critical thinking with skepticism and science together. It's not a easy task given our cognitive flaws and biases but certainly can be achieved with practice and humility.

Amazing!

This is an important addition to any library. I can't recommend it enough! Best to take breaks between each chapter to consider the implications to your own daily life.

Good Intro to Skepticism / Unnecessarily Long

Would you recommend Your Deceptive Mind: A Scientific Guide to Critical Thinking Skills to your friends? Why or why not?

The first half of the lectures, yes. The rest is feels elongated.

What did you like about the performance? What did you dislike?

Neutral on the performance.

Did Your Deceptive Mind: A Scientific Guide to Critical Thinking Skills inspire you to do anything?

Pay close attention and retain the fundamental terminology & concepts of critical analysis.

Any additional comments?

I am grateful to Professor Novella for his overall instruction re: critical / skeptical thinking and found him at his best when identifying fundamental concepts & phenomena of human psychology which undermine critical thinking. My reservation about the set, though, is that it feels as if twelve 45-minute were stretched into twenty-four 30-minute lectures. It's fine to use ghosts, Bigfoot, conspiracy theories, etc. as examples of non-critical thinking but feel it was unnecessary to give over whole or major parts of lectures to these categories.