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

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.

if it makes you angry, you need to listen

I started listening to this lecture a few months ago. I didn't get far before experiencing an overwhelming feeling of annoyance. I got the impression that the author was trying to inflate himself by pointing out how ignorant most people are. I thought he was a little too confident in his statements.
I don't remember why I was determined to revisit the course, but in doing so, soon considered the possibility that the author might be telling me something I just didn't want to hear. Having finished the course, I am convinced that this was at least partially the case. I also think that it would be a great high school requirement.
I am currently helping a friend with a pretty serious legal matter. The statistics which indicate that very few of my peers ( aka Jurrors) are scientifically literate is terrifying. It seems that knowledge of the presented logical fallacies alone would likely get the case thrown out.
Is there even an inherent pledge/oath/statement/belief on the part of our judicial system that commits itself to being bound by science?

Really great course

This was a very informative course, and was a surprisingly easy listen. I definitely recommend it.

Science Rules!

These set of lectures are fantastic! One of the best I have heard yet. Everyone should listen to these.

Important information

The first chapters were very powerful. I liked the final chapters but I has many fewer "aha" moments while listening to them.

An excellent experience

A perfect combination of accurate and clear explanations. Exceptionally enlightening, useful and enjoyable. Definately worth a second run through

Outstanding.

I intend to listen to it again very soon just to be sure I didnt miss anything.