Summary: Critical thinking is one of the most important skills you can teach kids Critical thinking is a tool: we can use it to sort out the latest crises we hear about every day Learning to recognize logical fallicies as a way to develop better critical thinking skills Logical Fallicies (some of my own, but much of this taken from the Skeptoid episodes): Two main categories: 1) Unrelated points to discredit argument: Discredit the messenger Distract from the main argument Random points or non-sequitors Appeal to emotions Sensational wording or rhetoric 2) Faulty inference or reasoning (considers facts, but jumps to faulty conclusions) sample size or faulty generalization: “but I know someone who…” Faulty pattern recognition: not recognizing random coincidence for what it is, and correlation not causation Exaggeration or edge case reasoning, like “it’s a slippery slope” or arguing extremes to discredit a more moderate middle alternative References: http://skeptoid.com/ 3 Skeptoid episodes on Logical Fallacies (the first 3 results on this search page)
