CriticalThinkingAcademy

Recently, I was considering purchasing the book "Mental Immunity: Infectious Ideas, Mind Parasites, and the Search for a Better Way to Think", when I came across a comment in the book review, that I found to be extremely indicative of the type of reasoning plaguing the world. The short answer to the title of this post is "no", but I raise it because it's not evidently clear, given the methods presented by this research, on how to handle this type of backlash. Being interested in critical thinking, naturally I was intrigued by the idea of Cognitive Immunology . The idea is that there is a system in the mind, analogous to the bodies immune system, that can be trained, strengthened, and fortified to help the individual avoid believing parasitic beliefs. The terms refer to the mind’s ability to resist harmful influences, including misinformation, biases, and maladaptive thinking patterns. According to this research, critical thinking by itself is insufficient when i...

Patterns of Reasoning in MAGA Conversations I've been interacting with Trump loyalists for quite some time. In many of these conversations, I deliberately resist challenging every claim in real time because I want to hear how the reasoning unfolds: which distinctions are made, which assumptions go unexamined, and how certain conclusions come to feel obvious within the conversation. This post draws on several recent conversations to examine those recurring patterns. The point is not merely to catalogue political opinions I disagree with. What interests me is the method of reasoning underneath them: black-and-white categorization, emotive language, selective skepticism, conceptual imprecision, and the tendency to filter evidence through an already established political or religious identity. Contents Case Study I: The Lunch Conversation Political Identity as Binary Categorization Semantic Collapse and Emotive Language What Does It Mean for a System to “Work”? From Healthcare to T...