Elements of Critical Thinking

Thinking and knowing are not the same things.

Businesses and other groups are usually better than individuals in using slow thinking, thus avoiding frequent mistakes because, by their very nature, thinking and change within them takes longer time.

The questionable scientific “evidence,” in these campaigns made claims such as marijuana turned users into killers and drug addicts. In reality the campaigns were an attempt to get rid of Mexican immigrants.

Repetition of short, memorable slogans was key in the marketing of his message. “The receptivity of great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. (…) all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans.”

The ways that Hitler used propaganda to plant hateful ideas in the minds of his followers and indoctrinate them forever changed the connotation we have for the word propaganda and enforced again and again how important a free and independent press, freedom of speech, and critical thinking really are.

Often what we are thinking is actually what we are feeling.

Consumer demands in the 21st century’s hardly ever represent human needs in the most literal sense. The demand is rather formed and changed by fashionable products and activities dictated by contemporary influencers.

Our brain on energy saver mode causes us to fall back on relying on shortcuts to help us get to answers and solutions faster

Peirce believed that we should look at the world as though it was entirely possible that everything we thought we knew and believed might be wrong and be willing to start over from scratch if we needed to.

Many of our beliefs are rooted in faulty information that could easily be disproved if we were willing to question it.