Critical thinking

When one wants to justify the harm one has done by saying that others have done the same or that this evil was only a reaction to the harm done by someone else, they commit the logical error of appealing to hypocrisy.

In practice, people often accuse each other of making logical errors, but sometimes the accusation is false. Such an accusation is made by someone who does not understand what logical fallacies are and how they work, or by a manipulative person who takes advantage of the ignorance of those in the first category.

Every religious movement and "camp" is built around a desirable ideal. However, when this core value becomes an end in itself and love—the hallmark of the Christian faith—is pushed into the background, tensions turn into open conflicts.

Almost a century ago, writer Virginia Woolf noticed people’s tendency to approach books “with clouded and divided minds, asking fiction to be true, poetry to be false, biographies to be flattering and history to chime with prejudices.”

Conspiracy theories and fake news are not the same thing, although the two categories have much in common.

When we think we are immune to disinformation, we become easy prey for those who manipulate us.

The questionable cause fallacy, described by the Latin phrase cum hoc ergo propter hoc, is an error of thought which leads us to believe that one event causes another event simply because the two events occur simultaneously. This error can easily be reinforced if the simultaneity of the two events is often repeated.

The false dilemma fallacy presents an issue as if there are only two ways to solve it—often, two opposite ways—when, in fact, there are more ways than that. The conflict between the two ways presented is also false.

Arguments must be convincing and, in order to convince, they must be valid—the minimum requirement of persuasion.

We live in a polarised world where conspiracy theories proliferate, but some people are more inclined than others to consume and propagate these theories rather than ignore or demystify them.

The biased sample is a kind of unrepresentative sample, either for quantitative reasons (as is the case with the too-small sample), or for qualitative ones, when its structure does not represent the structure of the real population that is the object of the research.

Fundamentalist movements, extremist and sectarian religious beliefs, manipulations of the mass of believers, conspiracy theories within religious sects, and other such threats, emphasise the need for critical thinking.

"Intelligent, scientifically trained people no longer believe (or can no longer believe) in God."

A few years ago, the American Statistical Association carried out research on the history of statistics, tracing their use throughout the course of human society’s development. The results of the study are displayed in the form of a chart called the Timeline of statistics, available on the association's website.

No one has ever seen a thought, not even a neurosurgeon. However, today we know more about the way we think than what we were able to visualise, yet still less than we would like to know.