In this episode we discuss perhaps the most crucial critical thinking tools of all: knowing that correlation does not necessarily mean cause.

We illustrate this with the correlation between ice cream sales and murders. Then we get into some controversial proposed correlations, such as police and crime, trauma and dissociation, trauma therapy and decompensation, and negative attitudes to paedophilia and paedophilia.

In the process, we discuss the things that are needed to establish cause: 1. Correlation, 2. Cause comes before effect, and 3. Spurious correlations rules out, and 4. Changing one variable in a controlled way effects the other variable.

In this episode I explain how to get the most out of the beautiful subjects in the humanities.

By using what UC Berkeley English Professor Frederick Crews called the "empirical approach" to the humanities I help students distinguish between good and bad art, history, literary criticism, sociology, philosophy, and so on.

This week we use the tools we learned previously and apply them to the sciences, and new tools emerge in the discussion as well.

Critical Thinking Tools Podcast  

Episode 1: Plato's Cave. The prison of belief.  

In this first episode we discuss probably the very influentual critical thinking tool that Plato described in The Republic around 375 BC. It consists of a mind-bending dialogue between Socrates and a student. Plato's cave is a foundational critical thinking tool that has stood the test of time, and has been quite productive, and still important and relevant today.

Join me outside Plato's cave.

In this episode we learn about 10 signs of a pseudoscience. These correspond to those presented by Scott Lilienfeld, Steven Lynn, and Jeffrey Lohr in their book Science and Pseudoscience in Clinical Psychology. These 10 red flags can be used in any science, and can be adapted to think about distinguishing knowledge and ideology in the humanities and social sciences too.

The ten red flags of a pseudoscience are:

1. Lack of falsifiability
2. Absence of self correction
3. Evasion of peer review
4. Emphasis of confirmation
5. Reversed burden of proof.
6. Lack of connectivity to existing science
7. Overreliance on anecdotes
8. Use of obscurantist language
9. Absence of boundary conditions
10. Mantra of holism.

Reference:

Lilienfeld, S. O., Lynn, S. J., & Lohr, J. M. (2003). Science and pseudoscience in clinical psychology: Initial thoughts, reflections, and considerations. In Science and pseudoscience in clinical psychology (pp.48-56). Guilford Publications.

For a link to a similar article in pdf form, see: https://scottlilienfeld.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/lilienfeld2015-5.pdf 

In this episode I discuss falsifiability perhaps the most important tool to distinguish science and reliable knowledge from pseudoscience, religion, and ideologies.

In the episode, I read from Karl Popper's well known lecture and article: Popper, K. (1963). Science: Conjectures and refutations. Conjectures and refutations, 33-39.

Link to pdf: 

https://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/Karl-Popper-SCIENCE-CONJECTURES-AND-REFUTATIONS.pdf

In Episode  2, I extract the most important ideas from the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment (from approximately 1600s onward)--with a focus on those ideas most useful for critical thinking and scientific skepticism. 

First, I discuss the difference between rationalism and empiricism. 

Then I discuss the values of objective truth, anti-authoritarianism, liberty, the marketplace of ideas, sapere aude, tolerance, humanism, and scientific skepticism.