We continue the MIT Press series "What you should know about..." with the new item "Critical thinking". You often asked and we gave.
“Over the past few decades, we have witnessed a rapid acceleration of the emergence of new knowledge, along with unprecedented access to information through the digital devices that are always with us. However, misjudgments also haunt us on a personal and societal level. Moreover, our inability to judge the veracity and reliability of the information in our countless pocket Libraries of Alexandria means that we are more likely to believe false information and draw incorrect conclusions based on the "facts" that may be fed to us by those who understand enough about the flaws of human thought. to manipulate us...
Some commentators on the 2016 US election, for example, conclude that many Americans make decisions based on emotion rather than reason, and suggest that the public's capacity for critical thinking is either absent—or very fragile. But it doesn't take an interest in politics to see the problems associated with a lack of critical thinking.
How many impulse buys, bad career decisions, senseless fights with loved ones, and other problems could be avoided if we could train our brains to find and evaluate evidence, organize it into a structure for analysis, and base decisions on rules that protect common sense since the time of Socrates and Aristotle?"
Jonathan Haber, from the Introduction of Illustrations to the Ukrainian edition - Viktor Kudin. Cover design and localization by Oksana Gadzhiy.