Critical Thinking Notes
Cults
Cults: common traits
1. authoritarian leader whom believers are supposed to show unquestioned loyalty and obedience.
2. The leader is usually a malignant narcissist, who lacks empathy.
3. Members are discouraged to socialize with nonmembers except in cases of recruitment.
4. Members are told that they are on a mission.
5. Members are told that everyone who disagrees is wrong.
6. Members are expected to give money to the leader.
7. Members are threatened with bad consequences if they leave the group.
8. Members are told not to reveal inner workings to outsiders.
Class Notes - Cults
Members are often young and impressionable
Major Cult Examples
Manson Cult
Jones Town
Heavens Gate - An outlier cult
Nxvim
Scientology
Most of these cults often start with really nice self-help groups as their ideology and introduction
This is known a
Acclimated Belief
Religion/Faith is cultural and geographical in nature. The right place at the right time.
The longer you hold a belief the less likely you are to get rid of it.
Pascals Wager
We don't know whether there is a god or not, whether there is a god or not
Belief in god is good for you.
Now this is a wager
So what are the payoffs
Belief In God
Eternal reward
minus autonomy
plus comfort
No Belief In God
Eternal Punishment
minus comfort
plus autonomy
Flaws in this argument
What god are we talking about?
Believing in god based on self-interest
Magical Thinking
The Fixation of Belief and 4 Methods of Belief
Charles S. Peirce, “The Fixation of Belief,” Section V:
The method of tenacity (found by those who hold beliefs dogmatically) - don't let it go no matter
what (Dogma)
The method of authority (found by those who hold religious and political dogma) - consider the
source beyond question
The a priori method (found among the rationalists) - pure reason
The method of scientific investigation (know why Peirce argues that this method is superior by far to
any of the foregoing methods.)
Eugene Sabbotski's Research on Magical Thinking:
When denying magical beliefs is considered too costly, people will gladly give up their beliefs about
scientific causation.
Magical thinking allows people to believe they have answers, which provides them with an illusory
sense of control.
University of Connecticut Gerontologist Kevin Bellizzi on Beliefs:
Beliefs are rarely the product of exposure to facts. Cognitive psychology and neuroscience have
both found that people form beliefs on the emotions of fear and anger more than on evidence and
reason.
Once beliefs are established, people seek out information that supports their beliefs and ignore
information that runs contrary to their beliefs.
The brain is hard-wired to protect us and one way it does this is by releasing chemicals that
stimulate good feelings when exposed to information that agrees and therefore supports existing
beliefs.
Psychologist E. Thomas Howell on Why People Resist Changing their Beliefs:
“Change is difficult because core cognitive constructs act like a mental filter to screen in confirming
data and screen out disconfirming data.”
Neurobiology: Sathyanarayana, T.S.; Asha, M.R.; Jagannatha Rao, K.S.’ Vasudevaraju, P. “The
Biochemistry of Belief,” Indian J Psychiatry, National Center for Biotechnology Information, Oct-Dec.
2009.
When a person’s beliefs are challenged, distress is created. The brain then releases dopamine,
which returns the person to the safety of his original belief and the good feeling it creates. The
longer one holds a belief, the more this effect will cause the person to resist change.
Asking a person to change his or her beliefs is viewed as a threat to one’s well-being and the greater
the degree of change, the greater the feeling of foreboding. This fear leads to: Dogma: a belief or set of
beliefs that is accepted by members of a group without being
William Clifford: The Ethics of Belief
“It is wrong always for anyone to believe anything on insufficient evidence.”
Astrophysicist Carl Sagan's "Baloney Detection Kit" for hypotheses:
1. Independent confirmation of the facts.
2. Substantive debate on the state of the evidence by experts.
3. Do not rely on a person or book as unchallenged authority.
4. Entertain multiple working hypotheses. Devise tests to determine whether one hypothesis is able to
withstand the rigor of investigation.
5. Do not attach yourself to an idea because you like it, or see it as yours.
6. Use quantifiable data when able, to assure precision.
7. Eliminate hypotheses that possess unnecessary assumptions (Occam's Razor) - common sense
8. Determine whether the hypothesis can be falsified. If the hypothesis is incapable of being disproven,
it is impossible to prove true and is being held without evidence. (If a believer claims that every
possible outcome proves his hypothesis true, the hypothesis is valueless.) Example: "The universe
was created by a higher power." - it needs to be provable, true or false
Class Notes - Magical Thinking
Peirce
The method of tenacity or dogma fails because it is impossible to reach a consensus.
Peirce believes it because it goes against the social impulse (argument/disagreement)
The method of authority is also socially impulsed against as no one can reach a consensus.
It causes more disagreement than agreement
a priori tries to use proof and to do this they use mathematics.
But reason by itself can't give us the truth about the world.
To discover something about the world you have to feel it.
The scientific method brings reason but it also brings in the census
This is why it works.
The scientific method catches errors and brings people to a consensus
Everyone views science the same
Science is the only one that brings undeniable true reason.
Sabbotski
People let go of science when things aren't going right or when it doesn't feel good.
What do I do know? Science often brings a loss of control and magic can bring that sense of control
back
Bellizzi
People often form their beliefs based on their emotions.
Fear and anger are great motivators as they trigger emotions.
People often only view what they want to and that supports their beliefs - confirmation bias.
The brain is hardwired to protect us and when their belief is challenged it returns people to the good
feelings their belief holds
Science
The more you hear a belief in your life the more entrenched it becomes because of classical
conditioning.
People who have authority are responsible for the information they give out.
If an idea has been presented to you take it through the 8 points of the bullshit detection test.
Brodie
Memes and Mind Viruses
Meme: Anything that gets initiated (an idea)
Biological Definition of Meme (from Dawkins)
The meme is the basic unit of cultural transmission or imitation.
Psychological Definition of Meme (from Plotkin)
A meme is a unit of cultural heredity analogous to a gene. It is the internal representation of knowledge.
Cognitive Definition of Meme (from Dennett)
A meme is an idea, the kind of complex idea that forms itself into a distinct memorable unit. It is spread
by vehicles that are physical manifestations of the meme.
Definition of Meme
A meme is a unit of information in a mind whose existence influences events such that more copies of
itself get created in other minds.
What is the difference between a meme and a mind virus
Meme = any idea whatsoever
A non-mind virus idea is a belief you can account for, one that has evidence.
A Mind Virus = an idea that is being imitated
You can't recount the idea because you imitated it and you have no good reason to follow it besides
other people believing in it.
IE: backward baseball hat.
A mind virus = No evidence. No argument. No accounting for it. No good reason
Meme = Evidence. Argument. Accounting for it. A good reason
The evolution of memes - Traits of Survival Value that Assist in Viral Success
Smart/important information = survival value
Survival Value equals
Danger
Food
Sex
and humor but thats just a catagory of sex
These things create biological success - its hard wired into our brain.
How we get programmed
Explain how
1. Conditioning (easisest method to spread mind viruses) - repetition
2. Cognitive Dissonence
A. Create tension (make them uncomfortable (upset))
B. Reward (compliment/agree) and punish there responses (if they diagree) Often use scare tatic
C. Once succesful compliment - make them feel good
3. Trojan Horse
A. Establish common ground
B. Common Ground + Mind Virus (Slip in the mind virus)
C. Sell the entire thing as one united package
The mimetics of religion
Absolute truth vs Indexical Truth
Absolute truth - Universal truth that applies to everybody
Indexical Truth - Truth that applies to only certain people, time ,places, IE. relative truths
Such assertions seem to be true only at the time, place, or context of their utterance. For instance, the
sentence 'It's raining today' is true at the time of writing it but may be false when uttered at a different
time or place.
Religion pursues a Meaningless Problem - a problem that cannot be solved
Not only do they try to solve this problem, they claim they have a solution
Religion Memes (Know all 4)
Tradition - The tradition strategy-meme replicates because it programs people to perpetuate itself—
along with the rest of the bundled memes. Religions have among the strongest traditions of any
cultural institutions. From Mecca, ancient churches, and Eastern monasteries to kosher laws and
the careful preservation of the Bible, traditions pervade most religions. Remember: It’s not that the
traditions are being kept because the religions are true or good—the cause and effect are reversed!
The religions survived because, in part, certain traditions became ingrained in them. Religions
without strong traditions had less chance of surviving.
The longer the idea has hung around ter truer it must be right?
Heresy - Heresy is any belief that goes against the dogma of a religion. The flip side of tradition, the
heresy distinction-meme is like an infection-fighting white blood cell, identifying and combating
infectious new memes. Heresy carries with it a whole list of association-memes about what will
happen to you if you believe (allow penetration of) or speak (spread) heresy.
Its generational, and it prevents people from leaving there religion behind as a parent there not
gonna let there children not belive the same as them cause they dont want them to reach eternal
damnation
Challenging the fundamental teaching of your religion.
Evangelism - The evangelism strategy-meme replicates because it’s shouting “Spread me to new
people!” This one is interesting because not all religions are evangelistic in the sense of standing on
street corners handing out pamphlets. But you’d have to look hard to find a major religion that
doesn’t evangelize to the children of its adherents. This works even better when combined with the
Have as many children as possible meme favored by the Pope, Mormons, and our current welfare
system.
It’s beside the point that people are sincere and have good reasons to evangelize:
“Jesus/Scientology/The Forum/The American Way made such an incredible difference in my life that
I want everyone else to experience that joy.” The institutions that encourage evangelism—that even
condition people to evangelize—have a memetic advantage, regardless of the impact of the religion
on people’s lives. The religion is successful because somehow evangelism became a part of its
dogma. A religion that gave people incredible joy but did not program them to evangelize would not
be as successful.
Keeps it popular
(Not) Making sense - Ideas that make sense replicate better than those that don’t by the very
nature of the human mind—remember the children’s game of “telephone.” Religions that have clear,
handy explanations for those tough questions are much more popular than those that challenge
people to think for themselves, such as Zen. Of course, those answers to tough questions don’t
have to be true, any more than Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, as long as they’re easy to
understand.
Religion gives you unbelivable simple and stupid answers to really tough questions.
Richard Dawkins
Duplication Folder - Children are guliable. Children belive in santa, the tooth fairy. We belive in exactly
what old people tell us.
The infected mind - Everything influences us.
2 qualities required for viral transmission - Two Requirements for Viral Transmission
A readiness to replocate information accuratly
Obeying instructions and coding that information
Biologically - its Dna in the celss
Mind - its Memes in our mind
Evidence
A good argument is good evidence
A bad argument is bad evidence
Language is an example of how we accuratly transmit mind viruses. Think about our accents
Our accents come from taking what we are hearing and repeating it. From that we get our accents
Obeying instructions. Sometimes we do sometimes we dont.
Children follow the religion of there parents. Is that not obeying instructions.
We replicate and obey instructions from childhood. Thats how we most often get our relgiouns beliefs
Human minds are friendly enviroments to parasitic self replicating ideas or ifnormation and that minds
are typically massivley infected
Like computer viruses you often wont know your infected witth a mind virus and you may even deny it.
Lets use a medical comparrision
Seven Symptoms of a Mind Virus
1. Patient is impleeded and conviced by inner convitction that something is true this is called Faith.
(Blind Faith)
A. Passionate
B. No Evidence
C. No logical arguments
2. Patients typically make a possitve virtue of faiths being strong and unshackable in spite of not being
based upon evidence.
Less evidence is good (Your blessed to belive withount evidence)
3. A related symptom is that mystery is good. Embrace mystery and riddicule evidence.
4. Intolerance twords rival faiths or heritics, things that may be veiwed as dangerous twords their faith.
(Creates violence)
2 forms
Exrteme
Less extreme
5. The patient may notice that his beliefs are based on the accident of birth. None of us choose our
religion/beliefs. We take them epidemolgically. (Religion is debandent on the cluture you are born
into)
6. Conversion (The Guru Effect) - if one is too come to a belifs later in life its almost always an
emotional conversion. Not logic, Not evidence.
7. It feels good. Religion and faith feel good.
The 7 symptoms to indicate if one has a mind virus or even better so a religous virus.
Science doesnt qualify as virus
This is because the laws and rules of it do not favor something. It is based on testiable percise
quantifiable cositant repeatable universal objective and bring proggress.
We know this works because of technology and how we use this science on a day to day basis
Scientific Methodology versus Religious Methodology (Know all steps)
Science (Why its safeguarded from being a virus )
Start with a hypothesis (possible explination)
Goes through deduction (if my hypothesis is correct what are the observable consitant result)
Scientic prediction
Induction (The testing phase)
You are right = body of evidence
Creates a scientific theory
You are wrong = counter example ( You now need to go back and revise your hypothesis)
This mean science catches error, Gives you good well supported theories
Religion (Why it is a mind virus)
Doctrines (set of beliefs) That are believed to be absolutley true
But how do you investigate these beliefs
Scripture (absolutely true) = circular reasoning
Revelation (absolutely true) = circular reasoning
Neither can be tested and it creates circularity
No hypothesis
No Deduction
No Induction
No Theories
There is no error catching
Viruses dont always win
Vaughn, chapters 1, 4, 9
Part 1 Chapter 1
A consequence then of going with the wind is a loss of personal freedom. If you passively accept beliefs
that have been handed to you by your parents, your culture, or your teachers, then those beliefs are not
really yours
Your beliefs are yours only if you critically examine them for yourself to see if they are supported by
good reasons
Claim: Any sentence that has truth value.
True and false questions are claims
2 types of claims
Factual - truth value is determined by empirical evidence
Value - truth value is not determined by empirical evidence
2 types of value claims
1. Moral
2. non Moral - subjective (personal preferences)
Some confusion - We either have the evidence now or evidence would ultimately decide it - its still a
factual claim
Better and worse - both are value terms
Section 1, Test
10 claims
You have to determine if its factual in nature or value
Arguments
Purpose: To settle diagreement - The goal is consensus
Criteria:
1. Premise - reason or evidence "Why?" Indicating words pg 14
2. Conclusion - main point "What?"
4 Clues to find a conclusion
1. Most controversial claim
2. Generalizations
3. Author making a judgment - "should, right"
4. Any words considered to be conclusion indicators, "There for" - Conclusionary words, pg 15
Exam exercise
Multiple choice
Which of the following contians conclusion indicating words only (no premise indicting words)
A (Words - mix of premise and conlsuion)
B (Words - mix of premise and conlsuion)
C (Words - mix of premise and conlsuion)
D (Words - mix of premise and conlsuion)
E (Words - all conclusion)
Section 5 of the exam
You get 5 arguments
(Use the clues given to find the concluison)
Then word for word right down just the conclusion
Part 2 Chapter 4
An expert is someone who is more knowledgeable in a particular subject area or field than most others
are.
Reliable Experts
1. Education and training from reputable institutions or programs in the relevant field (usually
evidenced by degrees or certificates)
2. Experience in making reliable judgments in the field (generally the more years of experience the
better) Your level of experiance
3. Good reputation among peers
4. Profesional accomplishments
But, unfortunately, people can have the requisite education and experience and still not know what
they’re talking about in the field in question.
X -> Y
~X -> Y
X -> ~Y
(Drugs and Aids)
Drugs -> Cause Aids
Junkis -> No aids
No Drugs -> Aids
Red Flags
• The expert is guilty of simple factual or formal errors.
• The expert’s claims conflict with what you have good reason to believe. (Contradictions)
• The expert does not treat opposing views fairly. (Straw Man)
• The expert is strongly biased, emotional, or dismissive
• The experts information is out of date
• Most other experts disagree
Personal Experiance - Anacdotal Evidence
Evidence of your senses - famously bad evidence
Another form of anacdotal evidence is hear say. Its even worse because its not your experiance its one
removed, its someone elses
What makes anecdotal evidence unreliable
Classic Problems
1. Impairment
sensory
memory
2. Expectation bias (Placebo Effect)
Experimental Group
Control Group
3. Innumeracy - misunderstanding coincidence
Confirmation bias - choosing the information that agrees with you (echo chamber)
Availability error - occurs when someone focuses on evidence that is readily available, memorable, or
psychologically compelling, instead of considering all evidence
Magic
Explanations Vs Argument
The difference is that they have different goals
Argument = settle disagreement
Explanation = solving mysteries
Criteria of Adequacy
1. Testability - Whether there is some way to determine if a theory is true
Ad hoc explanations cant be tested ( You cant prove them to be true or false)
2. Fruitfulness - The number of novel predictions made
successful risky (precise and accurate) predictions
3. Scope - The amount of diverse phenomena explained
The more the explanation proves the better
4. Simplicity "Ockham's Razor" - - The amount of diverse phenomena explained
Get rid of assumptions you don't need (path of least resistance)
5. Conservatism - How well a theory fits with existing knowledge
conserve your explanation to that which is already know before jumping into the unknown. Stick
to the known before going to the unknown
These 5 things need to be built into any good explanation
Conspiracy Theories
Why Researchers Argue that Religious People are more Susceptible to Conspiracy Theories because religion is a conspiracy theory, you've been groomed to think conspiracy theories are already a
fabric of the universe itself
1. There are gaps in our knowledge
Hand a simple minded answer to something that they do not understand
Actual Answers are normally simpler
2. The Asch Experiment
We conform to group pressure - We fall for repetition even if we know better (People are subject to
group conformity)
3. Repetition of misinformation (Echo Chamber)
This makes that information harder to go away
4. Misinformation
Once this brain takes this information as truth the brain retains it making it hard to remove
5. We see pattern
That doesn't exist
6. Dunning - Kruger effect
People with the lowest levels of knowledge constantly rank them selves as ones with the highest
amount of knowledge. You don't know what you don't know. Low metacognition
Metacognition - Ones ability to accurately assess ones knowledge
Truthers - they believe they have the truth, believe the government is responsible for grand
conspiracy's that are going on
Fabulism - Making outrages claims in order to gain attention IE: Alex Jones, Donald Trump
Conspiracy theories often violate critical thinking because it violates Ockham's Razor.
The Backfire Effect - Phycologists have learned when you confront conspiracy theorist with
facts it will backfire and they will think you are apart of the conspiracy
James Randi - Psychics
Hot Read Vs Cold Read
Hot Read = You cheat by gathering information in advance on your victim before the read.
Cold Read = You don't know anything about them, you have to get the information right then and there
through them.
"You cant prove a negative"
All you can do is prove that it might not likely be true
If something has no physical evidence so it we cant prove it to be true, then it cannot be proven true.
Ad Hoc Explanations
There is no way to test it (You cant prove them to be true or false)
Double Blinding - bedrock for scientific reasoning, guards against expectation Bias
You make sure that the researchers and the research subject has no cross communication between
them
Vague, Nonspecific Descriptions
Vague Imprecise descriptions platitudes - its true for practically everybody
often with cold reads, things like horoscopes, vague platitudes are what create platitudes
Propaganda
Types of Fake News: Misinformation, Clickbait, False Experts, Claim Offered Without Evidence,
Propaganda. (To check the truth of a claim, use fact-checkers Snopes.com, Factcheck.org,
Politifact.com)
Misinformation: false information, motive unknown.
Disinformation: intentionally lying to people, Example: “The fact is, we won the presidential election;
we won it big.” Donald Trump
Clickbait: hyperbolic headline designed to get people to click on a link. Example: “Doctors are on the
verge of curing cancer.” “How to grow hair with one simple trickle."
False/Dubious Experts: using alleged experts who are, in fact, either not experts or are dubious
experts. Example: “Healthy young child goes to doctor, gets pumped with massive shot of many
vaccines, doesn’t feel good and changes – AUTISM. Many such cases!” ~ Donald Trump
Claim Without Evidence: offering factual information that has no evidence to support it. (Notice, unlike
misinformation that can be proven to be false, claims without evidence cannot be proven false, but
simply have no evidence to support them.) Example: “From my office in trump towers, when 9/11
happened I witnessed thousands of people on the roofs in new jersey celebrating.”
False Flag: Disguise an actual source and instead cast responsibility onto another group of people.
Example: “Earlier today, the Capitol was under siege; there were reports that antifa sympathizers were
sprinkled throughout the crowd.” ~ Laura Ingraham, FOX News
These 5 are gonna be some multiple choice question
You are gonna see a question and you click on the letter that corelates to said type of Fake news
Propaganda: biased promotional material, often used to make a group of people appear to be evil or
not fully human…particularly scare tactics that are not grounded in fact. “Left wing mobs have torn down
our founders, desecrated our memorials, and carried out a campaign of violence and anarchy.” ~
Donald Trump
Almost always has fear behind it.
John Oddo: Three Elements to Propaganda
Repetition
Manipulation
Anti Democratic - take voting rights away
Goebbels’s Prescription for Getting People to Believe Lies - if you want people to believe a lie you
simply have to reapeat it over and over and belief will come.
Superstition
post hoc reasoning (Bases for superstition) - just because one event occurs after another event, the
first event must have caused the second event.
Counter Examples
x ------> y
chicken Great Game
This disproves it
-x ------> y
no chicken Good Game
x ------> -y
Chicken Bad Game
Superstition remains because we only remember the events that work towards that
People are at their most superstitions when they have something to lose
Gamblers Fallacy
1. Post Hoc Reasoning
2. Start believing falsely that the laws of probability apply to small numbers