Critical Thinking

Verify Your Independence

Mental Yoga

There’s a great mental exercise that drives me crazy. I read and listen to people whose message I hate. Sometimes they are the only ones who are telling me what I need to hear, but don’t want to think about.

“Both sides” is a tired journalism saying that can give a platform to all sorts of nonsense. But it is a defense against going down a rabbit hole.

We need to maintain a context, a frame of reference with which to understand everything. Context is a shared base of mutually agreed-upon facts. It is the basis for discussion and debate.

What misinformation does is take away our context and gives us false conclusions in a way that gets us angry. Then other suggestions are given to us. Angry, we click to find out more. Our initial impression is validated and we are tempted to find out more. On the way, information is being collected about us and matched to people who sell things.

Bye-Bye Twitter

Along wit…