I couldn't stop thinking about how this book was, "so cool." Psychologists refer to the discomfort we feel in such situations when our beliefs or attitudes are in conflict as cognitive dissonance. Publisher. The textbook How to Think About Weird Things: Critical Thinking for a New Age (2019, 8th ed) by the philosophers Theodore Schick and Lewis Vaughn, offers step-by-step advice on sorting through reasons, evaluating evidence and judging the veracity of a claim. They can fake anything. If were starting from a very low base, probability-wise, then much more heavy lifting needs to be done by the evidence to raise the probability of the claim to a point where it might be reasonable to believe it. It matters that we dont delude ourselves into thinking were being reasonable when were not. As science keeps reminding us, reality often is weird. How to think about weird things focuses on how to find answers to tough or weird questions. Stare at passing clouds or into the embers of a fire, and its easy to interpret the randomly generated shapes we see as faces, often spooky ones, staring back. Well, it is of course possible that Jane is playing a prank on me with her wet coat and brolly. Thanks for exploring this SuperSummary Plot Summary of "Why People Believe Weird Things" by Michael Shermer. Please use a different way to share. One or two will exhibit face-like patterns just by chance, even without divine intervention. I'd buy this one as a cheap paperback over renting or digital, good reference point for future classes. You will find more lots books in various disciplines. 7. 100% Success rate. List Price: $32.00. Having eaten mostly milk. Note: All numbers are on an RTX 3070 unless stated otherwise. We remove the responsibility for the result from the clients and do everything to ensure that the scientific work is recognized. Similarly, given the low prior probability of the claims that someone communicated with a dead relative, or has fairies living in their local wood, or has miraculously raised someone from the dead, or can move physical objects with their mind, we should similarly set the evidential bar much higher than we would for more mundane claims. But suppose Fred adds that, during her visit, Alice flew around the room by flapping her arms. pages He has also contributed to a number of volumes in Open Courts Philosophy and Popular Culture series as well as Blackwells Philosophy for Everyone series. Excellent! Heres the second thing that Schick and Vaughn set at the front and center of critical thinking, and which I would put this way: There are things, in other words, that are logically possible but not physically possible. Sometimes when we are doing trivial things, like taking a shower, our minds begin an involuntary brainstorming session and we come up with the most brilliant ideas and, at times, weirdest thoughts. By explaining what distinguishes knowledge from opinion, science from pseudoscience, and evidence from hearsay, How to Think about Weird Things helps the reader develop the skills needed to tell the true from the false and the reasonable from the unreasonable. Some very interesting case studies to go along with your critical thinking education here. In fact, given just this new evidence, it may well be reasonable for me to believe its raining. This, I think, is a clever way for Schick and Vaughn to entangle good reasoning with evidence and data: its not enough to think clearly, you should try to produce physical evidence for your claims as well. He has permitted the twilight. They believe in the literal truth of the Biblical account of creation: that the entire Universe is under 10,000 years old, with all species being created as described in the Book of Genesis. Heres an example. Fantastic book! Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations. 2. UFO abductions, television psychics, paranormal phenomena, skeptics and believers alike, find themselves debating truths and lies in the strange web of pseudoscience and the occult. Of course, were not going to just take Freds word for that. Critical thinking, Curiosities and wonders Publisher Boston : McGraw-Hill Higher Education Collection inlibrary; printdisabled; internetarchivebooks Digitizing sponsor Kahle/Austin Foundation Contributor Internet Archive Language English I think its interesting that Schick and Vaughn, as they get into the meat of their book,put at front and center, ala Thomas Kuhn, the importance of paradigms, which I would put this way: The example that they use is an excellent one, for it illustrates how your worldview can lead to incorrect inferences with regards to data and evidence: On hearing of a meteorite dropping to Earth, Thomas Jefferson famously declared that he would sooner believe thatindividuals bearing witness to such a thing were lyingas to believe that rocks actually fall out of the sky. October 1994. Many people believe in extraordinary hidden beings, including demons, angels, spirits and gods. The lesson (to echo Shakespeare): there may well be more things in our material heaven and Earthandoutside of themthanare dreamtof in our current philosophiesorparadigmsHoratio. Theodore Schick received his B.A. . 7. Strange things are afoot in Hawkins, Indiana, where a young boy's sudden disappearance unearths a young girl with otherworldly powers. How easily people can come to believe something that is not reflective of their own beliefs or personal experience. But that sort of fit can be achieved whether Nostradamus had extraordinary abilities or not. Add to cart. The authors defend the scientific method as the only way to determine what is true, and thus be in the best possible position to make good decisions - but it doesnt always follow that knowing what is scientifically true will lead to knowledge of how to construct a fair and equitable society. Psychologists have developed theories to account for this tendency to overdetect agency, including that we have evolved whats called a hyperactive agency detecting device. | Browse our daily deals for even more savings! Take the fossil record embedded in sedimentary layers revealing that todays species evolved from earlier species over many millions of years. No. My references to it will be from the 5th edition. In which case, such reports are not strong evidence of alien visitors. Critical Thinking Skills: Developing Effective Analysis and Argument. Great book on understanding our biases and the brain washing we do to ourselves. 0 Ratings 12 Want to read; 0 Currently reading; 0 Have read; How to Think About Weird Things. Why? The next night, the UFO appeared again. Those babies took milk and turned it into 12 pounds of flesh, bone, and brain. William Salomone. Being weird is your hidden advantage. Some believe it is created by the interaction between our consciousness and our four-dimensional selves. They too saw the UFO. . Huge amounts of money are often also at stake when it comes to weird beliefs. Not a bad book; I wish I had read it when I was a young man, it could have possibly made me if not smarter more systematic. Not, of course, that because this UFO report turned out to have a mundane explanation, all such reports can be similarly dismissed. Full of misgivings, a young woman travels with her new boyfriend to his parents' secluded farm. Analysis. Any theory, no matter how absurd, can, with sufficient ingenuity be made to fit the evidence: even Daves theory that dogs are Venusian spies. But as we increasingly come to rely on explaining away evidence in order to try to convince ourselves of the reasonableness of our belief, we begin to drift into delusion. If some alternative medicines really work, casually dismissing them out of hand and refusing to properly consider the evidence could also cost lives. Take homeopathy, for example. Clearly this therapy has some benefits! But the truth is that such accumulated anecdotes are usually largely worthless as evidence. I bought it because I love to learn. I think that the above quote is something to ponder as a contrast to Schick and Vaughn. Understanding argumentation is essential in gaining control over your own decision making. This binder-ready, loose-leaf version includes free shipping.Complete system requirements to use Connect can be found here: http://www.mheducation.com/highered/platforms/connect/training-support-students.html. Print from $85.94 Connect from $90.72 Loose-Leaf Purchase Out of Stock ISBN10: 125941650X | ISBN13: 9781259416507 Details Show me the evidence. I ended up asking my prof if there were better books out there that discussed critical thinking. How to Think About Weird Things: Critical Thinking for a New Age. How to Think About Weird Things was recommended as a primer on diagnosing Woo by Orac over at Scienceblogs. It falters in terms of how to reconcile these approaches with the existence of unscientific phenomena which cannot be wholly undone without cruelty, discrimination or violence - culture, gender identity, etc. Needed this book for an online philosophy class, Its nice to have tangible material I can cross reference and take on the go so this book was perfect, also its not different from the newer version so all the info was correct. When we first see her, she is already plotting Duncan's murder, and she is stronger, more ruthless, and more ambitious than her husband. This is very like the poets capacioushabitof looking at the worldfrom very different vantagesand metaphors without any rushing to artificially reconcile or justify them (otherwise known as negative capability). ISE How to Think About Weird Things: Critical Thinking for a New Age. Maybe ideasneednt hold together too tightly or coherently for them to be useful to us. . Psychopaths know they don't fit in. Thus, I read a text book for fun. This text serves well as a supplemental text in critical thinking, logic, introduction to philosophy, philosophy of science, epistemology, metaphysics, introduction to psychology, anomalistic psychology, perception and cognition, as well as any introductory science course. The particular ordering of the fossils is supposedly accounted for by different ecological zones being submerged one after the other, starting with simple marine life. The ones that you choose to put on your plate interact with each otherand, if you choose wildly, they can challenge your very own intellectual coherence. That is why the company EssaysWriting provides its services. Listen to the MP3 Audio here: Michael Shermer on Why people believe weird things at TED Talks TRANSCRIPT: I'm Michael Shermer, director of the Skeptics Society, publisher of Skeptic Magazine.We investigate claims of the paranormal, pseudo-science, fringe groups and cults, and . Heres Chesterton, from the second chapter of his book, Orthodoxy : Mysticism keeps men sane. Had I been so fortunate, this book would have been the best text I could imagine for such a course. Mayfield Pub Co. Its just recognising that, though we might not be able to explain the reports, theyre likely to crop up occasionally anyway, whether or not alien visitors, ghosts or fairies actually exist. Due to a planned power outage on Friday, 1/14, between 8am-1pm PST, some services may be impacted. Still, if we count only Simons hits and ignore his misses, its easy to create the impression that he has some sort of gift. Asking my prof if there were better books out there that discussed thinking. 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