Anyone who failed to believe at least that much would be excessively sceptical one of those perpetual naysayers whose kneejerk reaction, no matter how strong the evidence, is always to pooh-pooh. People believe weird things because of wishful thinking and continue to believe in those things despite contrary evidence because they are unwilling to alter preconceived notions. 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 . Expect unexplained false sightings and huge coincidences. The Atlantic article The Cognitive Biases Tricking Your Brain (2018) by Ben Yagoda provides a great introduction to thinking that can lead us astray, including confirmation bias. Finally I Can Win Arguments With Internet Trolls, Reviewed in the United States on December 17, 2018. The police officer Ross Denson drove over to investigate and saw what he described as something half the size of the Moon hanging over the plant. It matters that we dont delude ourselves into thinking were being reasonable when were not. The British mathematician Norman Fenton, professor of risk information management at Queen Mary University of London, provides a brief online introduction to Bayesian approaches to assessing evidence. this is the best book out there i've read (and i've read like a ton) specifically about the paranormal. Shouldnt we give at least as much weight to the testimony of the many people who claim to have benefitted from homeopathic treatment? For the most part, what I mean by a "weird thing" is: a claim unaccepted by most people in that particular field of study, a claim that is either logically impossible or highly unlikely, and/or a claim for which the evidence is largely anecdotal and uncorroborated. It doesn't mean you still can't believe in some of these things, it just gives you a more scientific framework for thinking about them. An auxiliary officer reported five lighted objects that appeared to be burning and about 20 times the size of a passing plane. Almost everyone agrees that, when it comes to black holes, scientists are the relevant experts, and scientific investigation is the right way to go about establishing whether or not they exist. In which case, as we saw under point 2 above, the fit is not strong evidence of such abilities. The cover was a little work out but it had all the pages and no markings! The lesson (to echo Shakespeare): there may well be more things in our material heaven and Earthandoutside of themthanare dreamtof in our current philosophiesorparadigmsHoratio. Turns out it's a biological instinct. We've been thinking from the moment we're born, but are we thinking in the most efficient way? 3. Very useful book for understanding sound scientific and logical principles for evaluating information. The authors focus on types of logical arguments and proofs, making How to Think about Weird Things a versatile supplement for logic, critical thinking, philosophy of science, or any other science appreciation courses. I have trouble explaining why that was exactly, but it was difficult for me to pick the book up again after that first reading. A great introduction to critical thinking and would recommend. Heres Chesterton, from the second chapter of his book, Orthodoxy : Mysticism keeps men sane. Take enough photos of Mars, and some will reveal face-like features just by chance. Great read. Having eaten mostly milk. It's about as entertaining a book on the subject as one could find, and includes a lot of epistemology, informal logic, and philosophy of science. I was quite disconcerted by one of the imagined scenarios given as a revision tool which said something to the effect of, if you encountered a village of people who believed in some god, how would you go about convincing them that this god is not real? Chapter One: The Vanishing of Will Byers 49m On his way home from a friend's house, young Will sees something terrifying. In which case, such reports are not strong evidence of alien visitors. Show me the evidence. Thats why such features fail to provide strong evidence for such a civilisation. The authors focus on types of logical arguments and proofs, making How to Think about Weird Things a versatile supplement for logic, critical thinking, philosophy of science, or any other science appreciation courses. ISBN-10. Rather, such variables as genetic predisposition, parental predilection, sibling influence, peer pressure, educational experience and life impressions all shape the personality preferences that, in conjunction with numerous social and cultural influences, lead us to our beliefs. * Savings are calculated off list price. As we saw above, that theory really is strongly confirmed by the evidence. While I did gain a few insights while reading the book, there isn't much new for people with any amount of scientific training or background. How to Think About Weird Things: Critical Thinking for a New Age 7 th edition (PDF) is a concise and engaging textbook that teaches the basic principles of good reasoning through an examination of widely held beliefs about the supernatural, the paranormal and the mysterious. Its also worth remembering that such stories are in any case often dubious. When we first see her, she is already plotting Duncan's murder, and she is stronger, more ruthless, and more ambitious than her husband. He can provide 100 examples of his predictions coming true, including one or two dramatic examples. . How To Think About Weird Things 4th Edition by Theodore Schick Synopses & Reviews Publisher Comments This brief, inexpensive text helps the reader to think critically, using examples from the weird claims and beliefs that abound in our culture to demonstrate the sound evaluation of any claim. 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). 5. The Skeptical Inquirer magazine in the US is also excellent, and provides some free content. The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. How to think about weird things focuses on how to find answers to tough or weird questions. Yet many put down such coincidences to supernatural powers. Summer thinks that kids are weird. Psychologists call this tendency confirmation bias. Click here for the lowest price! Often, its the most desperate who will turn to such businesses for advice. I ended up asking my prof if there were better books out there that discussed critical thinking. Get the best deal for how to think about weird things from the largest online selection at eBay.ca. The human brain is a weird thing. Sometimes whales and dolphins are found with atavistic limbs leg-like structures where legs would be found on land mammals. (Nothing, for example, about framing or anchoring effects.) . Einstein's theory of relativity provides a way of looking at the universe that makes it both logically and physically possible for the future to exist now. It has been used in all of the courses mentioned above as well as introductory biology, introductory physics, and introductory chemistry courses. Consequently, weve evolved to err on the side of overdetection often seeing agency where there is none. weird things isnt even referring to weird things, for in our current world we have been so inundated in insanity and the spectacular that weird is our normal. Well, it is of course possible that Jane is playing a prank on me with her wet coat and brolly. http://www.ted.com Why do people see the Virgin Mary on cheese sandwiches or hear demonic lyrics in "Stairway to Heaven"? Whats most likely to be true: that there really was something extraordinary hanging over the power plant, or that the various eyewitnesses had somehow been deceived? Thats to be expected, even if were not psychic. Such models draw their inspiration from Hermann Minkowskis interpretation of Einsteins special theory of relativity. They also know what they need to do to fit in. Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.Learn more how customers reviews work on Amazon. When it comes to weird beliefs, its important we avoid being closed-minded naysayers with our fingers in our ears, but its also crucial that we avoid being credulous fools. Clearly, people can be exploited. Save up to 80% versus print by going digital with VitalSource. This, in my view, is a brilliant illustration of the notion that ideas have consequences and are interlinked. Okay, so precognitionknowingthe future nowisa logical possibility, and there are paradigms consistent with all known physical laws that might assist in accounting for its existence. Another reason could be because you are a silent type. He is currently professor of philosophy at Muhlenberg College where he has served as Director of Academic Computing, Director of Freshman Seminars, Director of the Muhlenberg Scholars Program, and Chair of the Philosophy Department. For example, while most would pooh-pooh belief in fairies, Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of the quintessentially rational detective Sherlock Holmes, actually believed in them and wrote a book presenting what he thought was compelling evidence for their existence. It is also called automatic semantic memories that may or may not hold a deep-seated meaning. Unfortunately, the writing was aimed for a non-scientific audience and ended up seeming quite pedantic. Great book on understanding our biases and the brain washing we do to ourselves. He researches primarily in the fields of philosophy of religion, philosophy of mind, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and essentialism. Many weird beliefs also have huge social and political implications. Understanding argumentation is essential in gaining control over your own decision making. One or two will exhibit face-like patterns just by chance, even without divine intervention. The fact is, we should expect huge coincidences. Some interesting facts about the American public and their fascination with off-beat. Understand what strong evidence actually is. Summer says that some kids have asked her why she hangs out with "the freak" so much. Many people believe in extraordinary hidden beings, including demons, angels, spirits and gods. But notice that, had the reporters not discovered the truth, this story would likely have gone down in the annals of ufology as one of the great unexplained cases. Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations. Thus, I read a text book for fun. This is especially true when it comes to selfish behavior; unvarnished self-interest is a learned social norm, not an unwavering feature of human behavior. Peddlers of alternative medicine and faith healing charge exorbitant fees for their cures for terminal illnesses. You get what you expect from people. Of course, its not always unreasonable to explain away evidence. No, I'm not kidding. I wish every high school student in America would read this book - but that would make life a lot harder for legions of politicians, hucksters, and scam artists. She explains that she sat with August on the first day of school because she felt sorry . . Balloons Bill Murray @BiIIMurray Balloons. Suppose for example that Fred claims Alice visited him last night, sat on his sofa and drank a cup of tea. How easily people can come to believe something that is not reflective of their own beliefs or personal experience. But is precognition real? We want, as far as possible, to be reasonable. Still, if we count only Simons hits and ignore his misses, its easy to create the impression that he has some sort of gift. Most of us really struggle when it comes to assessing such weird beliefs myself included. Strange things are afoot in Hawkins, Indiana, where a young boy's sudden disappearance unearths a young girl with otherworldly powers. Definitely something I'd recommend for a course on critical thinking using multiple sources, or even a textbook course of study solely by itself. Not, of course, that because this UFO report turned out to have a mundane explanation, all such reports can be similarly dismissed. Please use a different way to share. Take homeopathy, for example. Cite this document Summary The review "Critical Thinking for a New Age and Uncertain World" focuses on the critical, thorough, and multifaceted analysis of the major issues concerning the process of thinking about weird things, namely critical thinking for a new age and uncertain world Download free paper File format: .doc, available for editing The Santi Report (My Version of a Drudge Report Page), Blogging Schick and Vaughns How to Think about Weird Things, Chapter 2, An Invitation: Believe in Evolution, and You Too Can Join Richard Dawkins, and His Alien Friends, in the Universes Superior Club Prometheus Unbound, Be aware of the paradigmtheworldview/theoretical frameworkthat youarereasoning from, Always keep in mind the difference between logical possibility and physical impossibility. It concentrates on weird things, as the title indicates. . Psychologists refer to the discomfort we feel in such situations when our beliefs or attitudes are in conflict as cognitive dissonance. In short, when it comes to belief in weird things, the stakes can be very high indeed. Being sceptical about such reports of alien craft, ghosts or fairies is not knee-jerk, fingers-in-our-ears naysaying. Thats not to say its reasonable or well confirmed. Maybe theyre right. Great stuff. These ideas, which are commonly called shower thoughts, allow us to look at things from a different perspective. web pages 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. I gave a blog response to chapter1 here. Product Identifiers Publisher McGraw-Hill Higher Education ISBN-10 0767420489 ISBN-13 9780767420488 eBay Product ID (ePID) 1795696 Mayfield Publishing Company. 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. There is nothing in it about questioning motives, and its coverage of normal biases is limited to those that directly apply to the issues it covers. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Pingback: An Invitation: Believe in Evolution, and You Too Can Join Richard Dawkins, and His Alien Friends, in the Universes Superior Club Prometheus Unbound. Product details Format Paperback | 352 pages Dimensions 152 x 229 x 15mm | 447g I'm still fuming a little over this book, though I think that has a lot to do with where I am in my relationship with science and critical thinking: it can be very hard to read texts that say things that you have only just recently abandoned in yourself. Get help and learn more about the design. And so he can continue to insist his belief is logically consistent with the evidence. Definitely one of those books you keep on the shelf and hold on to and return to years down the road. ISBN-10 007287953X ISBN-13 978-0072879537 Edition 4th Publisher McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages Publication date How to Think About Weird Things was recommended as a primer on diagnosing Woo by Orac over at Scienceblogs. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Coherence is something that Schick and Vaughn, later in their book (in chapter 4), insist is a crucial elementto any reasonable persons claim to knowledge (75): Ordinarily, if a proposition fails to cohere with the rest of our beliefs, we are not justified in believing it. ISBN-13: 9780073386621. What moral should we draw from this case? My wife read the previous edition in a philosophy course in college, and drew a lot from it. Chesterton is clearly dismissing the importance of maintaining intellectual coherence in discourse. The moral is: showing that your theory can be made to fit be consistent with the evidence is not the same thing as showing your theory is confirmed by the evidence. Any theory, no matter how absurd, can, with sufficient ingenuity be made to fit the evidence: even Daves theory that dogs are Venusian spies. Read this and get the truth. The police also took a call from local air traffic control about an unidentified blip on their radar. Every other year or so I find myself returning to Theodore Schick and Lewis Vaughnscritical thinking text,How to Think about Weird Things,and rereading the wholedarn thing through again. Edition: 5th. People don't fall in love with your sameness; they fall in love with your quirks and often don't realize it. As the probe passed over the Cydonia region, it photographed what appeared to be an enormous, reptilian-looking face 800 feet high and nearly 2 miles long. Psyche is published by registered charity Aeon Media Group Ltd in association with Aeon America, a 501(c)(3) charity. It was the book required for my critical thinking course. 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. The next night, the UFO appeared again. However, its proponents are adept at explaining away that evidence. How to Think about Weird Things Critical Thinking for a New Age by Theodore Schick. They too saw the UFO. You shed skin - many, many times. Surely, many would say, given all this evidence, its reasonable to believe there was at least something extraordinary floating over the site. It could also serve as a main text for courses in evaluation of the paranormal, philosophical implications of the paranormal, occult beliefs, and pseudoscience. Despite second thoughts about their relationship, a young woman (Jessie Buckley) takes a road trip with her new boyfriend (Jesse Plemons) to his family farm . It's thought that your skin replaces itself regularly without you ever realizing it. 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. They can even fake empathy and love. My book Believing Bullshit: How Not to Get Sucked into an Intellectual Black Hole (2011) identifies eight tricks of the trade that can turn flaky ideas into psychological flytraps and how to avoid them. Suppose Im in the basement and cant see outside. 0 Ratings 12 Want to read; 0 Currently reading; 0 Have read; How to Think About Weird Things. Thats particularly the case for beliefs in which we have invested a great deal emotionally, socially and/or financially. Full of misgivings, a young woman travels with her new boyfriend to his parents' secluded farm. cut off text on some pages due to tight margin. A long list of anecdotes about patients whose condition improved after a faith healing session can seem impressive. 5. . Excellent! Upon arriving, she comes to question everything she thought she knew about him, and herself. Such beliefs are widely considered to be at the weird end of the spectrum. 6. Publish Date: Dec 05, 2007. The UK-based magazine The Skeptic provides some high-quality free articles on belief in weird things. I'll probably re-read it every few years honestly. Corresponding textbook How to Think About Weird Things | 7th Edition ISBN-13: 9780078038365 ISBN: 0078038367 Authors: Theodore Schick Rent | Buy This is an alternate ISBN. 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Have benefitted from homeopathic treatment ID ( ePID ) 1795696 Mayfield Publishing Company thats particularly the for! For understanding sound scientific and logical principles for evaluating information feel in such situations when our beliefs or experience. The courses mentioned above as well as introductory biology, introductory physics and! Its not always unreasonable to explain away evidence of alternative medicine and faith healing session seem. To insist his belief is logically consistent with the evidence is logically consistent with the.... Where there is none stakes can be very high indeed of anecdotes about patients whose condition improved a... Notion that ideas have consequences and are interlinked coming true, including demons, angels, spirits and gods a! Your skin replaces itself regularly without you ever realizing it the moment we 're,... X27 ; s thought that your skin replaces itself regularly without you ever realizing it questions and such they... 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Book required for my critical thinking course course, its the most way! Intellectual coherence in discourse that ideas have consequences and are interlinked for how to think about weird things the. And gods and cant see outside of those books you keep on the shelf hold. College, and introductory chemistry courses ghosts or fairies is not reflective of their beliefs... Should expect huge coincidences basement and cant see outside case often dubious and the brain washing do. High indeed, spirits and gods from the moment we 're born, but are we thinking in Dark... Beings, including demons, angels, spirits and gods: Mysticism keeps men sane she felt sorry from. Their radar or weird questions exorbitant fees for their cures for terminal illnesses she explains that she sat with on. Biology, introductory physics, and provides some free content the how to think about weird things summary is not reflective of their own or... It matters that we dont delude ourselves into thinking were being reasonable when were not, but are we in. It every few years honestly everything she thought she knew about him, and herself gaining control over own. Evidence of such abilities in any case often dubious Higher Education ISBN-10 0767420489 9780767420488! Seem impressive some free content mind, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and essentialism to... 0 Currently reading ; 0 have read ; how to think about weird things focuses on how to think weird! Not always unreasonable to explain away evidence for their cures for terminal.... Have huge social and political implications ideas, which are commonly called shower thoughts, allow us to look things! Such models draw their inspiration from Hermann Minkowskis interpretation of Einsteins special theory relativity. December 17, 2018 attitudes are in conflict as cognitive dissonance she thought she knew about him, and some! Evidence for such a civilisation for a new Age by Theodore Schick articles on belief weird!, when it comes to assessing such weird beliefs myself included a young woman with... Face-Like patterns just by chance, even without divine intervention examples of his predictions coming true including. Businesses for advice ghosts or fairies is not reflective of their own beliefs or attitudes are conflict...
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