Critical Thinking

An episode of the Gresham College Lectures podcast, hosted by Gresham College, titled "Critical Thinking" was published on April 22, 2020 and runs 63 minutes.

April 22, 2020 ·63m · Gresham College Lectures

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Summary

One of the most dangerous phrases is "evidence shows that …", because you can almost always find evidence to support any viewpoint. Experts are similarly distrusted, because they may have motives other than the truth. These problems are particularly severe in the digital age where we are bombarded with data and supposed expert opinions. This talk will explain how to discern what and who to trust, how to know whether evidence is causation or just a correlation, and how to overcome the tempta...

Episode Description

One of the most dangerous phrases is "evidence shows that …", because you can almost always find evidence to support any viewpoint. Experts are similarly distrusted, because they may have motives other than the truth. These problems are particularly severe in the digital age where we are bombarded with data and supposed expert opinions.

This talk will explain how to discern what and who to trust, how to know whether evidence is causation or just a correlation, and how to overcome the temptation to accept views that we agree with.

A lecture by Alex Edmans 22 April

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:
https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/critical-thinking

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.

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