Critical_Thinking_Presentation

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CRITICAL
THINKING
Recognising biases, identifying fallacies of logic, and ways to make more rational decisions.

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CRITICAL THINKING
Recognising biases, identifying fallacies of logic, and ways
to make more rational decisions.
The key to critical thinking is intellectual humility. If you think
you're already a great critical thinker, that's a strong indication
that you lack the doubt and humility necessary to help offset
some of the biases we all suffer.
In this presentation we'll introduce some of the more
common and practical biases and fallacies that affect us
in a professional context.
If you'd like to dive deeper, there are some useful links
provided at the end.

The first thing you judge influences your judgment
of all that follows.
Human minds are associative in nature, so the order in which we receive
information helps determine the course of our judgments and perceptions.
Be especially mindful of this bias during negotiations. The initial offer is
proven to have a significant effect.
COGNITIVE
BI ASES
CRITICAL THINKING
ANCHORING BIAS

You irrationally cling to things that have already cost
you something.
When we've invested our time, money, or emotion into something, it hurts us to let
it go. This aversion to pain can distort our better judgment and cause us to make
unwise investments.
To regain objectivity, ask yourself: had I not already invested something,
would I still do so now? What would I counsel a friend to do if they were in
the same situation?
COGNITIVE
BI ASES
CRITICAL THINKING
SUNK COST
FALLACY

IN-GROUP BIAS
You unfairly favor those who belong to your group.
We presume that we're fair and impartial, but the truth is that we automatically
favor those who are most like us, or belong to our groups.
Try to imagine yourself in the position of those in out-groups; whilst also
attempting to be dispassionate when judging those who belong to your in-groups.
COGNITIVE
BI ASES
CRITICAL THINKING

Once you understand something you presume it to be
obvious to everyone.
Things makes sense once they make sense, so it can be hard to remember why they
didn't. We build complex networks of understanding and forget how intricate the path
to our available knowledge really is.
When teaching someone something new, go slow and explain like they're ten years
old (without being patronizing). Repeat key points and facilitate active practice to
help embed knowledge.
COGNITIVE
BI ASES
CRITICAL THINKING
CURSE OF
KNOWLEDGE

CONFIRMATION
BIAS
You favor things that confirm your existing beliefs.
We are primed to see and agree with ideas that fit our preconceptions, and to ignore
and dismiss information that conflicts with them.
Think of your ideas and beliefs as software you're actively trying to find problems
with rather than things to be defended.
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest
person to fool."
- Richard Feynman
COGNITIVE
BI ASES
CRITICAL THINKING

DUNNING-KRUGER
EFFECT
The less you know, the more confident you're likely to be.
When you don’t know how much you don’t know, it’s easy to be over-confident.
Don’t let confident voices dominate conversations and decisions - often the quiet
voices are the most rational and well-considered. How might you faciliate them?
“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are so certain of
themselves, yet wiser people so full of doubts.”
- Bertrand Russell
COGNITIVE
BI ASES
CRITICAL THINKING

SELF-SERVING
BIAS
You believe your failures are due to external factors, yet
you're personally responsible for your successes.
Many of us enjoy unearned privileges, luck and advantages that others do not.
It's easy to tell ourselves that we deserve our successes, whilst blaming
circumstance when things don't go our way.
When judging others, be mindful of how this bias interacts with the just-world
hypothesis, fundamental attribution error, and the in-group bias.
COGNITIVE
BI ASES
CRITICAL THINKING

AVAILABILITY
HEURISTIC
Your judgments are influenced by what springs most
easily to mind.
How recent, familiar, emotionally powerful, or unusual your related impressions
about a certain subject are can distort your judgment.
Try to gain different perspectives and relevant statistical information rather than
relying on first judgments and intuitions.
COGNITIVE
BI ASES
CRITICAL THINKING

THE HALO EFFECT
How much you like someone, or how powerful you
perceive them to be, influences your other judgments.
Our judgments are associative and automatic, and so if we want to be objective we
need to consciously control for the irrelevant influence of our own preferences and
prejudices, both good and bad.
Try to mitigate this bias by more actively challenging people you most like and
respect, as well as championing the voices and contributions of those with less
social power.
COGNITIVE
BI ASES
CRITICAL THINKING

LOGICAL
FALL ACIES
CRITICAL THINKING
Presuming that a relationship between things means that
one must be the cause of the other.
Many people confuse correlation (things happening together ) for causation (that one
thing actually causes the other to happen). Sometimes correlation is coincidental, or
it may be attributable to a common cause.
Pointing to a fancy chart, Roger shows how temperatures have been rising over the
past few centuries, whilst at the same time the numbers of pirates have been
decreasing; thus pirates cool the world and global warming is a hoax.
FALSE CAUSE

LOGICAL
FALL ACIES
CRITICAL THINKING
Misrepresenting someone’s argument to make it
easier to attack.
By exaggerating, misrepresenting, or just completely fabricating someone's
argument, it's much easier to present your own position as being reasonable, but
this kind of bad faith serves to undermine good outcomes and relationships.
After Bob argues we should be nice to kittens, Will says Bob wants to be mean to
puppies. Everyone boos Bob, who is clearly a mean jerk and hates puppies.
STRAWMAN

LOGICAL
FALL ACIES
CRITICAL THINKING
Asserting spurious causal connections between things.
This fallacy plays to our narrative bias which makes the story of how one thing
might lead to another, seem more plausible than it really is. To counteract it,
consider why A might not lead to B, let alone Z.
If we give women the vote, the next thing you know we’ll be giving the vote to
monkeys and zombies.
SLIPPERY SLOPE

LOGICAL
FALL ACIES
CRITICAL THINKING
Moving the goalposts or making up exceptions when a
claim is shown to be false.
Humans are funny creatures and have a foolish aversion to being wrong.
Rather than appreciate the benefits of being able to change one’s mind through
better understanding, many will invent ways to cling to old beliefs.
Edward Johns claimed to be psychic, but when his ‘abilities’ were tested under
proper scientific conditions, they magically disappeared. Edward explained this
saying that one had to have faith in his abilities for them to work.
SPECIAL PLEADING

LOGICAL
FALL ACIES
CRITICAL THINKING
Believing that ‘runs’ occur to statistically independent
phenomena such as roulette wheel spins.
This commonly believed fallacy can be said to have helped create an entire city
in the desert of Nevada USA. Though the overall odds of a ‘big run’ happening
may be low, each spin of the wheel is itself entirely independent from the last.
Red had come up six times in a row on the roulette wheel, so Greg knew that it
was close to certain that black would be next up. Suffering an economic form of
natural selection with this thinking, he soon lost all of his savings.
THE GAMBLER’S
FALLACY

LOGICAL
FALL ACIES
CRITICAL THINKING
Where two alternative states are presented as the only
possibilities, when in fact more possibilities exist.
Also known as the false dilemma, this insidious tactic has the appearance of
forming a logical argument, but under closer scrutiny it becomes evident that
there are more possibilities than the either/or choice that is presented.
Whilst rallying support for his plan to fundamentally undermine citizens’ rights,
the Supreme Leader told the people they were either on his side, or on the side
of the enemy.
BLACK OR WHITE

LOGICAL
FALL ACIES
CRITICAL THINKING
Appealing to popularity or the fact that many people do
something as an attempted form of validation.
The flaw in this argument is that the popularity of an idea has absolutely no bearing
on its validity. If it did, then the Earth would have made itself flat for most of history
to accommodate this popular belief.
Millions of people agree that smoking cigarettes is both healthy and clever!
BANDWAGON

Brainstorm different ways that the project or idea might go
wrong so that you can anticipate and avoid them.
When a team finally gets to a consensus there’s a danger for us to only see the
positives. This framing exercise gives everyone permission to consider all the worst
case scenarios and potential pitfalls.
Be careful that this exercise doesn’t kill a good idea or project though!
Constructive criticism is better than destructive criticism.
PREMORTEM
MENTAL
MODELS
CRITICAL THINKING

Clearly defining the base principles allows us to reason
more clearly.
Our minds are heuristic machines that make manifold presumptions all the time.
Consequently we are often blinded to possibilities and innovations because we miss
the trees for the forest.
What happens if we remove all assumptions? What are we just taking as a given?
FIRST PRINCIPLES
MENTAL
MODELS
CRITICAL THINKING

About 80% of the output tends to come from around
20% of the input.
Whether it’s 80% of the work getting done by 20% of the workers, or 80% of the
revenue coming from around 20% of customers, this heuristic helps us to optimize
for the best results by focussing our efforts.
Rather than evenly distributing our efforts or budget, where can we focus in order to
get the most optimal yields?
PARETO PRINCIPLE
MENTAL
MODELS
CRITICAL THINKING

Instead of thinking in terms of ‘true or false’ assign a
percentage probability.
By reframing things as a probability rather than a binary we’re able to think more
rationally and allow for reasonable doubts.
If we consider risks and opportunities in this frame it can help us to evaluate, for
example a 10% risk of failure may still be too high, but because success is far more
likely we tend to focus on the positives.
MENTAL
MODELS
CRITICAL THINKING
PROBABILISTIC
THINKING

RESOURCES
This website provides clear explanations for
24 of the most common cognitive biases that
are stuffing up your thinking.
yourbias.is

RESOURCES
yourfallacy.is
This website provides clear explanations for
24 of the most common logical fallacies that
politicians, advertisers, and your own brain try
to fool you with.

RESOURCES
Explore an interactive list of all the best free
learning resources online including YouTube
channels, Podcasts, and make sure to check
out the Effective Thinking category.
freelearninglist.org

RESOURCES
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V1.0 : Published under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND Attiribution, Non-commercial
and No Deriviative Works license by Jesse Richardson 2021.
The School of Thought is a registered 501c3 non profit organization.
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