Thread by @steak_umm

critical thinking beef tips, A THREAD

critical thinking is not a singular skill. it’s a constant state of metacognition, measuring evidence, and recognizing when to defer to experts. it's analyzing this tweet's substance, motivations, credibility, and source, not just reading it

critical thinking isn’t what to think, it’s how to think. you may critically think about this tweet, but lower those defenses for the next one. most people's natural state is to seek or settle for whatever confirms their preexisting beliefs (duh). life's more comfortable that way

there are endless proposed critical thinking strategies and endless ways to integrate them, but they're all incredibly challenging to teach because thinking about thinking has to be developed over time, constantly refined, scrutinized, and customized per an individual's context

ways to train metacognition/think critically:

- challenge beliefs against reason
- identify inconsistencies and biases
- study contextually relevant perspectives
- change mind when confronted with superior evidence
- if it feels righteous or sounds unfalsifiable, question it

obstacles that prevent critical thinking:

- selection biases
- cognitive biases
- emotional biases
- umm... other biases
- false comparisons
- overgeneralizing
- mistaking correlation for causation
- cherry-picking data
- blindly listening to frozen meat companies on twitter

all people, including scientists, have to overcome endless obstacles in endless contexts to think critically. you can’t just “do your own research" for everything. you have to defer to experts in subjects that require baselines of knowledge or expertise to think critically about

if someone researches expert consensus and finds a conclusion they don't want to hear, they'll often keep searching until they find one they do, likely from fringe or anecdotal sources. even if you overcome your biases, finding the most reliable sources is still a great challenge

decades of institutional trust declining and rapid internet access for the masses has allowed people to magnify every bias, mistake, and exception in scientific communities to discredit them and perpetuate conspiracies, politicized narratives, and further distrust toward experts

people like being told what they wanna hear. they like shiny things. entertainment. provocative or beautiful imagery. divisive, confident statements. repetition, fear, purpose, belonging. there’s a million tricks to dull a mind, all of which must be overcome to think critically

"in these strange and uncertain times" with information inundation, weaponized fear, and cultural polarization, we have to discover thoughtful, new ways to elevate experts, credible information, and critical thinking that can reach our neighbors in need

steak-umm bless