"Exposure to diversity of thought produces better results than an ideological echo chamber where everyone looks different but thinks the same."
"Always question conventional wisdom, including our own."
"My litmus test for how insane somebody is: What would it take to convince you otherwise? For any belief that I have, if something I said was completely wrong and somebody showed me a way that I was wrong, I would change my mind very quickly because I'm not crazy."
"Thinking critically for yourself is very important. If someone makes a strong case and shows a lot of evidence, I wouldn't just close my eyes and ears. I would actually go and think for myself."
"Brain envy. Love your brain. Don't believe every stupid thing you think. Know what you want."
"Don't you think we should at least start with diet, exercise, and learning how to not believe every stupid thing you think?"
"Everything was a calculation, everything was a decision, everything was based on what is my teacher looking for, what is the right answer, and what is the path of least resistance that will get me there."
"If these assumptions could be proven faulty, that means that our entire society is built on a lie, or at least a mistake."
"With technology too, you're also fighting the programming. How do you stay detached enough that you can still think for yourself?"
"The first thing I do when I look at a study is, 'Who paid for the study?'"
"You can't believe everything you think. You can't believe everything you feel. The mind is a very dangerous organ."
"The essence of good science is whenever you see some data and an inference, ask yourself: How might that inference be wrong? How else might we account for those data?"
"I would love for everyone here to really challenge the core assumptions we have."
"Some of your belief systems are so archaic and ridiculous... you inherited the belief, you didn't originate it."
"Philosophy is very, very interesting. I think it should be a required class for everybody, just the idea behind like critical thinking and everything is so, so important."
"I'm not Russian... but it was obvious to me that we were being lied to in ways that were just it was crazy the scale of lies."
"It's crucial to see all sides of a story, especially when it affects your money."
"We are not encouraging you to agree with what Putin may say in this interview, but we are urging you to watch it. You should know as much as you can, and then, like a free citizen and not a slave, you can decide for yourself."
"One of the greatest skills of the 21st century is the skill of critical thinking."
"If you take any information and you conform it to what you already believe, you're not critically thinking."
"Critical thinking is a skill, and it should be honed and practiced."
"The universe right now is very much calling you guys to step away from the media to step away from other sources of information and to start really building your own thought forms for yourself."
"One of the most important skills for a surgeon is an ability to think critically."
"We are not convinced that prayer works, and as soon as you present sufficient evidence that prayer works, we'll accept that. Until such time, there's no reason to think that it does work."
"I really want people to push themselves beyond the aesthetics and language of anti-capitalism and dig more into the substance of it."
"Science is the language of nature, and learning how to think like a scientist means you are learning how to systematically seek out truth in the world."
"A lot of the productivity tips that people give... are actually more pitfalls than tips."
"If it's boring, you're doing it wrong. There's a lie in it somewhere."
"A mark of maturity is someone that can entertain an idea without accepting it."
"Skepticism, unlike cynicism, isn't about intrinsic distrust but about starting with a clean slate, in order to think clearly and rationally."
"A true critical thinker shouldn’t be swayed by repeated falsehoods; they discern lies from truths, regardless of how often they’re repeated, and how beautifully they’re adorned."
"Knowing the tactics of persuasion is the best defense against manipulation, empowering us to engage critically with the information that shapes our worldviews."
"Let's take the best insights from the spiritual traditions and be willing to call nonsense nonsense and take the best tools from science...and try together to make precise theories about the spiritual realm."
"Nothing that I say here should be taken on faith or blindly believed by you."
"The very essence of critical scholarship is to make the familiar strange, to make the taken-for-granted questionable."
"Questions are the answer. It's the key to understanding, to critical thinking, to focus, to learning."
"Philosophy isn't to instill hardcore ideological concepts into the brains of impressionable young people; it's to help people learn how to think more critically about themselves and the world around them."
"The goal of academic philosophy is to help people learn how to think more critically about themselves and the world around them."
"In American medicine we are so much better at starting medicines than we are at taking them away, right?"
"Don't accept groupthink and settle for a life of average."
"Think for a change. You are literally going to learn to think for a change."
"This is a generation that will insist on learning how to think rather than what to think."
"Critical thinking is the ability to think clearly and deeply about a problem and make a logical judgment for solving it."
"Most of philosophy is just a consistency test."
"The truth is not at hand; you have to seek and sort out to get the truth."
"Please take this seriously... we don't yet have a way to filter the information, misinformation, and disinformation with which we are all being bombarded."
"Diversity of thought is essential. Lots of different kinds of diversity are essential, but diversity of thought is absolutely critical."
"The problem with talking about simplicity and using simplicity as a guide is that it's very easy to fool yourself."
"You constantly have to question your assumptions because new information is being layered on and re-contextualizing the stuff that came before."
"Be highly skeptical of those who would presume to give you advice."
"I think we need to learn how to debate...debate and critical thinking."
"It's my job not to affirm what they say, but to question and to challenge them, no matter what they call me."
"Cutting through the cognitive bias that shapes so much of our thinking."
"The key characteristic of ideology is that it tells half the story, and the best way to immunize ourselves to the corrupting effect of dogmatic thinking is to listen to the whole story."
"A lot of bad thinking is done in the service of prosecuting one's political agenda."
"Just because they are the loudest in the room doesn't make them right."
"You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink; you can show a person the truth but you can't make them think."
"What we want is an explanation for why we should believe it."
"My policy, and I think it's generally good advice, is to always fact check things you see that you disagree with. And the things you agree with, you fact check those twice."
"I want to create a future where young people can think critically, be financially literate, and contribute positively to their communities."
"I think it's a sinister, secretly ingrained thing that we don't think about often."
"Reductio ad absurdum...is the great crowbar of thought."
"We collectively have to lose patience more and more and faster and faster with obviously bad arguments."
"The purpose [of education] is to create cogent brains, not coddling people's particular beliefs."
"Don't take the data at face value; always ask yourself, is this the expected result?"
"But I like that we're ending with unanswered questions. That's always the sign of a conversation that's alive."
"Making it open to the public, that they actually have to think critically about it and see the evidence for themselves, is really important."
"Being able to be critical of a source, to evaluate something...it's more important today than it ever has been."
"Step out of line, feel that freedom and power of stepping out of line and saying, 'Wait a minute, hold on, what you're saying doesn't make sense, what you're saying is not right.'"
"If you've only ever heard one smart person talk about an issue, you might not actually know that much about it."
"If you don't learn history, you're doomed to repeat it. I hope it is because Mike Johnson, Moses Mike, is full of [__]. You had to go down there and kiss Daddy's ring."
"Addressing the problem of evil, people who put forward easy solutions probably haven't thought very hard about the problem."
"You can't say God is the best answer without demonstrating that a God is even possible or real."
"Professional scepticism is an attitude that includes a questioning mind, being alert, and a critical assessment of audit evidence."
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without necessarily accepting it."
"Education in the humanities is designed to teach you how to think and to speak and to formulate arguments."
"In order to be able to think, you have to risk being offensive."
"It's much more important to teach children to question what they read. Children should be taught to question everything."
"The importance of young men thinking for themselves."
"Critical thinking, learn how to live out your full potential so you can be independent and everything else really flows from there."
"Being nostalgic for the good old days is fine, but looking at those days uncritically and wanting to go back to them anyway basically means we want to return to the uncomplicated lives we had as children."
"Creating Frameworks is what I like to do. I like to question the frameworks of other people and understand them."
"An important part of being a scientist is being skeptical, which means questioning everything, especially everything you believe."
"One of the reasons why debate is important is because at least you get to hear some of the counter-arguments to positions that you hold, so you think through them a bit more."
"Getting people to understand sound reasoning and evidence so that they're better at reaching conclusions is a good thing."
"Critical thinking will not necessarily lead you to a truth."
"Proper investigation and critical thinking will increase your chances of avoiding the mines."
"It's like saying all swans are white because all I've ever seen is white swans, and that's going to be true right up until you go to Australia where there are black swans."
"Critical thinking is an all-encompassing weapon with which to approach all human problems."
"The more complex the issue, the more important it becomes to explore the nuance."
"Thinking critically makes you a better leader, even if that critical thinking makes you question who your adversaries really are."
"The two factors for critical thinking are curiosity and open-mindedness."
"Tolerance has to go both ways like when it comes to thinking about ideas and criticizing."
"Critical thinking is independent thinking. That means that you are figuring out the problem for yourself."
"Being able to derive a truth for yourself versus just taking it from culture, society, or somebody else."
"Critical thinking is a critical skill to have."
"Ultimately, what is behind critical thinking? Let's define it and let's talk about why you want to develop it."
"Critical thinking will allow you to solve many of the problems in your life that you have."
"What is happening to critical thinking, and why does it feel like in a time where we can more readily access the truth, we've only become far more divided?"
"The reason you want to hone your system 2 thinking skills isn't so you can be completely agreeable all the time, it's so you can become more open-minded to the possibility that maybe, just maybe, you're wrong."
"Teaching students how to think and how to question rather than teaching them what to think."
"Our literacy rates are tanking, and many critical thinking skills go out the window when you can't even comprehend what you're reading."
"You need to read with them, read everything, make them read, and please focus on reading comprehension and then critical thinking after that."
"The most important thing is for you to face up to the fact you live in an economic system that isn't the beginning and end of anything, that is part of an evolving history, that has very serious flaws and faults."
"Our country and our society are weaker because we do not have a tradition of critical thinking."
"Just because you have a thought, that doesn't necessarily mean it's true."
"Chemicals in our food, cleaning products, etc., are affecting many people's ability to reason."
"Your sovereignty, Nez Nation, is your ability to critically think."
"Critical thinking is probably the hardest thing to develop because, in my opinion, this takes like a lifetime to develop."
"Art is what gives you creativity, creativity is what leads to critical thinking."
"Critical thinking... requires you to pause and examine for a second instead of reacting."
"I would consider education to be a much bigger priority... and the educational system to be more Socratic and more stimulating for people to question."
"We are brainwashed in the United States and we don't know it until we leave for a very long time and then come back."
"Question everything. There is no idea too sacred not to question."
"A genuine intent for truth at whatever cost is essential to avoid falling into falsehood and delusion."
"You cannot fix a problem until you identify it. You have to know what the problem is exactly."
"Becoming a deep thinker is more than that; it is the key to creative success or success in any endeavor in your life."
"Open-mindedness and being open and critical with your thinking is extremely important to any kind of creative work."
"A real intellectual is somebody that can appreciate and work with a topic at multiple levels."
"If college is not a place where diversity of thought actually exists, then what's the point?"
"My country right or wrong? That would be an abuse of patriotism. Saying it's wrong is patriotic."
"A better conception of patriotism would require a willingness to soberly assess and tackle our country's problems."
"Spiral dynamics is just a model, and it has limitations and it is not the territory."
"Beliefs are our enemy. Nothing within actualized.org can be taken as an ideology or as a system of belief."
"It's your ability to think critically and independently for yourself that's what it takes."
"When you've got an opinion that becomes not only ubiquitous but unquestioned, that's when you make really bad decisions."
"You need to have people asking questions to challenge Orthodoxy."
"My objective here is to be as respectful as possible to everyone whilst also challenging people's thinking."
"There's a simple, highly effective rule for making a good argument: don't build it on a fallacy."
"Read a bunch of different things from a bunch of different sources and where they cross is probably the set of fact."
"I'm concerned about whether or not people have a good reason to believe things."
"The propaganda to buy a house or to follow a prescribed set of rules for the American dream is so powerful that even losing your own houses doesn't change people's perspective."
"Listen to different perspectives, seek out different information, and make up your own mind as an individual how you feel about it."
"Indoctrination leaves very little room for good questions and open conversations."
"The concept of the red pill and the blue pill are again epic concepts. They're the sort of concepts that can apply to anything."
"It's not controlling; it's giving your children the opportunity to think for themselves rather than going along with what everyone else is telling them to do."
"It's good to read things that you don't agree with. It keeps your mind sharp."
"Use your own discretion, critical thinking skills."
"My main thing is I always want to be able to debunk them, show you all the truth, back it up with facts and some sass, and try to help you see through the manipulation."
"The formulation of a problem is often more essential than its solution."
"The job is to capture your attention and make you think."
"Question everything. You don't believe it just because I tell you it's true, you figure it out for yourself."
"Just because two things are correlated does not mean that one causes the other."
"You have a mind of your own. Learn how to use it. Don't follow the crowd."
"You've really demonstrated to me that you're great at self-reflection and critical thinking."
"Should we just presume that everything that they have in their possession is just okay, it just works, it's all good? We don't even have to ask any questions about it? Well, that doesn't make any sense."
"Media manipulation is tricking you into losing focus and they're taking away from you, they're taking away your ability to understand the world."
"These conspiracy theories shouldn't be taken too seriously, but I do think it's healthy that we question our surroundings and what we're told."
"The best way that you can help these young people that really enjoy him is to get them to think critically and to make their own decisions about what they choose to find entertaining."
"Our goal on this show is to question everything."
"Instead of teaching students that there's a list of works that must be read...we should pull back the curtain and show them why some books have been canonized instead of others."
"The New York Times knows its base of support, so they would never [__] concern troll around abortion in this exact same way."
"It's eternally amusing and yet disheartening... my only goal is to get people to think and to draw their own conclusions."
"Maths is useful because it's illuminating. It helps us to think more clearly."
"Thinking about how things are connected can really help you understand those things."
"The most dangerous thing is asking people how to use it (AI). You destroy your ability to think the moment you do that."
"It's not really even about the conclusion, it's about getting them to question."
"Think like an individual and not with your gender or the color of your skin."
"Increasing sensitivity to the difference between having good reasons and bad reasons for what you believe."
"Thinking like a scientist requires that we be actively open-minded, searching for reasons why we might be wrong, not for reasons why we must be right."
"When someone tells you to 'don't do your own research,' that means let the person in authority do your thinking for you."
"Jesus said, 'Why do you wash the outside of the cup? Don't you understand that the one who made the inside is also the one who made the outside?'"
"I don't have a guide to the universe, and I don't think anybody who's claiming that they do is selling you something."
"A healthy person goes, 'Hold on, is there counter-evidence to my belief?'"
"Transmission of knowledge and skills is not enough; we need to engage students in the deep transformative lifelong process of reflection and critical thinking."
"It really makes you question life and society and whether we're truly gonna move past any of these things because it's messed up, it really is."
"It's healthy, I think, to take a step back from supposed norms and examine why we see them that way."
"Don't take life advice from people like Andrew Tate."
"It is actually sort of important to learn how to read statistics. It's sort of important to learn how to read studies."
"It's fun to look at the stories that you're being told from the opposite perspective."
"Be careful who you believe on the internet...be informed, intelligent consumers."
"But you really have to think things through."
"Teach them not what to think but how to think, and teach them skepticism, teach them the rigorous method of thinking through doubting, testing."
"Let's always try not to teach people what to think but teach them how to think and teach them skepticism, teach them the rigorous method of thinking through doubting, testing."
"The media's job is to present the different issues of the day. It's up to us to figure out what's true and what isn't."
"We are just consumers, we consume and because of this behavior of consuming things we don't understand, we can be sheep led to slaughter."
"It's the mark of an intelligent person to be able to entertain an idea without having to accept it."
"Think about it, it's food for thought. Status quo is wrong."
"As soon as I mentioned to people I'm going to be teaching a course on rationality, the inevitable question is: Why does humanity seem to be losing its mind?"
"Do you really think that's all there is to this story? That what they tell us is the only story we need to know?"
"Art gets the audience to think; propaganda does the thinking for the audience."
"It's really important to diversify your information streams for anything in life, whether it be the news, politics, feedback, your work environment, your relationships."
"Blind faith in authority is a feature of religion, it's a feature of authoritarian regimes, but it is not a feature of either science or democracy."
"Don't ever let your mind be so open that your brain falls out of it."
"We are entering a phase where it's becoming increasingly obvious to a large number of people that a lot of the [stuff] going on in the world is not okay."
"The real question is, do we need to be more selective and more careful with who we listen to, who we trust, and who we shop from when they promote?"
"I encourage questioning. Questioning is, in fact, what I'm all about."
"I tend to analyze every detail, what I think was done right and wrong."
"Survivorship bias means that... if you're only looking at the survivors, then it can look glamorous... but what's being left unsaid is that... left on the battlefield, left in the graveyards... are many more victims."
"We need to think for ourselves. We need to be free thinkers."
"Not holding false or misrepresented beliefs or ideas is really fundamental to being able to do sense-making."
"I want people to open their eyes and just see the other side of things and see what's really going on behind the scenes."
"Always do your own due diligence and never blindly listen to a random guy on YouTube."
"You want to take arguments that are against your perspective and you want to make them as strong as you possibly can so that you can fortify your arguments against them."
"It's definitely time we start facing some of these important questions before it happens."
"Don't let a teacher tell you how to think, don't let a TV series tell you how to think, don't even let me tell you how to think. You need to choose your own belief systems in life."
"The antidote to pathological dogmatism is the free, truthful expression."
"This is more about like getting people to ask bigger, better questions rather than necessarily have answers."
"I want a class of people that question, that are strong, that are powerful, that make humanity better."
"Nothing should be above ridicule. Ridicule and satire are one way of getting people to think."