

I have Crichton Amnesia - ianna
http://www.iannaccone.org/2012/12/26/crichton-amnesi

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ChuckMcM
Critical thinking (and reading and listening) is a state of mind. Its not so
much disbelieving everything you hear, so much as looking at what is
communicated as a set of data points and one of perhaps many conclusions.

I don't take credit for this insight, I believe I first heard it from Don
Knuth when we were discussing a research paper. The process is to try to
ascertain what is the _data_ in the communication, which of the pieces of
information were observed or came from unbiased sources. Next is to think
about what data might be missing, so if you're reading a paper that says "all
of the people in our study could explain complexity theory" what other things
about those people might have been considered and weren't? Their course of
study? Their interests? How they were chosen?

Once you have an idea of what data is present, and perhaps a guess at what
isn't, look at the conclusion or assertion in the paper. One flag to look for
is if some missing data that should have been available would materially
change the conclusion. An example of this was watching a news story of a
single mother of two who had been unemployed for over a year. The story
concluded that unemployment benefits needed to be extended because people
"like this" were out of work. And yet they never mentioned her job although
they did mention where she lived. So a bit of web searching we can turn up
other bits of information about this person. She was unemployed, had filed and
lost several workmens compensation claims against her former employer, had no
additional training or schooling past high school, and was terminated from her
previous job under a cloud of poor accounting records keeping. Of course
adding in all of the information to the news story would not have made her a
sympathetic figure so it wasn't included. I don't doubt the news producer, if
pressed, would simply call her "an example" of the problem rather than a
specific problem.

So critical reading and listening begins with "What is this person trying to
communicate?" and the second is "How hard or honest are they being in making
their argument?"

Fair warning here, if you are in a conversation with someone and start probing
around the data question they _will_ get mad at you. (I won't, I'll just jump
into my reasoning, but I have found that isn't the common response)

The risk of being a critical thinker/reader/listener is that you risk rampant
cynicism. This is especially true around sources which have a long history of
shading the data to make their point. If you are not careful you throw out
good data. I find it is useful and fun to deconstruct a news story with my
wife. As she and I think differently about things we always find questions the
other person missed (not that we always agree that they are the right
questions, but they do keep the discussion interesting)

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snogglethorpe
What I've found interesting is reading these tomes by people that pile up
stuff from all sorts of various fields, e.g. Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs,
Steel).

I'll read along happily, completely convinced, being amazed and thrilled at
the depth and scope of his knowledge ... and then I'll happen across some
_little_ tidbit that's in a field I know about—and he screws it up, saying
something silly/wrong in an authoritative tone.

It suddenly makes the entire thing come crashing down. I suddenly feel like I
can't really trust anything he's said, because his obvious skill at _sounding_
authoritative and confident, and the wide scope of his pronouncements, make it
pretty obvious that there are probably other silly/wrong things in the book
that I _didn't_ get.

So I don't read Jared Diamond books anymore, entertaining may they be. Worse
than that, I really can't read _any_ of these sorts of books anymore. I can
suspend my disbelief for fiction, but that doesn't work so well for non-
fiction...

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benwerd
Every time I've had traditional media coverage of a project I've worked on,
I've made this resolution. I'm not at all ungrateful for the coverage - each
time, it made a difference, and it's lovely to be noticed - but even Wired,
which should be pretty good at this, got major details wrong. (To their
credit, TechCrunch, RWW et al have always reported accurately.)

Journalism is really important, but it's rare to see it done well. I really
like long-form journalism outlets like the New Yorker for this reason.

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alanctgardner2
I guess the only way to combat this in fields where you aren't knowledgeable
is to read many sources and synthesize your own conclusions? Alternately, you
could accept that there are good and bad journalists, and trust some of them?

~~~
Torgo
I have tried to treat information I gather from news sources as preliminary.
When I relay information I've learned from these sources, I try to say "I read
in the new york times" instead of repeating the information as fact. There's a
lot of information that I know I'll never get around to researching
thoroughly, but it still is good to be able to use as a working base of
knowledge until what seems to be better info can replace it.

~~~
Turing_Machine
I have not noticed that the New York Times is any more reliable than other
sources on subjects that I actually know about.

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Shorel
So, what about Gary Taubes?

What do the experts on insulin can say about his books?

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d--b
I have something related: \- I read an article on hacker news \- I realize
that the article is useless and/or completely undocumented \- I decide not to
go to hacker news \- I read another article on hacker news

