Purchase
Critical Thinking in the Information Age
Dutton
September 2016
On Sale: September 6, 2016
304 pages
ISBN: 0525955224
EAN: 9780525955221
Kindle: B01AHKXJ4Q
Hardcover / e-Book
Add to Wish List
Non-Fiction
From The New York Times bestselling author of THE ORGANIZED
MIND and THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON MUSIC, a primer to the
critical thinking that is more necessary now than ever. We are bombarded with more information each day than our
brains can process—especially in election season. It's
raining bad data, half-truths, and even outright lies. New
York Times bestselling author Daniel J. Levitin shows how to
recognize misleading announcements, statistics, graphs, and
written reports revealing the ways lying weasels can use them. It's becoming harder to separate the wheat from the digital
chaff. How do we distinguish misinformation, pseudo-facts,
distortions, and outright lies from reliable information?
Levitin groups his field guide into two
categories—statistical information and faulty
arguments—ultimately showing how science is the bedrock of
critical thinking. Infoliteracy means understanding that there are hierarchies
of source quality and bias that variously distort our
information feeds via every media channel, including social
media. We may expect newspapers, bloggers, the government,
and Wikipedia to be factually and logically correct, but
they so often aren't. We need to think critically about the
words and numbers we encounter if we want to be successful
at work, at play, and in making the most of our lives. This means checking the plausibility and reasoning—not
passively accepting information, repeating it, and making
decisions based on it. Readers learn to avoid the extremes
of passive gullibility and cynical rejection. Levitin's charming, entertaining, accessible guide can help
anyone wake up to a whole lot of things that aren't so. And
catch some lying weasels in their tracks!
Comments
No comments posted.
Registered users may leave comments.
Log in or register now!
| 
© 2003-2025 off-the-edge.net
all rights reserved Privacy Policy