what is critical thinking? Why is it important?

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" It teaches us how to question things rigorously, how to form sound, well reasoned, coherent thoughts and arguments. Most importantly it teaches us that it is good to be wrong. Meaning the ideas that we hold are not us and we don't need to defend them to the death, in fact we can change those ideas and it is absolutely liberating to do so! "

We all are prone to cognitive biases, prejudices and blinding effects of privilege. We like to think of ourselves as really quite objective and clever. The truth is we all are flawed, ignorant and deluded. We can do something about it by learning critical thinking skills. It teaches us how to question things rigorously, how to form sound, well reasoned, coherent thoughts and arguments. Most importantly it teaches us that it is good to be wrong. Meaning the ideas that we hold are not us and we don't need to defend them to the death, in fact we can change those ideas and it is absolutely liberating to do so. It is something really fundamental to how we approach the world and to have the vulnerability and humility to be receptive to the idea that we might be wrong. We become self aware.

You know how to find sources and include them in your assignments – but do you know how to evaluate their worth critically? This is key for success and will help us become awesome learners. Critical thinking is a learned skill. 3 simple things that you can do to improve your critical thinking skills:

• Question assumptions
• Reason through logic
• Diversify thought

Every day, a sea of decisions stretches before us, and it’s impossible to make a perfect choice every time. But there are many ways to improve our chances — and one particularly effective technique is critical thinking. Samantha Agoos describes a 5-step process that may help you with any number of problems.

How the brain works, how we learn, and why we sometimes make stupid mistakes

I of III: how to think critically?

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II of III: 5 Tips to improve our critical thinking

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III of III: the science of thinking

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