Fourth Task: Critical Thinking Skills

Point Of View:

Here is a quick quiz for you:

• In the biblical story, what was Jonah swallowed by?
• How many animals of each kind did Moses take on the Ark?

Did you answer “whale” to the first question and “two” to the second? Most people do … even though they are well aware it was Noah, not Moses who built the ark in the biblical story.

Argument:

Psychologists like me call this phenomenon the Moses Illusion. It is just one example of how people are very bad at picking up on factual errors in the world around them. Even when people know the correct information, they often fail to notice errors and will even go on to use that incorrect information in other situations.

Explanation:

People are naturally poor fact-checkers and it is very difficult for us to compare things we read or hear to what we already know about a topic. In what’s been called an era of “fake news,” this reality has important implications for how people consume journalism, social media and other public information. The Moses Illusion has been studied repeatedly since the 1980s. It occurs with a variety of questions, and the key finding is: Even though people know the correct information, they do not notice the error and proceed to answer the question.

THIRD TASK

DIRECTIONS: Watch the lecture of Stephen Brookfield on Creative and Creative Thinking and make a summary of it in your own blog:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8umk4w8kB8

Brookfield says that someone who thinks critically, is the one that is able to identify assumptions behind thinking and actions, someone who check assumptions for accuracy, and validity; someone who take informed action. Also, he talks about that someone who thinks creatively is able to view ideas and practices from multiples viewpoints, is the one that is able to move outside of their typical mental framework.

In the lecture he says that when a person think critically, they can:

• Identify assumptions behind thinking and actions
• Check assumptions (accuracy and validity)
• Take informed action.

Brookfield also explained the kinds of assumptions, those are:

• CAUSAL: Explains a sequence of events
• PRESCRIPTIVE:Assumptions about how things should happen and how whe should behave
• PARADIGMATIC: Framing and structuring assumptions that may look obvious.   

Brookfield also explains the four common traditions that feed into critical thinking, these ones are:

* Analytic philosophy (the strongest, and ist say that a student who thinks critically, its good at constructing and  deconstructing arguments)

* Natural science (application of the scientific method, the hypothetical  deductive method)

* Critical theory (traditional critical  theory)

* Pragmatism (the most intersects with creativity

Finally he talked about how Critical Thinking is learned: 

• Ending discussions
• Speaking in tongues
• Drawing and musicalizing discussions.

Reflection: emotional self-management

For me, the emotions taht are most difficult to manage when others disagree with me are:

Sympathy: In case that we have critical disagreements
Stressed: Becasuse people are to close mind and they don't like accept other arguments
Tense: Sometimes the people that we use to disagree are hostile and we feel the necesitie to deabte with the person.
Frustration: It happens to me when I try to let myself understood. When I give my argument in somehow I feel insecure and I expected that someonelse is going to attack me by contradicting my own beliefs.

 When something is disgusting to me, I just express it, and I expect the same from people. If somebody disagrees with me I try not to cause any trouble, but of course it depends on the situation.

INFLUENCES ON MY THINKING 

The influences on my own thinking that I need to be most aware of so they don't prejudice my thinking are my emotions, I tend to be an emotional person, and in some cases, I have thought more with my heart instead of my head.
The  dependency, and the desires about looking good for keeping appearences is insane.