Intro-level training materials for rationality / critical thinking

lukeprog

Iksorod and I made a Google doc of intro-level training materials for rationality / critical thinking. We'll keep adding to it as we find more stuff. Please comment with your own additions.

Anyone who downvoted CriticalSteel just for his unpopular positions should be ashamed of themselves.

That having been said, he deserves enough downvotes, for the obnoxious and arrogant manner he uses later in the thread. Just not for this initial post.

Anyone who downvoted CriticalSteel just for his unpopular positions should be ashamed of themselves.

Not at all. It is entirely legitimate to down-vote completely crackpot ideas purely because hearing the same old completely crackpot ideas can be annoying. It would also be legitimate to downvote the grandparent based off the arguments therein. They aren't nearly as ridiculous as what they descend into later in the thread but the "like a true evangelist" line as well as move to the entirely different kind of 'conspiracy' used in law (rather far removed from popular 'conspiracy theories') are both potentially downvote-worthy.

2lessdazed15y

I tried to accommodate the 9/11 trutherism by pointing to videos discussing the problems inherent in conspiracy theories that did not use that as an example. I didn't downvote the original post and ignored early signs of confusion about how words work: [...] This was followed in subsequent posts by map-territory confusion: [...] That the video did not use the word "evidence" does not strongly imply that evidence was not provided. Spelling and grammar are tools to limit confusion, and writing "the word 'evidence'" as "the word evidence" isn't helping him. The response: [...] At this point, I was done but he went on: [...] To his credit, he apparently actually went and read about it, as he later said: [...] He doesn't understand how words work, doesn't understand beliefs and reality, and doesn't understand how to change his mind. I disagree with the implication that things other than tone aren't sufficient reasons to downvote his other posts. It is not a coincidence that one person's arguments, sentences, and words are all muddled. I endorse what wedrifid said as a reply to the new person's posts: [...]