The critical thinking blog has it’s own home now!

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What is Critical thinking?

We are beset with information these days and not all of it is accurate, truthful or even partially correct.  At its worst, some information is purposely designed to mislead us.  Critical thinking is the act of evaluating the information in our daily lives to determine truth and accuracy.  

This doesn't mean questioning everything around us, but knowing what might need questioning or could have a large effect on us.  None of us has the time to question everything, so we need to pick and choose.  Having a toolkit of common forms of misconceptions, fallacies or outright lies can help you zero in on the important points.

You might have heard about logical fallacies. These are errors in logic that show up regularly in discourse, media, news, ads, everywhere.  I look at these throughout the blog, but I won't stick exclusively to them.

Why am I writing about it?

I'm a data analyst and visualization professional by day and I get used to seeing lots of numbers, facts and news every day.  A few years ago I looked into the skeptic movement and found it interesting.  As I studied more, I began to see just how much misinformation is around us.

I wanted to give back to the community I was learning from and decided to start writing this blog.  I also found that through research and writing I was learning more about critical thinking concepts, so it is helping me as I go.

I also noticed much of the writing out there was a bit academic and I wanted to put a more casual and humorous take on things.  I try to put even heavy subjects into a lighthearted format that is easy to read and understand.  

As a side note, I decided to start doing some drawings and pictures as I went along and I've been learning how to draw better and get decent pictures.  So, it's helping me there.  Bear with me on the drawings, I'm totally new to that.

How often do I post?

I am aiming for a weekly update, usually on a Saturday or Sunday.  I want to keep the posts rather short and focused so that you are getting just one or two main details in each without having to read a small book.

How is this associated with woodworking?

Well, the truth is, it isn't.  At all.  However, I have to pay for my site and I can have unlimited blogs and pages so it just kinda works out.  If this grows large enough I may move it to its own site.  For now, woodworking and critical thinking are my two side hobbies.  I keep the areas separate, so it's easy to tell what is what.