A Field Guide To Lies: Critical Thinking In The Information Age
by Daniel J. Levitin /
2016 / English / PDF
190.1 MB Download
From
FromThe
TheNew York Times
New York Times bestselling author of
bestselling author ofThe Organized Mind
The Organized Mind and
andThis is Your Brain on Music
This is Your Brain on Music,
a primer to the critical thinking that is more necessary now
than ever.
,
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.
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
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.
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 infomation 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!
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 infomation 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!
