How important it is think critically and to question everything. It's okay to say, "I don't know. Let me do some research and get back to you." It's okay not to know everything and to ask questions. Look at both sides of the argument and come to your own conclusions but keep in mind that a new piece of information may arise and completely change your view. To pursue knowledge and understanding is to swim in a river with a gentle current -- it's always in flux and a new scene will present itself

Useful information, but I found his monist, materialist assumptions had too much influence.

I hadn't connected Shermer with Skeptic Magazine, but I should have. I had a subscription for a year some years back. It was good, but pricey & I didn't have time to read it properly. Anyway, he's the guy that started it. He's been knocking down all sorts of bunk for a long time. He mentions quite a bit of it in his lectures. I don't know how he manages to actually hang around with some of these nut jobs. Might be that he is one himself since he was in the first & several other runnings of the

A while back, when I first became interested in the subjects of skepticism and critical thinking, I picked up a Michael Shermer book and didn't like it. That was about a year ago, and after reading numerous other books on the subjects, his name kept coming up, so I decided to give him another try, and he blew me away. I'm officially a fan after going through his Skepticism 101 course. He is extremely well-versed on why people believe in the supernatural and paranormal, and he has great strategie...

Excellent introduction to the skeptical way of viewing the world. Open minded people will enjoy this presentation which provides.a useful toolset for understanding the world. With ever greater numbers of charlatans and odd beliefs along with a deteriorating media (to mediate news, not that they're always perfect!) this kind of education is really important. Highly recommended

An interesting take on skepticism. However, this is more an addendum to “The Demon-Haunted World” by Ann Druyan and Carl Sagan rather than a separate position. In many places, the author is oversimplifying things too much but on the other hand, provides discussion on the currently most popular disbelief in the world. For instance, he presents the concepts of creationism and intelligent design in a sort of straw man fashion, by quickly summarizing it all as being a part of the supernatural, so un...

I usually like the courses from the Great Courses. This one would be better titled as I Hate Religion and you're stupid for believing in God. Any relevant or useful information could have been provided in a much shorter format.

These lectures are like an extended edition of Shermer's book Why People Believe Weird Things. I particularly liked the chapter on arguments for and against god. Spoiler alert, the against arguments are way more convincing.

A skeptic will believe in an idea when there is sufficient evidence for that idea being true. Until then, depending on the quality of evidence and the probability of that idea’s truth, a skeptic will either suspend their judgement or lack a belief in such an idea.Skeptics are open to many diverse—even seemingly paradoxical—ideas, but they will not accept those ideas as being true until there is empirical evidence and logic, which supports those ideas.People who are intelligent and well-educated

I suppose a Great Course audio file is not technically a book. Perhaps it's a sort of book on tape (yes, I was born in the 20th century back when we had cassettes). Still, I'm thrilled the Great Courses are on goodreads so I can keep track of them.On to the Great Course. It was fantastic! Dr. Shermer is brilliant; his Great Course is appropriately named. It is interesting, insightful, and very educational. Actually finishing this Great Course saddened me; I was enjoying it so much I didn't want

Fell short on the "how" part of the subtitle. Most of the time was on the author's view on specific topics. However much I might agree with the position he takes on the topics, it does not address the how... how does one overcome these natural human fallacies in logic. Identification of logic fallacies and how to overcome them are different learning objectives. I wanted the latter and was therefore disappointed

Michael Shermer, founder of the Skeptics Society and editor-in-chief of its magazine Skeptic, has written the book on skepticism — literally now, with Skepticism 101: How to Think Like a Scientist, a series of lectures on science, pseudoscience, and the in-between. He does the same service for history, pseudo-history, and historical revisionism. I was fortunate enough to listen to these lectures on the Audible edition released by The Teaching Company. Skepticism 101: How to Think Like a Scientis...

Important skills to have in the world of fake news. Also really interesting to learn how some of our natural assumptions evolved and why we have them.

A lousy attempt to use the name of skepticism to stamp out any political or scientific skepticism. I couldn’t believe that the study of scientific methods, the science of the sciences, a philosophy to encourage ppl to think science more as a theory that needs periodic revolutionary restarts, has deteriorated into a pendantic tool that tells a student of science they can only think in one way but not in any another, a tool that the professor used favorably and constantly to “disprove” political r...

This book presents, for the most parts, why being skeptical is a necessary surviving skill. It utilizes many different real-life examples, to make abstract taught rather more tactile; while not using them as a proof at the same time. I would argue that its greatest flaw is his lack of knowledge or preciseness when it comes to morality and animals. He explains normative ethics (Study of what people generally think they ought to do), as ethics in general (What we ought to do, regardless of our int...

This was kind of fun and definitely brought up some good points, but the author was very clearly heavily to the left, which shows several times throughout the book (who ever heard of a liberal professor!?). In itself that isn't bad, but when you're trying to promote critical thinking, it should be done so from a politically neutral stance. 3/5

These are eighteen lectures intended to teach listeners to be open-minded enough to accept new ideas without making fools of themselves by believing apparent truths that are actually false. As indicated by the title, these lectures encourage scientific and skeptical thinking.Thinking skeptically doesn’t come naturally to the human brain which has been hardwired by evolution to be a belief engine. Our early ancestors while walking across the African Savanna had to quickly develop an image of poss...

Having listened to Your Deceptive Mind: A Scientific Guide to Critical Thinking (Great Courses by Steven Novella), I did not find this to be nearly as useful.If you are considering this set of lectures, I suggest that you try Your Deceptive Mind.

The quality is not what i expected from the great course series. And content have too much cites from other sources.

If you are new to this subject, you will probably enjoy this course more than my husband and I did. We listened to this course over lunches, one lecture per meal, and it was as entertaining as the radio would have been, although we were tempted to cut a couple of the lectures short. It was well presented, and there were some interesting examples and a few insights ,but for someone who has read a bit on the subject already, e.g., Dan Ariely, there is nothing new here.In addition, there is not as