Banishing Dragons
A friend of mine, Brian Dunning, host of the Skeptoid podcast and producer of the Skeptologists tv pilot, recently made this video on critical thinking. I think it is a fabulous introduction into the tools that all people should have in order to critically consider the deluge of information that bombards us on a daily basis. The video itself is of decent length (40 minutes) and without lots of fancy effects, so may be a slog for the ADD among us. But, Brian does a great job of clearly describing critical thinking and its importance, which makes this video something that I think every teacher should consider playing for their students.
As an aside, it might be nice for someone to develop some classroom tools to supplement this video.
Anyway, on to the video:
4 Responses to “Banishing Dragons”
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Thank you for posting this. It was interesting!
Though he makes a good point. It’s a shame that he’s not applying critical thinking to both sides of the equation.
In a sense, he’s throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Take Chinese medicine as example. There is a wealth of carefully researched medicines available, which are mainly written down in Chinese.
If Western science has one major weak point, it’s the habit of not accepting anything that hasn’t been tested through modern western methods, and then not doing it because it’s already part of Eastern medicine.
I’m all for science, but the same way that people before Newton didn’t float; I will not be blind for the possibilities of things that just haven’t been researched yet.
Hi, this is offtopic but I can’t find your email address.
On your food science show you claim that some of chocolate’s effects are due to anandamide and further, that it contains compounds that prevent anandamide breakdown. Wikipedia contradicts this:
“Anandamide was reported to be present in chocolate[6] in small quantitities that were not be assumed to have pharmacological or psychoactive effects.[7] However, a later study failed to repeat these findings and did not detect anandamide in chocolate.[8]”
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anandamide
Can I ask where you got your information?
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