I personally use local TV media for morning traffic, weather and general
knowledge of world events. When there are important current events that
I am interested in I switch back and forth between news outlets that have
seemingly bias reporting. For example with the current pandemic I watch
CNN, and Fox News, conservative radio and NPR. I listen for opinions of
the reporters, and try my best to filters those out as color-commentary. If I
can get to the abstract of a scientific article, I will bypass the article itself
and try to interpret the results myself.
Being a informed citizen is very important. My best application of critical
thinking I believe is in the political process. I don’t associate so much with
a party than by a “issue by issue” approach. When I hear both sides of an
issue, I weed out the over simplification of an argument, I notice who is
not answering the questions directly, attacking the candidate via ad
hominem approach etc. Once I tally the issues, I am pragmatic in knowing
not one candidate will encompass the exact same viewpoints./
The advertisements from multi-level marketing companies like Herbal-Life
always stand out to me. The appeal to nature fallacy runs ramped
throughout their sales pitches. Claiming the mere fact that their products
are allegedly natural, then they must be good for you. Adding more
knowledge of common logical fallacies such as the fallacy of popular
appeal allow me to correctly label the advertisements I know are weak but
I couldn’t correctly describe.
Logical fallacies by far have been my favorite topic and or activity. There
are so many of them and they apply so often. Everywhere we go, every
day we are bombarded by “Celebrity X uses this and so should you”, “this
ancient remedy is better than..”, “that product is used by undesirable
demographic”. Even at work places we are given false dichotomies when
being persuaded towards a solution by false choices. Identifying the
weakness in the arguments allows me to then logically think through the
proper response or see through a weak argument.
