The Infodemic and How to Safely Navigate the Information Landscape

It is certainly interesting times that we find ourselves in. Fake news, pervasive science denial, a new conspiracy theory seemingly every week, tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths from the pandemic that could have been easily avoided by acknowledging the recommendations coming from the scientific community, and many more examples. Society is swimming in false information that is literally costing people their lives at this point and driving us apart through polarization [1]. But what can we do? Quite a bit actually…

Cognitive Bias, COVID-19, Science, Mental Model, Philosophy, Logic, FallacyJonathan MaloneyDecember 14, 2020Comment

9 Steps For Establishing Credibility of Information

Establishing the credibility of information and claims in today’s information-dense world can be challenging. How do you know that information and claims you hear about are worth trusting as accurate? How do you avoid mistakes in your own thinking when deciding if something is true or when deciding on a particular course of action? Critical thinking is a method for…

Science, Logic, Cognitive Bias, Mental ModelJonathan MaloneySeptember 25, 2020Comment

Systems Thinking: A Balance Between Reductionism and Emergence

ystems thinking is best described as a synthesis between reductionism and holism. Reductionism is the practice of analyzing and describing complex phenomenon on a simpler or more fundamental level while holism is looking at the same phenomenon and describing it in the context of the whole. If you were to view systems thinking as a spectrum, at one end would be reductionism and then holism would be at the other end. Both have their advantages and disadvantages, but to have the best description of the situation one should embrace the synthesis of the two, which is…

Mental ModelJonathan MaloneyMay 19, 2020 Comments

Thinking Gray

Confirmation bias is this omnipresent cognitive force that is always influencing how we view the world. Even for the most rational thinkers out there; confirmation bias as is the case with all cognitive biases can only be minimized and never completely eliminated on the individual level. One of these mitigation strategies that can not only help you to minimize the effects of the influence of confirmation bias, but help you to eschew thinking in binaries (i.e., black and white thinking), is…

Mental ModelJonathan MaloneyMay 12, 2020 Comment

How to Identify and Combat Weaponized Disinformation in the Digital Era

The technological revolution, with its explosion of data and far reaching accessibility, has forever changed the way humanity consumes information. Whereas once upon a time, before the days of the World Wide Web, information (along with accessibility) was limited; those days are now long gone. Today, humanity is constantly barraged with digital information. Whether it is the overwhelming surplus of questionable content or clickbait that serves no other purpose than driving traffic for the sake of sales, there’s….

Science, Logic, Cognitive Bias, Mental ModelGaurav DubeyMarch 10, 2020 Comments

Philosophical Razors

A philosophical razor is a rule that cuts out conclusions that have a low probability of being correct. I use the phrase “low probability” because the nature of a philosophical razor is that it is a rule-of-thumb and not a formal principle. Razors are quite common in…

Logic, Mental ModelGarrett WiseAugust 22, 2019 Comment