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Critical Thinking
Smart people fall for cons more often than average ones — not less.
Researchers find high-IQ subjects are quicker to construct rationalisations for false beliefs. Intelligence sharpens the defence, not the detection.
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Critical Thinking · Facts
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Critical Thinking
You're more confident about facts you only half-remember than ones you know cold.
The Dunning-Kruger effect cuts both ways. Real expertise creates awareness of nuance and exceptions — half-knowledge creates the illusion of clarity.
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Critical Thinking
Reading the same headline twice makes you trust it more — even if it's false.
The 'illusory truth' effect means repetition equals plausibility in the brain. Fact-checkers and propaganda departments both rely on it.
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Critical Thinking
The phrase 'studies show' is doing most of the lying in popular articles.
Most cited studies use small samples, weren't replicated, or measured something different. Always check what 'studies' — usually one underpowered paper from 2003.
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Critical Thinking
Asking 'how do I know I'm wrong?' beats asking 'how do I know I'm right?'
Confirmation bias hunts for evidence supporting beliefs. Falsification flips the search direction — and is the single most reliable mental move in critical thinking.
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Critical Thinking
A random dice roll can add 35% to a prison sentence
German judges who rolled high dice before sentencing gave 8 months instead of 5 for the same shoplifting case. Anchors steal your brain even when obviously irrelevant.
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Critical Thinking
Asthma kills 20× more Americans than tornadoes — but people fear tornadoes more
Vivid disasters dominate the news, so the brain treats them as more likely. Quiet killers — asthma, falls, diabetes — barely register, even though they take far more lives.
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Critical Thinking
80% of people finish a bad movie just because they bought the ticket
The money is gone whether you stay or leave — yet the brain treats leaving as 'wasting' it. The truly wasted thing is the 90 minutes you'll never get back.
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Critical Thinking
WWII planes came back with bullet holes — engineers wanted to armor those spots. They were wrong.
Abraham Wald said armor where there are NO holes — those planes never came back. Looking only at survivors gives a perfectly upside-down picture of reality.
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Critical Thinking
After Nixon went to China, people 'remembered' predicting it correctly. They hadn't.
Studies pinned down actual pre-trip predictions, then asked the same people post-trip — answers shifted toward what really happened. Memory quietly rewrites itself to feel smart.
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Critical Thinking
Doctors get a textbook breast-cancer math problem wrong 76% of the time
Given a 1% prior and a 90% accurate test, only 24 out of 100 doctors correctly say a positive result usually still means no cancer. Most overweight the test.
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Critical Thinking
85% of students rated 'bank teller AND feminist' more likely than 'bank teller'
It is mathematically impossible — a subset cannot outnumber the whole set. But a vivid story (Linda majored in philosophy and protested) overrules basic probability.
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Critical Thinking
Surgeons recommended surgery 84% at '90% survival', only 50% at '10% mortality'
Same operation, same numbers, opposite word — and the experts flip. Framing reshapes decisions even when the underlying facts are completely identical.
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Critical Thinking
Losing $100 hurts roughly twice as much as gaining $100 feels good
Kahneman measured the asymmetry lab after lab: people demand about 2x upside before risking a 1x loss. That ratio quietly shapes negotiations, investing and breakups.
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Critical Thinking
The shooter fires at the barn, then draws a bullseye around the holes
A favorite move of bad science: gather the data first, then claim you predicted that exact pattern. The bullseye looks impressive, but was painted after.
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Critical Thinking
A drunk man searches for his keys under the streetlight — not where he lost them
We instinctively look where data is easy to find, not where the answer actually lives. Endless replications of one tiny dataset are this man, in lab coat form.
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Critical Thinking
In 1913, black came up 26 times in a row at a Monte Carlo roulette table
Each spin was independent, so red wasn't 'due' — yet bettors lost fortunes piling on red. Coins, dice and roulette wheels have no memory, but humans pretend they do.
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Critical Thinking
75% of people agree with an obviously wrong group answer at least once
Asch had actors confidently pick the visibly shorter line; real subjects caved on at least one trial in three quarters of cases. Group pressure beats your own eyes.
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Critical Thinking
Two thirds of ordinary people kept delivering shocks to a screaming stranger
Milgram's volunteers obeyed a calm authority all the way to 'lethal' voltage. The result has been replicated in seven countries with frighteningly similar numbers.
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Critical Thinking
Attractive defendants get sentences about half as long as unattractive ones
Juries unconsciously borrow positive traits — honesty, gentleness, low risk — from a pleasant face. The legal system officially ignores this, and yet it keeps showing up.
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Critical Thinking
Half the audience didn't see a person in a gorilla suit walking through a basketball game
Asked to count passes by white-shirt players, viewers locked on the ball. A gorilla strolled into the middle of the frame, beat its chest, and walked out — invisible to half.
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Critical Thinking
9 out of 10 people fail a basic logic puzzle — until you reframe it as cheaters
The abstract Wason card task trips nearly everyone. The same logic dressed as 'who is drinking underage' is solved by 90%. We evolved to police people, not abstract logic.
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Critical Thinking
Always switch doors. It doubles your chance of winning the car.
Three doors, one prize, host opens an empty one. Staying wins 1/3 of the time; switching wins 2/3. Even PhD mathematicians refused to believe this puzzle for years.
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Critical Thinking
A horoscope written for a serial killer fits the average reader 4 out of 5 stars
Psychologist Forer handed every student the same vague personality reading. Students rated it 'accurate to me' 4.3/5. Generic + flattering = personally true to the brain.
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Critical Thinking
To live a smart life, ask first: where would I be guaranteed to fail?
Charlie Munger's trick: instead of plotting paths to success, list every way you'd reliably ruin the project, then refuse to do those things. Negative goals are clearer.