this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2023
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Asklemmy

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[โ€“] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago (11 children)

Learning how to get better at critical thinking.

I study rhetoric and argumentation for fun. Rhetoric is for understanding how people persuade me, argumentation is for understanding the tactics they use to achieve that goal. I've developed a certain style of rhetoric and argumentation that I like a lot. Essentially, I think people should learn to identify their own assumptions and make them explicit. Far fewer misunderstandings would happen if people know wtf they themselves were saying.

[โ€“] Windswept 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How would someone get started doing this?

[โ€“] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

I really got started by reading Thank For Arguing. It was a quick and dirty introduction to rhetoric. But what struck me was quotes like

A successful argument, like anything about the future, cannot stick to the facts.

or

The audience's beliefs are at least as important as the facts

I grew up in a world were facts and logic were esteemed, but, for whatever reason, people don't even know basic logic and facts are selectively chosen. There was an obvious disconnect that this book explained really well.

And then it went on to explain how to do it yourself. So, that was nice, too.

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