The Critical Thinker's Dictionary Quotes

“Political beliefs, religious beliefs, and conspiratorial beliefs seem impenetrable to facts that contradict them.”
― Robert Carroll, The Critical Thinker's Dictionary: Biases, Fallacies, and Illusions and What You Can Do About Them

“Political and economic experts, for example, actually do worse than dart-throwing monkeys when it comes to making long-term predictions.”
― Robert Todd Carroll, The Critical Thinker's Dictionary: Biases, Fallacies, and Illusions and What You Can Do About Them

“There is overwhelming scientific evidence on memory that shows memories are constructed by all of us and that the construction is a mixture of fact and fiction. Something similar is true for perception. Our perceptions are constructions that are a mixture of sense data processed by the brain and other data that the brain supplies to fill in the blanks.”
― Robert Carroll, The Critical Thinker's Dictionary: Biases, Fallacies, and Illusions and What You Can Do About Them

“When presented with this evidence, believers in the “hot hand” are likely to reject it because they “know better” from experience.”
― Robert Carroll, The Critical Thinker's Dictionary: Biases, Fallacies, and Illusions and What You Can Do About Them

“One of the ironies of cults is that the craziest groups are often composed of the most caring people.”
― Robert Carroll, The Critical Thinker's Dictionary: Biases, Fallacies, and Illusions and What You Can Do About Them

“Accept the fact that sometimes coincidences happen. Clouds sometimes look like horses and clocks sometimes stop for no reason. Resist the urge to find meaning and significance everywhere you look.”
― Robert Carroll, The Critical Thinker's Dictionary: Biases, Fallacies, and Illusions and What You Can Do About Them

“Perhaps the most common ad hominem fallacy is to attack the motives of the person making the argument. Critics of judicial decisions often cite suspected motives of a judge that might bias his or her decision, as if the judge’s motives were relevant to the cogency of the judge’s argument for making the decision. Even a biased judge can make a cogent argument in defense of a ruling. In any case, you can’t refute an argument by accusing the arguer of being biased. The bias of the arguer is irrelevant to whether the premises support the conclusion. People with good motives sometimes make fallacious arguments, and people with bad motives sometimes make good arguments.”
― Robert Carroll, The Critical Thinker's Dictionary: Biases, Fallacies, and Illusions and What You Can Do About Them