 Are you interested in having critical thinking skills? Yet when you open up a book or watch a video about it, you get confused on how to actually apply them? Well then, this video is for you. In this video, I will introduce 6 easy to understand practical critical thinking skills that I apply every day and that really benefit how I make my decisions and how I understand information. Just before we get into the actual skills, I wanted to congratulate you deciding to learn more about critical thinking. It's an extremely valuable skill that many people miss and by learning it, you can make a really big difference in your life and even the lives of others. I also wanted to make a quick point explaining why it's so essential to learn critical thinking skills. These days, we are bombarded with huge amounts of information, of which a lot is not true. Tons of people want to take advantage of us by luring out money from us, making us buy a thing we don't need or something that actually has no value, vote for someone who does not deserve a vote, the reasons are endless. Most of the people and organizations who want to manipulate us use this information, aka false information which is intended to mislead us in order for us to make a decision which favors them but does not favor us. If we are not capable of using critical thinking skills, we fall prey to this disinformation and end up making decisions we regret. But now you are here, you are ready to change and improve the ways you think and how you evaluate information. So, let's get started. Skill number one, ask yourself how you know that what you know is true. Now this may sound like a riddle, but it's actually quite simple. Many of us are convinced that the knowledge we have is true. It may be something we thought we knew is true for years, but when you stop and ask yourself how do I really know that what I think is true is actually true. You'll be surprised how often you will catch yourself believing in something without actually having a good reason for it. I'll give you an example from my own life. I used to believe for years that a single individual on average, while they sleep, eats two to three spiders during their lives. I've even told this, quote-unquote, fact to so many people over the years. I was convinced that it's true. I mean, it does make sense, right? But when I learned about critical thinking and started to observe what I believe in more closely, I asked myself, how do I know if this idea about nightly spider snacking is true? The answer was simple. I read about it online years ago. Was that enough to come to a conclusion and make a claim that it's true? No, it's not. The same way, when you ask yourself this question, you may discover that the reason you believe in something will be, for example, my dad told me so, or I heard someone say that in a video. Once more, just because it sounds real or kind of makes sense, does not magically make it true. So the first step is to ask yourself, how do I know that what I know is true? Skill number two, check your sources. The next step after you realize that you don't have a good enough reason to justify whether what you believe in is true is to check your sources. Ask yourself, how credible is the source of information that I am relying on? For example, coming back to my story of spider snacking, what was the website which had an article about that story? Was it a credible website? What did it base the information on? Thinking about this, already on the spot, I realized that the website I relied on did not have any science of credibility. There were no mentions of scientific research or explanation where they got this information from. Checking the source and credibility of my knowledge made me realize quickly that my knowledge may not be nearly as true as I thought. That's when the next step comes in. Skill number three, check multiple sources. Information may be misleading. As I mentioned at the beginning of this video, there are plenty of people who want to mislead us for their personal gains. Just because one website claims that some quote unquote fact is true may actually be false information. Even if unintentionally, maybe they misunderstood a scientific research themselves and misrepresented the information. My advice here is to never trust a single source of information. Information is easier to come by these days than ever. All it takes is just a few minutes to open up your phone and Google something. If you will check a number of different websites speaking about the same thing, there's a chance you will find some incongruences. If this happens, it will create a further sense of healthy doubt in you, which will make you question if the information is true at all. Meanwhile, if all the sources which are credible say the same, it's much more likely that what you are considering to be true is indeed true. I'll give you another personal example. Recently my mind was blown away when I saw a video of a person hypnotizing a rooster by drawing a line on the ground. I was so intrigued by it that I immediately wanted to rush and send this video to my girlfriend saying, holy shit, did you see that chickens can be hypnotized this way? But then I stopped and asked myself, am I really sure this is real? The video was low quality and the guy was holding the rooster by the neck. I thought maybe he was just choking the rooster out. So I went on to look for more videos like it. If this is real, surely more people will have done this. To my surprise, there were loads of videos where different people did the same. But that was not enough for me, so I went and typed, can chickens be hypnotized into Google? The first article was one on Wikipedia that is named Chicken Hypnotism, which elaborated more on the subject. I was starting to think, holy crap, this may be real. But Wikipedia may be misleading sometimes, since anyone can create or edit an article there. So I also checked some other websites. They all seem to conclude that chicken hypnotism is a real thing. Seeing so many confirming opinions, I became much more confident in believing this mind-blowing, life-changing phenomena. Many of us are surprised when we meet a person who believes that the earth is flat. Even some otherwise seemingly reasonable people sometimes hold this belief. At first it seems, how is it even possible that someone came to such a conclusion? But there is actually a solid explanation of why that happens. The internet is infamous for having infinite rabbit holes of conspiracy theories. If you check one video or article about a flat earth, you'll soon be recommended another one. And then, another one. And so it keeps on going. You may start to come to a conclusion that, if so many people say the same thing about it, it must mean it's true. But hold your horses. First of all, the checking of credibility of your sources of information was missed in coming to your conclusion. After all, you most likely will never find a well-respected and acknowledged scientist who claims that the earth is flat. Usually, it's some guy who is saying that. Still though, the principle of majority may apply in your thinking, and for some, it may be difficult to realize that flat earth stuff is nonsense, since they've seen so many videos and articles which supported each other. That is why it is important to also check contradicting sources. People who want us to believe in something will often go great lengths to make it happen. They will quote scientists, usually incorrectly, fake or misinterpret scientific researches, tell fake stories about a quote-unquote real story of a friend of a friend, etc. Our brain is haywired to take the route of less resistance. It is in our nature to avoid additional challenges or effort. That's why most people will never check contradicting sources of information naturally. But that's a huge mistake. Even if you are certain about what you believe in, you should still read at least a couple of articles that contradict this belief. Even if the counterarguments are not true, you will still expand your horizons and better understand the thing you are learning about. Or maybe you will come to understand that the other side of the argument is better, and that will help you let go of information which was actually not true. For example, in my chicken hypnosis story, after reading about it on Wikipedia, the next article I read explained that it's not actually hypnosis. Instead, it's something called tonic immobility. The result is the same. The chicken goes into a state of trance and stays immobile. This further helped me in coming to a conclusion that the whole thing is real, although I still want to try it out myself, to be entirely sure. And heck, it also seems like such a cool thing. But now, I have a better and more vast understanding of the subject. I now know that it's not exactly hypnosis. As Professor Steven Novella says, you have a limited fund of knowledge and a limited perspective. In fact, your knowledge and perspective may be limited in ways that you're not aware. You don't know what you don't know. No matter how well we think we know something, there will always be something that we don't know. New discoveries are made and old information gets debunked all the time. What was claimed to be true years ago now is told to be false. Heck, decades ago, even doctors were claiming that smoking isn't unhealthy. It is always good to stay humble, to realize that even what you are certain of is true, there is still at least a tiny chance that it's not. Too many times we say something as a fact, period. But that does not leave space for further investigation. That does not leave space for curiosity, an essential element for quality critical thinking. That's why when I personally make a claim, I usually add words such as, I'm not entirely sure, but I read an article, or I personally tend to believe that. For example, when making a statement about the chicken hypnosis, I would say, I'm pretty sure it's true, although I haven't yet tried it myself, but it seems that chickens can indeed be easily hypnotized. Making statements like this, not only leaves you more open to reexamining your own beliefs, it will also encourage others to use critical thinking as well. Skill number six, don't blindly trust authority. There is a phenomena called appeal to authority. It's our natural tendency to automatically believe what a presumed authority figure has said. A claim made by an authority figure makes many people skip all the other critical thinking elements. These people think if that person said it, it must be true. Too many times, it's not. Centuries ago, the Pope was a huge authority. He said that the sun was moving around the earth. Did that actually make it true? I also just shared the story of doctors claiming that smoking wasn't bad for your health. There are constantly new researches made that deny the ones made previously. That shouldn't make you skeptical about everything. It doesn't mean that you shouldn't believe in anything at all, or that you shouldn't trust well-established experts more than some random guy. But it simply brings us back to the importance of all the other previously mentioned skills. Always ask yourself why you believe something is true. Check your sources. Check multiple sources. Check contradicting sources. Always question, even if it's an authority figure. And most importantly, stay humble. Realize that everything you believe is true may be proven to be wrong the following day.