Ethics Explainer: Critical thinking

In a world awash with spin, misinformation and AI slop, critical thinking has become an indispensable survival skill.

While scrolling through social media, you spot a post shared by a good friend. It’s from a popular (and attractive) influencer, who is claiming that sunscreen is toxic. The post resonates with you, especially since the last time you bought a new sunscreen, you broke out in a rash. 

But how do you know if what they say is true? On the surface, their argument seems persuasive, but does it stack up? And what are the stakes if you get it wrong? If it turns out sunscreen isn’t toxic, then you could end up with nasty burns, or worse. 

The modern world is an informational minefield. Every day we slog through hundreds of claims that purport to be true, but any one of them could end up being false or misleading. Influencers have been known to peddle misinformation. Activists, advertisers and politicians all put their spin on the facts to promote their interests. Artificial intelligence is further muddying the waters with hallucinations, deepfakes and so-called “AI slop”.  

The cost of falling for falsehoods can be profound, both to us and to society as a whole. We need to be equipped to handle this epistemically hostile environment. This is where critical thinking becomes a key survival skill for the 21st century. 

Not uncritical

One way to define critical thinking is to consider its opposite. An uncritical thinker will accept everything on face value. They will be prone to biases, like stereotyping or being swayed by someone’s appearance rather than the strength of their argument. 

They will mistake subjective statements, such as “I don’t like pineapple on pizza” for objective statements, like “pineapple on pizza is bad”. They will overgeneralise from a few anecdotes or examples, like viewing a minority with suspicion because of one unpleasant encounter.  

They will employ motivated reasoning, such as seeking out information that makes them feel (or look) good, rather than what is true. And they will latch on to the first explanation for some phenomenon, whether it’s the correct one or not. 

A critical thinker, on the other hand, will be mindful of how biases and other irrational forces can sway their views, and will endeavour to avoid those and settle on beliefs rationally by drawing on good reasons and evidence. 

They won’t just accept things at face value, but will ask questions, like: is the source reliable? Is the argument sound? Is the supporting evidence strong? After weighing up all these factors, they will hold their beliefs with a strength proportional to the reasons and evidence they can muster in their favour.  

Misconceptions

Critical thinking is more than just being critical. The latter is about finding fault in someone or something. Critical thinking, on the other hand, is more about thinking carefully about what we hear.  

It’s also not the same things as philosophical scepticism, which is the thesis that we cannot know what is and is not true. This kind of scepticism sets an impossibly high bar for knowledge. But critical thinking doesn’t go as far. Instead, it sets the bar at what we can demonstrate to be true by appealing to reason and evidence. 

Critical thinking is also different from cynicism, which is just assuming the worst about what we see and hear. If you immediately assume that a politician is lying, or that a corporation’s environmental efforts are greenwashing, without looking at the evidence, then you’re being cynical. If you decide they are lying or greenwashing after you’ve carefully looked at the reasons and evidence supporting those beliefs, then you’re exercising critical thinking. 

Finally, critical thinking is not the same as critical theory. The latter is a philosophical and social science project that seeks to improve society by revealing sources of oppression, and is associated with thinkers such as Theodor Adorno, Michel Foucault and Jurgen Habermas. 

Critical mass

So what about that social media post about sunscreen that seemed so appealing? A critical thinker would start by reflecting on any biases they might have when watching it. It was shared by a friend, and they know that they’re prone to weigh things more heavily when their friends endorse them. That’s a good reason to pause and ensure they’re not being overly credulous. 

They would also know that they are more likely to assume an attractive or high-status speaker will be trustworthy – which is why coffee companies like to have handsome actors in their ads. So a critical thinker w0uld try to detach the message from the messenger, and scrutinise the former on its merits. 

A critical thinker would also be mindful of the sources that the influencer cites. Are they reliable experts? Do they have any vested interests, like working for a company that sells a sunscreen alternative? Is their evidence high quality, such as the product of a double-blind clinical trial? 

They would also be wary of allowing their subjective experience to flavour how they interpret the post. Just because they got a rash from the last sunscreen they bought doesn’t mean that all sunscreen is toxic. It’s possible that they just had an allergy, or something unrelated caused the rash, and it happened to coincide with them applying the sunscreen. 

And they would be on the lookout for logical and argumentative fallacies, like an appeal to authority or popularity, or begging the question, which might undermine the soundness of the argument. 

A critical thinker would weigh all these things, and come to a conclusion about the claims about sunscreen, acknowledging that they could always be wrong – so not allowing themselves to arrive at a point of unwarranted certainty. 

Employing critical thinking takes some time and effort. However, if you care about not being duped by misinformation or falling for spin, then it’s an indispensable skill to cultivate.