I’m a former academic philosopher of science. Now I work as an independent educator and consultant, helping individuals and companies develop their capacity to think critically, communicate persuasively, and make smart decisions that promote their true goals and values.
- As a solo entrepreneur, I develop learning resources (video courses, podcasts, ebooks) and run a membership site dedicated to helping individuals develop their critical thinking, argumentation and persuasion skills. One can think of this work as located at the intersection of critical thinking education and personal development.
- As an educational consultant, I give talks and run workshops on the topics related to critical thinking education, teacher training and curriculum development.
- As a business consultant, I work with the amazing team at Lenker Consulting, where I bring my skills as a writer, researcher, analyst and philosopher to help businesses fulfill their aspirational goals and make a positive impact on the world.
Start Building Your Critical Thinking Library
In episode 029 of the Argument Ninja podcast, “How to Raise a Critical Thinker“, I gave five recommendations for parents looking for ways to help their kids become better critical thinkers. The fifth recommendation was to “develop the right kinds of background knowledge”. The background knowledge that is most relevant to critical thinking is this knowledge, knowledge of the Light
028 – Tribalism isn’t the Problem
On this episode I’ve got an interview lined up for you that I did with Bob Froehlich, who hosts the Thinking Clearly radio program and podcast over at KMUD community radio in Redway, California. Our topic was critical thinking and tribalism, very much in the vein of what I’ve been talking about in my recent sketchbook video series titled, appropriately, “Critical Thinking and Tribalism”. If you’ve been following my work a certain amount of this will be familiar, but in this interview we covered some new topics relating to tribalism and polarization that I haven’t discussed before; for example, the distinction between ideological polarization and social polarization; evidence that social polarization along political lines has increased dramatically in recent years, especially in the US; and some discussion of the causes of this increase in polarization.
027 – Updates: Finances, Projects and Plans
In this episode I answer the most common questions I get about the status of my finances, what my plans are to improve my situation in 2018, what video courses I’m developing for Udemy, and where we are with the development of the Argument Ninja Academy.
If you’re interested in entrepreneurship and making a living online doing what you love, I think you’ll find this episode interesting.
In Our Tribe We Trust
This is the third in my series of sketchbook videos exploring the theme of Critical Thinking and Tribalism. In this video I discuss the relationship between tribal psychology and trust. What factors determine who we trust to provide reliable information about issues like climate change, gun control, and other issues of the day? More specifically, this episode is a deep dive into the psychology of risk perception. I look at two important forms of “motivated reasoning”, AFFECT BIAS and CULTURAL COGNITION, discuss how these influence how we make judgments about the risks and benefits of various social policies.
026 – Feminism, Marxism, Postmodernism and Jordan Peterson: Sometimes the Only Winning Move is Not to Play
On this episode of the Argument Ninja podcast I offer a perspective on Jordan Peterson’s criticism of left-wing ideology (what he calls “cultural Marxism”) by sharing some of my own intellectual history with feminism, Marxism and postmodernism. The broader question animating this episode is: how can I critically engage with challenging ideas without being sucked into a tribal mindset?
025 – Why Tribal Literacy?
On this episode of the Argument Ninja podcast I talk about TRIBALISM and the challenges that our tribal psychology poses for critical thinking. This episode includes the audio for two sketchbook videos I’ve done on this topic, “The Dangers of Tribalism” (11 minutes) and “Our Tribal Intelligence” (13 minutes), with additional commentary not found in those videos (25 minutes). I give time stamps below to help you navigate the episode if you’ve already watched those videos.
Our Tribal Intelligence
Here’s the second in my series of sketchbook videos exploring the theme of “critical thinking and tribalism”. In this episode I focus on the epistemic dimension of our tribal nature. I talk about how social survival strategies played an important role in the evolution of our distinctively human intellectual capacities, by increasing our storehouse of knowledge and skills via the development of CULTURE. I also show how one of the consequences of our socially distributed knowledge is that we’re prone to OVERCONFIDENCE about our own personal knowledge.
The Dangers of Tribalism
Here’s the first in a series of sketchbook-style videos I’m doing on the topic of tribalism and critical thinking. I really do think a certain degree of tribal literacy needs to be a part of everyone’s critical thinking toolkit.