Mar 03 2012
Your Deceptive Mind
I am proud to announce my second course with The Teaching Company: Your Deceptive Mind: A Scientific Guide to Critical Thinking Skills.
The Great Courses are a series of college-like lectures designed for adult learners. They are very well produced – I have been impressed with the entire process, and I am happy that The Teaching Company decided to produce some courses with me. In this one I go systematically through all of the flaws and foibles of the human brain, our errors in perception and memory, hyperactive agency detection, pattern recognition, logical fallacies, and cognitive biases. Then I discuss how this manifests as delusions and pseudoscience, and finally how to develop the critical thinking skills necessary to overcome these limitations.
This is a great introduction into skeptical thinking for those not as familiar with skepticism and metacognition, and also a thorough treatment of the topic for those who are. I encourage you to check it out.
Also, if you have not previously seen it, take a look at my first course: Medical Myths, Lies, and Half-Truths: What We Think We Know May Be Hurting Us.
23 Responses to “Your Deceptive Mind”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Congratulations! I think your partnership with The Teaching Company (psst: I think they brand themselves now as The Great Courses) is a real “breakout” opportunity for the skeptical movement. We’re perenially struggling over how to push skepticism out there to receptive individuals who simply aren’t aware that we exist. Not to mention it will undoubtedly be a fun and informative audiobook.
Evan – Thanks.
The Teaching Company is the company, The Great Courses is their series of courses – as is reflected in the post.
And, to clarify, the course is available as an audiobook, but also in video DVD format, and also as a download.
I have the audio-only version of your first Teaching Company course. The sound quality was weird. Kind of a muffled echo in the midrange. Also some lispy effects on high frequencies, not just for your voice but also the announcer at the beginning of each file.
Just ordered it. Thanks for doing this!!
Just FYI, I have the video of Medical Myths and the quality was good.
I just bought and am downloading this stuff. If I like it enough (probable, but we’ll see), I’ll give it a link with a thumbnail graphic in my REC blog links column, right by “Why Do Humans Reason” and “Medicine in Denial.”
Carl – I will check with the company about the audio quality. The CDs and DVDs I have are all excellent quality. Did you download? Perhaps the bit rate on the downloads are lower. I can probably get them to send you a CD copy.
Hi, Steve! I know this is meant for adults, but is the content kid-friendly as well? I’m thinking about getting it for myself, but the one I’d really like it for is my son, a soon-to-be middle schooler.
Hi Steve,
You are my favorite writer and thinker among those in the “skeptic” movement. I would love to support your work. However, the lecture only format of your courses does not work for me. As far as I can tell, there is no text that accompanies this course. With a book, I can read at my own pace, reflect on what I am learning as I read, highlight points that I think are important, and make notes in the text about my reactions and questions regarding the material. I assume you wrote your lectures before making the videos. Is there any reason you cannot publish them as text? In the future, I hope you will consider making your work available in book form.
Also, I find the promo video for your course to be very off-putting. That style of video really irritates me. I realize that it does not necessarily represent the actual videos, and that is my point. I would much rather see an extended excerpt from the actual course content rather than this marketing piece with it’s rapid cutting, hyped-up commentary, and irrelevant imagery.
But please be assured that I will continue to recommend your writings to other, as I often do, and keep up the good work.
Dile, in response to your concern about printed material, there are two supplemental materials to the lectures that you may find useful. Each course comes with a guide to each lecture with the main points outlined. If you read that before you listen, you may find it easier to pick up the content. Also, you can purchase a transcript of the lectures for $25. (To my mind, this should be free, but what do I know?)
Steve, I’m glad you provided a link to the course off the Skeptics Guide website, because when I went directly from your podcast to the Teaching Company website, I didn’t see your course under the New Courses and thought that they had stumbled in putting it up. It may be that my bookmark is taking me to old content, but I figured it was worth while letting you know.
I greatly enjoy listening to your podcast and look forward to this Teaching Company course. SGU and AstronomyCast transformed my outlook on the world, and anything I can get my hands on that will help me see the world the way it is will be welcome.
Dile – I cannot print the exact content of the course. That would violate my contract. Of course I can still write about the topics, as I have been for years.
There is a book that accompanies the course It’s not a transcript but it does include a glossary, references, suggested reading, and lecture descriptions. I don’t know if that is sufficient for you, but it does have a place to follow along and make notes.
I just downloaded the Audio and am listening to it through Itunes and the audio is fine, no fadeouts or differences between different chapters, I downloaded all the 24 parts of the lecture at once and have them saved in an external storage so as not to take up hardrive space. Is that applause at the beginning of the lectures real, and are you really talking in front of a live audience? I have listened to Dr. Novella’s first course and the sound is comparable, and better than some Great Courses like Bart Erhman’s lectures who sounds like he is being recorded by someone in an auditorium. Dr. Novella lectures on many of the subjects he covers in his blogs and SGU, but it’s nice to have more detail and organization bound into one lecture. I am enjoying it very much and can only wonder if Dr. Novella is planning a published book in the future. In response to the criticism of the promo, I didn’t find it off putting in its context, it is on par for what the Great Courses does with its other lectures. The content is family friendly as far as language, but the ideas may be considered dangerous. If you don’t want your children to question things, this lecture is not for you, although I highly recommend it. Every elementary school should use this lecture as a cornerstone in education for critical thinking. Opposable thumbs up!
Hi Steven,
I just bought the video. Always been a great fan of yours!
I always thought that if you could tell dramatic stories about why scientific approach or an evidence-based approach evolved, people would be more influenced than scientific explanations. Kind of an availability bias!
I wrote something similar which tells the stories of the grandiose failures in medical history and why EBM evolved in the first place: http://workout911.com/?p=3709
I did the MP3 download. The MP3s are 93kbps, which should be fine for voice (Skeptic’s Guide episodes are only 48, and those sound OK). I can cut out a short piece and email it to you if you want to hear it and compare to the CD or DVD.
Just purchased and downloaded the digital copy; very pleased with my purchase. Full of useful information and it is very high quality (plus it didn’t take long to download). I’m basically adding it to my curriculum this semester and looking forward to sharpening my critical thinking skills that I know will come in handy in my career. Thanks again for another great course Dr. Novella!
Btw its very nice to have these lectures on my iPhone ready to be watched at any time!
Carl, did you download the whole course at one time? There’s a disclaimer on the side of my download screen that says to download 3 lectures or fewer at a time. I listened to the beginning of the first lecture, and I’m not not noticing anything.
The first lesson was great, but man, I can’t look away from the blinking left eye!
Steve, what can I say? Thank you.
This course comes on the heels of my sharing several of the cognitive biases we are all subject to in terms of our food choices (at a conference on weight management) and after my just finishing reading a summary of the key-note theme from the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Vancouver: We have a crisis on our hands globally: a drop off on scientific literacy and critical thinking.
I plan to order your course right away, but need to just figure out which is better audio or video… I saw there is some guidance there as well. Excellent!
Thanks for all your tremendous work advancing our movement.
Can someone please help?
I’m a long-time reader of this site and others of a skeptical, critical thinking nature. I’ve just discovered my niece is involved in chiropractic at this clinic:
http://www.drwestonline.com/index.php?p=63280
I’m wondering: Do I just let it go and let her make her own choices? She’s recently out of college and has tens of thousands of dollars of debt. It just seems like such a waste to see her go down this path.
I know little about chiropractic except the few things I’ve read here and at the Skeptics Dictionary. If you had one thing to recommend I send to her, what would it be?
Thanks a million.
MB
Steve, I love you, but 50 USD for a video download? Ouch… I’ll stick to MIT Open Courseware, or even iTunes U.
Hi MikeB,
Here you go: http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/reference/?p=44
“If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.” – Derek Bok
I ordered the CD version of the new one, and it is basically the same. It isn’t a matter of a low bit rate, it is either the recording setup or some kind of post-recording filtering to try to block high sounds.
Just finished the DVD series,and I would recommend this to anyone who is wanting to improve their critical thinking skills.This course would be especially useful to those who have never been expose to the ideas of informal fallacies,cognitive biases,and scientific skepticism.
The DVD set also came with a 230 page course guidebook that covers each lesson in detail,and highlights important terms,suggested reading,and additional questions to consider.It also has an extensive glossary,additional references by lecture,and bibliography.Good job Steve!