I think it is impossible to listen to almost anything that has anything to do with politics, sales and marketing and to be honest, just about anything you see or hear about anything that is not shaping your opinion one way or another about who knows how many things with every sound that you hear or pictures you see or words that you read that is not trying to convince you of something or another.
Some messages are very bold. Some are very subtle. Some are hidden. Some are true and some are not and lots are in between.
On the side of discovering truth, the messages are designed to accurately present some facts and to then logically use the facts to advance by logic and evidence a point of view or argument.
On the other side, hiding the truth etc, messages are designed to present things as facts that are maybe not so factual and/or manipulate false logic techniques to block or divert or distort the presented "evidence" to give false information or to change the subject.
There exists a website that has a really great taxonomy of false logic techniques. The site is http://www.fallacyfiles.org/
This site has tons of information and tons of explanation, a lot more than I can supply so I recommend that you peruse this sight to see where your interests are and get an idea of what false logic is all about.
There are lots of examples and from old or newer sources and you can get some names of types of false logic techniques and what they are called and you will start to see how intricate wording that you have been hearing on the news or in a commercial might have given you an impression that does not hold up to scrutiny.
Once you start to read and listen to examples of the spin, you develop a feel for it. Getting familiar with the techniques being used against you will have you start to see things in a different way. You will begin to spot the red flags and that will tell you something is wrong and you can then research or ASK for clarification. That is the way to deal with false logic is to question it.
If the answer you get leads you to something that is not really relevant or introduces another idea or premise or question, you are being led away from their answering your question and you are being asked to defend or explain or something to occupy you as they continue to move the conversation along and away from what you caught them doing. The response then, "I will get to that after we finish this point and you repeat your question. This or something similar is how to respond to this type of technique. If you take the bait, you will find the subject has moved on and your "liar" presenter will be more careful with what he says although he will work to set you up and discredit your argument, but in the meantime, you will learn to be better and develop your own techniques as you inquire for real answers.
This is a teaser. I want you to read the "Files" yourself and learn to use this and other resources to help discover when you are being told fact and when it is going into the realm of fiction.
I will be happy to help if you experience problems understanding things or if you want to discuss specific aspects of False Logic. I am not sure, however what the best way to do that is. I am new to Kos and I do have limits on time I can spend writing. I will try to monitor the responses and answer but if you don't hear from me, I have not discovered a way to monitor messages very well. As I learn Kos better, I hope to have a better way to communicate with people interested in learning to discover truth but for now, I hope that you will bare with me and I will help in any way I can.
Below the fold is another link and a brief introduction to Critical Thinking. Please check it out.
Critical Thinking
Critical thinking to some is simply common sense. To others, it is something that seems to be beyond their understanding. In the political arena, Critical Thinking is what some people seem to associate with intelligence and mistakenly accuse the "right wing" as not having much and the Liberals get the moniker of being egg heads and aloof and thinking that they are smarter than the Conservative Right.
Well, ignorance is curable but stupid is not. In our society, by definition of the Bell Curve, at least most of the people are not stupid. only a small percentage is stupid and only a small part of everyone is genius. We are born that way and unfortunately we may learn to cope with low intelligence better, we don't know of a way to make us more intelligent. We are what we are born with unless we have been damaged in some way and if that is the case, we can regain what we lost, but that is pretty much it and that would be really rare.
But a lot of people that have average or above intelligence or whatever level do not use what they got to their full potential. A big part of this is CRITICAL THINKING.
There is something called Bloom's Taxonomy. This is a classification of 6 (and some expanded versions of 7 or so) levels of Critical Thinking. I will talk a little bit about the first three here and tell you how to learn more and then I will be happy to help in any way I can, including trying to monitor the responses here and addressing them as I find them as I said above the squiggle.
with the 6 levels, a rule of thumb is that with a good traditional education approach you will be well versed in the first two levels after High School. You will add the next two with a college degree and you will master all six with a post graduate degree.
This is a VERY GENERALIZED rule of thumb and I have met elementary school dropouts that developed all of the skills just naturally on their own. We all have at least some experience with all levels, but the nice thing is that for what ever reason you don't learn these skills naturally, ignorance can be cured and Bloom's is a big start to removing ignorance from all our lives.
With Bloom's you learn by doing. Bloom classifies and describes the levels, then there are key words that relate to the level and there are sample questions to describe a target assignment to illustrate whats involved with each level.
I put Bloom's Taxonomy into Google and clicked on the black and white pie chart in images and came up with this link from North Carolina State University.
http://teaching.uncc.edu/...
I can't outline it better than they did so I just posted the link. For variations of presentation use Google and just put in "Bloom's Taxonomy" and you will have a wide selection of different ways to teach or learn Bloom's skills. But all you have to do is practice the examples and you can use your own interests to fill in the blanks and you have an assignment using something that interests you and while you learn more ways to think about what you like, you are programming your thought process to automatically think on higher levels. What it means is that you not only can talk about things as well as visualize what will happen if you do some things differently and learn to accurately predict outcomes based upon fact rather then just creating fiction. I will discuss more benefits and uses of critical thinking as I go through responses from you so I can be specific to what you want to know.
I hope you enjoy these two sites. They are two of the most important sets of skills if you want to find better understanding of the truth and how you can discover and evaluate ideas on your own when forming opinions and conclusions. An informed electorate will have these skills.
Thank you for reading.
LeZi
ps
If I have any glaring typos etc, I will try to edit them later. I think you get the gist and have enough clarity to understand enough to get started and I am here if you need help. Just work with me. I am new at this forum.