Contrary to popular belief . . .

Below are some important ideas that deserve more attention and explicit discussion. We hope you will find them thought provoking and consider contacting us to share your views. As this website grows, we’ll add more common mistakes to this list and essays about these topics.

Common sense is not the same thing as skilled critical thinking.

Almost everyone feels as if he or she has good common sense, and most people do. That’s because common sense is more or less defined to be the kind of judgment that is universal and practical without requiring much reflection or analysis. But in a complicated world, common sense has significant limitations. It’s not sufficiently curious, skeptical, and searching to look below the surface, understand its own blind spots, and challenge widely accepted ideas. Critical thinking can tap into common sense, but it must go beyond it to be effective.

A worthwhile debate that’s fair and balanced does not necessarily give equal time to all sides of an issue.

For example, a useful, contemporary scientific debate about the precise shape of the earth would not include anyone who believes the earth is flat. A productive discussion of German history need not include Holocaust deniers. A real debate needs to be based on certain common ground. By analogy, think of antonyms: Although we think of antonyms as words with opposite meanings, a pair of antonyms must actually share a certain amount of meaning before they can be understood as relevant opposites. (Think of “ugly” and “beautiful”— both words pertain to a thing’s visual appeal; “generous” and “stingy”— both words reflect attitudes toward spending money.) Debates can be most fruitful if they can identify lowest common assumptions as starting points.

People often don’t know why they believe their most important ideas or where they came from.

We tend to think that we knowingly adopted what we believe. But the truth is that many of our most important beliefs were fed to us when we were children, or perhaps by authority figures whom we trusted as adults. And we may have never seriously questioned these ideas as we absorbed them. (Read more about this in our essay, Challenging Ideas.) For example, do you know when and why you decided to believe in freedom of speech?

While extremism is often a problem, what appears to be extremism — when viewed in a broad context — may sometimes not be.

Martin Luther King, Jr., for example, was perceived by some to be an extremist, but properly understood, he was not. Read some of his thoughts on extremism.

Can you add to this list? Can you write a short essay about any of these topics? Contact us to share your thoughts.