In the modern world, with its massive amount of information, it is more important than ever to be able to formulate your thoughts and convey them to others. Due to the excess of data, the brain filters out many things that it considers unimportant, so attracting attention and getting your message across to the addressee is not easy. Marketers need to convince customers to buy a product, managers need to justify the need to perform various tasks, and politicians need to convey the benefits of their political program. The ability to be persuasive is an integral part of success in the current realities.
Critical thinking is critical to avoid becoming a victim of cognitive distortions, manipulations, and outright deception. I liked that we learned the principles of critical thinking during the course. I am sure that if more people used this thinking, they would act much more rationally. The study of cognitive biases has also been fascinating: understanding how the brain can deceive itself helps avoid this shortcoming in the future. However, the most exciting and challenging topic for me was the art of arguing correctly and effectively. Advice like “arguing with an opponent only when he is ready to discuss the topic” (Popova, 2014) or “asking clarifying questions to clarify his position” (Lau & Chan, 2021) seem pretty obvious. However, at the same time, they were quite effective and helped me to convince my opponent more than once.
The idea of whether arguing is appropriate in all situations has also turned out to be unobviously interesting (Cohen, 2013). I have no comments regarding the fact that some points should have been done differently, the impressions of the course are very positive.
References
Cohen, D. (2013). For argument’s sake [Video]. TedTalks.
Lau, J., & Chan, J. (2021). Arguing with other people.
Popova, M. (2014). How to criticize with kindness: Philosopher Daniel Dennett and the four steps to arguing intelligently. Brain Pickings.