Sunday, December 6, 2020

Thinking and Deception

[Image of reflecting pool, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA] Critical thinking seems a heavy lift these days, when emotions run high and hyper partisan exchanges of opinion settle debates based more on intensity and duration of salvo than on strength of argument. Under the cirumstances, one way to crawl a little closer to critical thinking may well be to assign a little energy to uncovering deception. To this end, here follows a link to the last presentation I gave before the pandemic lockdown. It was an invited talk at the Naval Postgraduate School, and they filmed it, eventually releasing it here: https://youtu.be/zSWos678ohk The idea was to go with the general format of TED Talks. Thus, I was asked to speak for 15 minutes and to then allow another 10-15 minutes for questions. This particular talk was on ways to find out when people are lying and otherwise to learn more than most people intend to reveal. Some people in the audience seemed to enjoy it. No heavy lifting required. - Nick Catrantzos