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From Hunting the Snark
Welcome to Hunting the Snark, a wiki-driven site devoted to helping people learn to think rationally. I hope to gather and present resources that can help all ages learn to think carefully through life’s problems. This will be a repository of links, book reviews, practice problems and essays that are aimed at helping folks focus on how to solve problems, analyze arguments, present their own careful arguments. In general, a site to learn how to go about thinking in a manner that is both more rational and ethical.
You can start learning or practicing or playing with "critical thinking skills" by browsing some of the links below. You can come back here, to the Main Page, by clicking on the "Main Page" link above in the title bar.
News/Essays-News clippings or articles about critical reasoning, essays on critical thinking issues
Book Reviews-Books on logic, reasoning, and other sorts of philosophy
Lessons/Exercises/Games-For all ages
Definitions-Explanations of fallacies, logic terms, and types of reasoning
Links-Outside links with descriptions, to sites devoted to logic and critical thinking
The Hunting of the Snark
Why call this site Hunting the Snark? For a couple of reasons: I’m a big fan of Lewis Carroll, and I particularly like the poem, The Hunting of the Snark, an Agony in Eight Fits. I can use the poem to metaphorically describe some of what I’m seeing today in the real world: people racing off to accomplish the goals they set for themselves, using some of the silliest reasoning skills imaginable. As the poem The Hunting of the Snark is a litany of silly illogic in support of the goal to hunt down and capture a snark, so too do some of today’s arguments presented to support a point of view seem just as silly and irrational.
A second reason is that many of today's media pundits and opinionists are engaged in snark, a pernicious debate tactic that infuses ill-temper into rhetorical arguments and renders rational thinking more difficult than it normally is. Recognizing and defusing the tactics of snark to get at the gist of an argument is more important than ever.
Why think rationally? Fundamentally, for two rather basic and selfish reasons: so you won’t get laughed at, and so you won’t get scammed. Both are things that I suspect most people wish to avoid. Learning how to present yourself to others as a person that thinks carefully can only bring ego-stroking benefits as others learn to take your well-considered opinions seriously. And learning to spot when someone is attempting to pull the wool over your eyes is also good. In this age of the spinning the news in favor of one political policy over another, one needs to carefully read through the words and grasp the essence of the information. Thinking rationally about the information you are presented with can also prevent you from falling victim to scams that seek your hard-earned cash. And learning to think rationally can quickly clear up questions you may have posed to yourself, but were unable to answer. These reasons alone I consider significant enough to seek the ideal of thinking more rationally.
Contribute to Hunting the Snark
You are welcome to contribute to this site, with games, links, book reviews, essays, exercises, and definitions. Please see the Help page for more information.