Roger Garriock – Announced that there are 50 of the 750 tickets left for “Beer for a Year”. He hopes to have your help in selling these tickets before Ribfest weekend.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jim MacKenzie – Is happy to be going back to Scotland to the Isle of Lewis again with his family. It has been 50 years since he came to Canada and this year would have been his 47^th wedding anniversary. On this trip he will take Ann’s ashes to be interred with his family's.

He also heard a rumour that there has been a betting cartel in the club as to just when he would be returning to Scotland next.

 

 

 

 

Ben McCarl – Shared that he has been learning how to become a Personal trainer. He can now critique every single muscle and sinew in his body as it aches.

 

 

 

Bev announced that she was the winner of the betting pool for Jim’s departure. And gave the money to PolioPlus.

Gail Moore was fined for being a guest at our club.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Marty Fairbairn introduced our speaker, Dr. Chris Di Carlo, as a philosopher and humanist at the University of Toronto. An authour of many books, including “How to Become a Really Good Pain in the A**” and “Flying without a Pilot”.

Dr. DiCarlo is currently seeking philanthropic interest to develop a large project which aims to establish a comprehensive series of models for understanding value and human behaviour to develop fairer and better ways to establish social policies in the management of human and natural resources in various fields such as law and justice, healthcare, politics, business and industry and education. This is called the OSTOK (or Onion Skin Theory of Knowledge) Project.

Dr. DiCarlo introduced us to his latest book “Six Steps to Better Thinking: How to Disagree and Get Along”. There really are better ways to think about things. It is possible to have a heated discussion, disagree entirely, and still be able to get along. Due to recent events involving the Brexit referendum in the UK and the Trump Presidency in the US, The Oxford Dictionary’s word of the year for 2016 was post-truth. This is an extremely sad commentary on how information is delivered, interpreted, and acted upon. By repeatedly stating talking points – even if it involved false information – some candidates said whatever they “felt” was appropriate to make their point. This was done through the excessive use of echo chambers, a media term indicating the uncritical way in which unchecked and untrue information can be repeatedly stated until it appears to be factual – in other words what Stephen Colbert calls “truthiness”. In many cases, the false information is treated as factual by some news agencies.  This is hauntingly like what Joseph Goebbels, the Reichs Minister of Propaganda for the Nazis during World War II stated;

 

 

Once “fake news” becomes accepted as factual, it feeds on confirmation bias and becomes entrenched in the minds of people who want to believe it to be true. However, in attempting to respond to and correct the falsities, those who wish to “fact check” such claims often come under attack as belonging to a grand conspiracy who are trying to suppress the truth. Post-truth politics makes considerable use of conspiracy theories. To further criticize such conspiracy theories with such things as facts is to be a member of the mainstream media or that other group The Establishment. In critical thinking, this is called insulating one’s argument against criticism. It is an attempt to make any claim impervious to scrutiny and criticism. And we will have none of that in Critical Thinking and hopefully, in society! To live in a free and just society,  ALL information is open to criticism and scrutiny without exception. And so, it’s time to make facts and Critical Thinking sexy again.

Check out the New York Times for guidelines and online courses to assist in training people to better understand information and to make discernment between what can be considered factual and what is simply opinion or feelings. There’s a quiz to test how well you are capable of critical thinking.

This was the jumping off point to write his book “Six Steps to Better Thinking”. He tried to distill the skills into six easy to remember steps using the first letters of the English alphabet.:

Step 1: A is for Argument

Step 2: B is for Bias

Step 3: C is for context

Step 4: D is for Diagram

Step 5: E is for Evidence

Step 6: F is for Fallacies

Remember the letters and apply them to information as the most basic part of becoming a better thinker. This will create a skill set which will allow anyone greater capacity to have more meaningful discussions about all issues, from simple to sublime.

The biggest take-Away of the book is that using Critical Thinking skills fairly, people will be more empowered to have meaningful discussions about important issues, disagree entirely, and still be able to get along.

A very thought-provoking discussion on thinking.

 

 

Andrea Groenwald thanked Dr. DiCarlo on behalf of the club and presented a certificate certifying that 100 children around the world will be vaccinated against Polio in his name.