The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Search results for “baloney detection kit”

Galileo on Critical Thinking and the Folly of Believing Our Preconceptions
Galileo on Critical Thinking and the Folly of Believing Our Preconceptions

“To divine that wonderful arts lie hid behind trivial and childish things is a conception for superhuman talents.”

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35-Year-Old Emerson’s Extraordinary Harvard Divinity School Address on the Divine Transcendence of Nature
35-Year-Old Emerson’s Extraordinary Harvard Divinity School Address on the Divine Transcendence of Nature

In praise of the sentiment through which the soul comes to know itself.

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This Idea Must Die: Some of the World’s Greatest Thinkers Each Select a Major Misconception Holding Us Back
This Idea Must Die: Some of the World’s Greatest Thinkers Each Select a Major Misconception Holding Us Back

From the self to left brain vs. right brain to romantic love, a catalog of broken theories that hold us back from the conquest of Truth.

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Margaret Mead on Myth vs. Deception and What to Tell Kids about Santa Claus
Margaret Mead on Myth vs. Deception and What to Tell Kids about Santa Claus

How to instill an appreciation of the difference between “fact” and “poetic truth,” in kids and grownups alike.

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Bill Nye Reads a Brilliant, Creationism-Busting Passage from His New Book on Evolution
Bill Nye Reads a Brilliant, Creationism-Busting Passage from His New Book on Evolution

An intelligent antidote to propaganda’s chronic line of unreasonable reasoning.

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Michael Faraday on Mental Discipline and How to Cure Our Propensity for Self-Deception
Michael Faraday on Mental Discipline and How to Cure Our Propensity for Self-Deception

“That point of self-education which consists in teaching the mind to resist its desires and inclinations, until they are proved to be right, is the most important of all.”

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Beware the Rise of the Pseudo-Intellectual: Tom Wolfe’s Boston University Commencement Address
Beware the Rise of the Pseudo-Intellectual: Tom Wolfe’s Boston University Commencement Address

“We live in an age in which ideas, important ideas, are worn like articles of fashion.”

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Self-Refinement Through the Wisdom of the Ages: New Year’s Resolutions from Some of Humanity’s Greatest Minds
Self-Refinement Through the Wisdom of the Ages: New Year’s Resolutions from Some of Humanity’s Greatest Minds

Enduring ideas for personal refinement from Seneca, Thoreau, Virginia Woolf, Carl Sagan, Alan Watts, Emerson, Bruce Lee, Maya Angelou, and more.

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On “Beauty”: Marilynne Robinson on Writing, What Storytelling Can Learn from Science, and the Splendors of Uncertainty
On “Beauty”: Marilynne Robinson on Writing, What Storytelling Can Learn from Science, and the Splendors of Uncertainty

“We are part of a mystery, a splendid mystery within which we must attempt to orient ourselves if we are to have a sense of our own nature.”

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John Dewey on the True Purpose of Education and How to Harness the Power of Our Natural Curiosity
John Dewey on the True Purpose of Education and How to Harness the Power of Our Natural Curiosity

“While it is not the business of education … to teach every possible item of information, it is its business to cultivate deep-seated and effective habits of discriminating tested beliefs from mere assertions, guesses, and opinions.”

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