Critical Thinking Blog 4

Junk thought is one of those tools that can be compared to pseudoscience. Both are used to mislead the general population and can easily be believed by any audience. Why? Both junk thought and pseudoscience use deception and colorful language that make them sound credible. The main difference between the two is that pseudoscience is a completely fake science while junk thought is science being used wrong. Unlike pseudoscience, Junk Thought is picked up by politicians on all sides of the arena and use certain facts or angles to make their agenda look legitimate. For example, Jacoby writes about the liberal group showing pictures of polar bears to promote sympathy for global warming. Jacoby points out that children and many people think of polar bears as big and cuddly so they sympathize and jump on the bandwagon to stop global warming. She goes on further to say that polar bears are shown when a ice chunk breaks off the southern ice shelf even though polar bears do not live in the southern hemisphere. Susan Jacoby uses many other examples like this one to describe junk thought and I completely concur with her. Americans are getting too much data these days and not thinking about how to use the data, they just use it how they need it to work for them. Instead of thinking in logical ways, people are just regurgitating information to look intellectual. The biggest problem with the junk thought being produced is it detracts from intellectual and practical thought. Its like people have been given screws and use hammer on them- it is just not going to work.