CRITICAL THINKING AND COMMUNICATION WORKSHOP

FREE    FREE    FREE    FREE

On the 1^st Sunday of every month at the ‘Star and Shadow’ Newcastle between 2 – 4pm

For 15 years I have been working at being a better person.  It all started 13 years ago at the ‘Star and Shadow’ and watching the processes and dynamics of how things worked there.  Especially influential were the meetings which were based on consensus.  I had never even heard of the concept of consensus before the S&S.  (I’m from Tottenham.)  This was the beginning of my journey in to improving my communication skills.  Later I found a podcast called ‘The Sceptics Guide to the Universe’ and I began to learn what is critical thinking and this made me evaluate my preconceptions on so many things.  This journey to being a better person has been an on-going process with the support of online educators like ‘Matt Dillahunty’ and ‘Anthony Magnabosco’.  Now I want to experience this journey with others.  In the words of Dillahunty ‘I want to believe as many true things and as few false things as possible’ and the best way to do that is for us to all learn from each other.

FAKE NEWS…  In the era of what was unimaginable 30 years ago an abundance of information on everything that can be imagined at our fingertips, at all times how should we evaluate this information in ways that accurately reflect reality?  How can we tell what is true and what is false and why?  Is what we are being told is fake, really fake?  Together we can explore topics like how we evolved to think and how that serves, or disserves us in the modern world.  How we get numbers wrong.  What are biases and fallacies?  What is evidence and so much more?

Reality is a concept…  Well much of our reality is and even though we often sum these concepts up in a single word, these concepts mean different things to different people.  We are in a new age, an age of communication and often in this time who is the loudest and who has the biggest platform is believed.  Together we can learn better ways of communication.  Ways that are productive to achieving our goals and learning from each other what we actually think and why we think what we do.  There are better ways. 

Ask questions… 

Listen to responses… 

clarify… 

Ask more questions. 

Learning to communicate with techniques like the ‘Socratic Method’.  Inviting discussion and avoiding conflict.

At the ‘Star and Shadow’ in the meeting room on the 1^st Sunday of every month we can explore these and many more topics together between 2 and 4 pm.  Every Sunday the café for the ‘Star and Shadow’ is open with beverages and snacks from 12pm.  Making practical uses of philosophical ideas.