I am a long time listener of Jan Irvin. Jan is the proprietor of Gnostic Media - Research & Publishing, which runs a variety of websites and podcasts on a large range of topics. One area that Jan has put a lot of effort into unveiling to the world is critical thinking. This came in the form of his expositions involving the Trivium Method of Critical Thinking. This subject is, put concisely, the study of the classical liberal arts of Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric. Studying these subjects has greatly changed the way I approach life, and I can honestly say that I would not be worth as much money as I am right now without those efforts.
Critical Thinking
Critical Thinking, as I define it, is the application of the three classical liberal arts of Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric, as well as the four liberal arts of the Quadrivium, namely Arithmetic, Geometric, Music, and Astronomy, to arrive at a clear representation of the truth based on objective reality. Getting to the truth is important, as it will make it easier for you to realize when you are being fooled, deceived, used, or taken advantage of, and give you the means to remove yourself from the situation and/ or take steps to put yourself in a more advantageous or morally righteous position. There are so many people, institutions, and habits in this world that effect us negatively as a human species, that if we were to think critically about them, would cease to effect us almost immediately.
Case Study: Bitconnect
Bitconnect, as many of you know, was a multi-level cryptocurrency marketing scheme that effected millions of people and resulted in wealth destruction in the ballpark of two billion dollars. Bitconnect had many claims about their platform that were very hard or impossible to prove. They supposedly had a special trading bot that could give returns whether the market was going up or down. No-one was allowed to see the bot or the algorithms that it used to generate returns. Strike One. To make money using Bitconnect, one either had to 1. Loan the trading bot Bitcoin in exchange for a daily returns of around 1% interest paid out in USD, or 2. Get affiliate bonuses through signing people up under you and getting a cut from when they reinvest their interest. So many things wrong with these two methods of making money.
To be continued.
Well, people lack common sense. So sad.