Is This Real: How to Avoid Becoming a Crowd? Author: Joel Best, Beijing United Publishing Company

The key to avoiding becoming a mob is to think critically about phenomena and ideas; and the key to thinking critically about phenomena and ideas is to judge the evidence.

The strength of the evidence determines the credibility of an opinion. As a set of methods for evaluating evidence, critical thinking is a skill that can be mastered through practice.

"Is This Really True" focuses on the field of sociology, starting with the basic concepts and methodology of critical thinking argumentation, and emphasizing how to use critical thinking to think and judge opinions. Through the discussion of topics such as flawed arguments in daily life, cognitive biases caused by different understandings of the world, understanding biases caused by ambiguity of language, reasoning fallacies caused by invalid evidence, and cognitive limitations caused by personal biases of the person expressing opinions, it helps readers master the rules, methods and techniques of critical thinking about opinions and avoid becoming a mob that just follows the crowd.

Joel Best

Professor of Sociology at the University of Delaware. Author of the best-selling book Damn Lies and Statistics.