How to Become a Really Good Pain in the Ass ─ A Critical Thinker's Guide to Asking the Right Questions

DiCarlo, a lecturer on bioethics and philosophy of science who is associated with the Society of Ontario Freethinkers and the Center for Inquiry-Canada, offers a guide to help readers learn how to question the beliefs and assumptions of others, spot faulty reasoning, and hold people accountable. He shows how individuals can analyze their own thoughts, ideas, and beliefs, and understand why others might have opposing views, and challenge those views using tools and ideas of critical thinking, such as argument, biases, context, diagramming arguments, evidence, and fallacies. He describes the methods of Socrates and the ancient Skeptics and how they can be applied to today's questions, and applications of the tools and methods to different answers to five key questions about what can be known, existence, the nature of humanity, ethics, and the afterlife, which reveal the core of a person's beliefs. Annotation c2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Christopher DiCarlo, PhD, (Guelph, Ontario) is an award-winning lecturer on bioethics and philosophy of science. He is a fellow, advisor, and board member of the Society of Ontario Freethinkers and the Center for Inquiry–Canada. He is a past visiting research scholar in the Stone Age Laboratory at Harvard University.