The Thinking Project’s goal is to teach young people, one small group at a time, how to resist fallacies, embrace complexity, acknowledge uncertainty and to remain open to being wrong–in short, how to think.
Did you know?
- False stories are 70% more likely to be retweeted than true ones.
- People who are good at math make more mistakes when the problem they’re solving proves a point they don’t like.
- Holding a heavy clipboard or sitting in a hard chair can impact the decisions you make in an interview or a negotiation.
- Your position on climate change can likely be deduced by knowing your beliefs about gun control, despite the fact that the two issues have nothing to do with one another.
- Multiple studies confirm that, even when people are given facts that contradict their views, their initial beliefs only deepen.
What does all this tell us? That the human brain has a great capacity for irrationality and self-deception. Only awareness of that fact can help us combat it. But what’s sobering is that American education is often contributing to the problem by substituting ideology for thinking.
What You Will Get from the Course
- A blueprint--created by you--for a long-term project that can impact some corner of the world that matters to you. This could be anything--a social science experiment design, an outline for a movie script, a theory of leadership, an idea for a podcast series, a proposed Constitutional Amendment. Your passion will be your guide.
- Deep and satisfying discoveries—ways of thinking about the world that are not dependent on ideological shortcuts.
- Knowledge about an array of topics including cognition, evolution, decision-making, game theory, social psychology, economics, narrative, ideology and the scientific method.
- Life-long relationships and professional contacts.
- A certificate of course-completion that can be sent to colleges or organizations with which you’d like to intern/work.
- Talks plus Q&A sessions from prominent people in various professions and vocations.
- A personalized recommendation letter from your teacher for college and/or employment.
This is Not Recycled High School
The Thinking Project knocks down the artificial barriers between disciplines. The world doesn’t divide itself into English-, math-, science- and history-realities, and thus neither will we.
The Thinking Project is not debates, multiple-choice tests and five-paragraph essays. This course will invigorate you, help you to see with new eyes. No performing answers scripted for you by the teacher. Just serious questions and careful, openminded exploration.
Via reading, experiments, games and deep conversation, we will build together a foundation for thinking. Our sessions will be visited by some of the most insightful thinkers in the world, and you will have a chance to ask them how they do what they do.
In-Class Guests, 2021
Economist at Harvard University
Futurist, Economist
Counterterrorism Expert
Dir. of Performance St. Louis Cardinals
Author
Health Care Investor
Freelance Journalist
Digital Marketing Specialist
What You Will Get from the Course
- Deep and satisfying discoveries—ways of thinking about the world that are not dependent on ideological shortcuts.
- Knowledge about an array of topics including cognition, evolution, decision-making, game theory, social psychology, economics, narrative, ideology and the scientific method.
- Life-long relationships and professional contacts.
- A certificate of course-completion that can be sent to colleges or organizations with which you’d like to intern/work.
- Talks plus Q&A sessions from prominent people in various professions and vocations.
- A personalized recommendation letter from your teacher for college and/or employment.
Tools for truth-seeking and problem-solving that you don’t learn in high school.
“The Thinking Project’s goal is to teach young people, one small group at a time, how to resist fallacies, embrace complexity, acknowledge uncertainty and to remain open to being wrong–in short, how to think.”