Dangerous Memes Summary And Analysis

In class, we discussed more leadership theories as it pertains to intellectual thought process through learning analytical skills, creative/critical thinking, and avoiding analytical pitfalls. This paper will discuss if people are more susceptible to extremist thoughts and behaviors based on today’s time with current information. While using the information learned in class. I believe that people are susceptible to extremist thoughts because of where people are currently at in the environment we have created technologically. In the TED talks video Dangerous memes by Philosopher and cognitive scientist Dan Dennet, Dennet explains what memes are and dissects there negative and also positive effect in society. Dennet explains memes through the

In today’s world, many communication is done through social media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. With the vast technological era, we are able to communicate with other people across the globe in seconds through the wonders of the internet. However, there is a bad side to this. As Dennet explains that memes are the passing of information to another person. In our society we are free to speak what we want and the internet allows us such freedom. The internet is considered to be laissez-faire. Many things happen on the internet. Dennet explains that in our free society we let ideas roam free. But other people in different cultures take these ideas in the wrong fashion. (Dennet, 2002)

Levitin explains that when people learn something they tend to hold onto the information learned regardless of the contradiction of vast evidence. (Levitin, 2016) Critical thinking plays a huge part into how we understand and analyze new information. The lesson in class defines critical thinking as a mental process that is subject to influences that shows a person’s views and their reasoning. This can viewed through different biases and fallacies. A fallacy in the text is a deceptive or misleading argument found through false reasoning. A bias is a thought out belief on someone or something. In the TED talk from Diane Benscoter, an ex-Moonie who explains how cults rewire the brain through memes explains how people are susceptible to ideas based on the environment and the ideas they are in. From her personal story, she explains that as a young women she had been taken into the views of a cult. There ideas were that through religion her complex questions to the world were easy to fix through their ways. Benscoter had fallen into the fallacy that if she followed the teachings and practices of the Moonies that her problems she had conceived would be fixed (Benscoter, 2009). That’s how she was able to rationalize her concepts. She had an organizational and cognitive bias towards these beliefs. Until she was able to analyze the discrepancies in this