Critical Thinking Biases

The meta-collection of cognitive biases that specifically distort, undermine, or corrupt the practice of critical thinking itself. These are not ordinary biases that affect any judgment, but biases that attack the very tools we use to think clearly about bias. They include the bias to consider one's own thinking "critical" while dismissing others' as biased, the bias to apply skeptical standards asymmetrically (strictly to views one dislikes, leniently to views one favors), the bias to treat "critical thinking" as a label one claims rather than a practice one performs, and the bias to mistake cynicism for critique. Critical Thinking Biases are what happens when people weaponize the language of reason against reason itself—using "just asking questions" to spread doubt, demanding "evidence" only from opponents, treating one's own unexamined assumptions as "first principles." They are the pathologies of the proudly rational.

Example: "He thought he was immune to bias because he was a 'critical thinker'—but his Critical Thinking Biases meant he applied skepticism only to views he already distrusted, never to his own."

Critical Thinking Biases by Dumu The Void March 13, 2026