The World is Hiring: Chief Critical Thinking Officer (CCTO)
(An executive role for those who dare to ask “Wait… but why?”, before clapping.)
🔹 Core Skills Required:
· Radical Skepticism: Ability to question the unquestioned, challenge assumptions, and smell BS from three continents away. Bonus points if you can do it politely, but it’s not required.
· Cognitive Dissonance Management: Skilled in holding two contradictory ideas without exploding, weeping, or resorting to Twitter threads. Recognizes discomfort as the price of thinking.
· Logical Reasoning: From syllogisms to slippery slopes, you should know your fallacies better than your friends. If you misuse post hoc ergo propter hoc, you’re fired.
· Bullshit Detection (A.K.A. Epistemic Hygiene): Familiarity with the fine art of distinguishing between a well-argued perspective and a TED Talk in a Halloween costume.
· Philosophical Literacy: Can reference Socrates, Kant, or Simone Weil without name-dropping or misusing them like motivational quotes. Bonus: understands Hegel and still has a will to live.
· Information Forensics: Comfortable navigating data, spin, and curated narratives. Must be immune to infographic-induced persuasion.
· Ethical Clarity: Possesses a functioning moral compass not based on vibes or shareholder pressure. Able to make value judgments that transcend convenience.
· Linguistic Precision: Says what they mean. Means what they say. Fears buzzwords more than spiders.
· Pattern Recognition (and Un-Patterning): Not everything is a trend. Some things are just coincidences. Others are existential warnings. Know the difference.
· Intellectual Humility (without Intellectual Cowardice): Must be willing to be wrong. Must also be willing to tell others they are wrong. Ideally, in the same meeting.
🔹 Desired Traits:
- Comfortable being the least popular person in the room.
- Cannot be bribed by dopamine from likes or retweets.
- Thinks “devil’s advocate” is too easy and prefers to advocate for truth, even when it hurts.
- Understands that nuance is not weakness.
- Refuses to outsource thought to algorithms or groupthink.
- Look both ways before crossing a conclusion.
The pay? Existential discomfort and the occasional.
The perks? You sleep with a clear conscience … most nights.
The burden of borrowed truths sweeps us away and quietly drowns us in the flood of our unexamined beliefs.
This might be of interest:
You can read an excerpt from the book “Critical Thinking is Your Superpower” here:
