The Course of Uncomfortable Ideas

This is a course designed to help college-age and adult students appreciate and even celebrate questioning the unquestionable, thinking the unthinkable, and facing reality head on, no matter what that reality is. It is a course about uncomfortable ideas.

• Learn how problematic our brains can be when it comes to reality
• Learn why entertaining uncomfortable ideas is so important
• Learn why we avoid uncomfortable ideas
• Learn why we refuse to accept uncomfortable facts
• Learn strategies that help facilitate reason and fight these cognitive biases that lead to poor decision making and irrational beliefs
• Hear over 100 uncomfortable ideas!

This is a course about uncomfortable ideas—the reasons we avoid them, the reasons we shouldn’t, and discussion of dozens of examples that might infuriate you, offend you, or at least make you uncomfortable.

Many of our ideas about the world are based more on feelings than facts, sensibilities than science, and rage than reality. We gravitate toward ideas that make us feel comfortable in areas such as religion, politics, philosophy, social justice, love and sex, humanity, and morality. We avoid ideas that make us feel uncomfortable. This avoidance is a largely unconscious process that affects our judgment and gets in the way of our ability to reach rational and reasonable conclusions. By understanding how our mind works in this area, we can start embracing uncomfortable ideas and be better informed, be more understanding of others, and make better decisions in all areas of life.