The book consists of 4 parts, addressing in sequence: (1) the meaning and requirements of cooperative and constructive communication as a starting point from which to judge the quality of communication, (2) logical fallacies and rhetorical tricks, including ‘red herring’ practices, (3) cognitive distortions and mental biases, containing a list and explanations of self- and memory-related and other biases; and (4) explanations of more than 40 “mtajicons” (mental emojis) —practical mental heuristics, the techniques that can either facilitate or hinder thinking, such as: Pareto’s principle, implicature, subtext, social construction, modus and dictum, interpretation, element and unit, the Overtone window, Occam’s rasor, second thinking, pragmatism in communication, ‘thick variable’, rule of thumb, etc. Most of entries are illustrated with life examples. The book is based on the experience accumulated over a series of more than 20 activities and practical schools on critical thinking and conflict transformation carried out by Eurasia Partnership Foundation in 2010-2025, and is published as a part of the EU-funded “Cultures of Peace” programme (2023–2025). After studying materials presented here, the readers should gain the ability to discern and deconstruct manipulative and malign communication, whether written or verbal, on-line or off-line, and to avoid such communication in their own practices. As the first comprehensive manual on critical thinking to appear in Armenian, the book will be useful to students, researchers, educators, as well as anyone seeking to develop their critical thinking skills in the 21st century, when mastery of this competence has become imperative.
