Check the Assertion
Distinguish being marketed to from being given an argument — and verify before you repeat
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 90%
Schmidt's answer to what an eighteen-year-old should learn is analytical critical thinking, and he defines it operationally rather than abstractly. The first and most important move is distinguishing between being marketed to — which he equates with being lied to — and being given the argument to evaluate yourself. The practical habit is to check plausible-sounding assertions rather than believing them because friends do, and to accept a personal responsibility not to repeat anything you have not verified. The underlying test is falsifiability: science is trustworthy because people constantly try to prove it wrong.
Origin
Schmidt built the habit over his years at Google, where whenever someone said something he would check it — and he now sees it as the defining skill in a world where AI enables perfect misinformation.
Core principles
- 01Being marketed to is a form of being lied to.
- 02Plausibility is not evidence — plausible-sounding claims are exactly what spread.
- 03Falsifiability is what makes an assertion checkable.
- 04AI will allow for perfect misinformation, which raises the value of the habit.
How to run it
- 1
Separate marketing from argument
Ask whether you are being handed a conclusion to accept or the reasoning to evaluate yourself.
Watch out Social media conditions people to believe claims because their friends do.
- 2
Check plausible claims
When someone says something that sounds plausible, look it up rather than absorbing it.
Pro tip Schmidt's worked example: the widely-repeated claim that only 10% of Americans have passports is false — the real figure is higher.
- 3
Decide whether to correct
Having checked, make a deliberate call about whether to correct the person or let it go.
- 4
Don't repeat what you can't verify
Treat repeating a claim as taking responsibility for it; if you cannot distinguish true from false, stay quiet.
Pro tip A society cannot be run without people operating on basic shared facts.
- 5
Learn to build as well as check
Pair the thinking skill with a practical one — Schmidt recommends learning Python, the language AI systems write code in, and building something like a game using model APIs.
Pro tip Give a model a picture and ask what is in it via an API call — the tools are available to build something new.
Watch out The claim that AI writing code makes coding a dying art is, in Schmidt's words, not correct.
In the wild
Schmidt cites the widely believed but false claim that only 10% of Americans hold passports as the model of an assertion you can simply check.
→ A concrete demonstration that plausible, repeated claims often fail the most basic verification.
Schmidt explains TikTok as a Las Vegas one-armed-bandit algorithm that serves what you signal you want plus occasional adjacent content, pulling users into confirmatory rabbit holes.
→ Unhappy users get an environment of unhappy content, in some cases contributing to self-harm — which is why critical thinking matters more, not less.
Common mistakes
Believing because your friends believe
Social consensus substitutes for verification, which is precisely the mechanism misinformation exploits.
Is it for you?
Best for
Students, professionals and parents navigating algorithmic media and AI-generated content.
Not ideal for
Contexts requiring instant decisions where verification is impossible before acting.
From the transcript
“the first and most important thing about critical thinking is to to distinguish between being marketed to which is also known as being lied to…”
“you have a responsibility before you repeat something to make sure what you're repeating is true and if you can't distinguish between true and false…”
From the episode
Ex Google CEO: AI Is Creating Deadly Viruses! If We See This, We Must Turn Off AI! They Leaked Our Secrets At Google!
Eric Schmidt