About and disclaimer
CritThinker is a critical-thinking app run by Scott Cook, in the UK. The scam check and each week’s Monday Trickle case are free. The rest of Trickle, the casebook and the back catalogue are in a 10-day free trial, then £4.99 a month or £39 a year.
CritThinker was formerly called CriticalThinker.
What the badges mean
- Well attested. The sentence is securely the author’s, in their own language, or a close standard translation of a specific passage.
- Paraphrase or translation. The thought is in the source, but the English is a translation, a freer rendering, or a shortened form of a longer passage.
- Summary. A short restatement of the argument, not a sentence the person wrote. Shown without quotation marks, and left out of the misquote game.
- Questionable. There is a real doubt: the wording is late, the book’s authorship is disputed, or the line is only an anecdote.
- Misattributed. The familiar sentence was not said or written by this person. The note names a better source when there is one. These are here as lessons in checking.
Interpretations
“What it’s commonly taken to mean”, the two applications, and “Understand the philosophy” are short, common readings for study. They are not definitive commentaries, not a full account of scholarly disagreement, and not a substitute for the book. Where specialists split, the note tries to say so. Where a rendering is freer than it looks, the badge says paraphrase.
Not advice
CritThinker is an educational tool. It is not professional, medical, legal, or psychological advice, and it is not a crisis service. Stoic and Buddhist lines about worry or death are philosophy, not treatment. If you are in despair or thinking about suicide, please speak to someone who can help you now. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans are free to call on 116 123, at any time.
Your data
The scam check needs no account. A membership keeps the rest of your practice with you. Saved quotations also stay in this browser until you clear them. The public site is indexed: robots.txt allows crawling, and a sitemap lists the pages.