"We really just need better public education"
I agree 100% as long as you put me, or people of my worldview, in charge of the curriculum and personnel.
I agree 100% as long as you put me, or people of my worldview, in charge of the curriculum and personnel.
While thought-policing media, schools, churches, and any other possible venue of "indoctrination" may "work" to a superficial extent, it mostly just completely destroys the credibility of your authority and leads to stunning implosion and destabilization. See: the Soviet Union.
Like it or not, you can't just beat "undesirable" views out of people, either with schools or social media moderation.
I don't know, I don't think we have actively tried yet.
You absolutely can. An example: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2012/sep/22...
Religion sucks, but Soviet Communism's anti-religious nature doesn't excuse its foibles.
That quality is also known as adaptability and it's crucial to successful survival and prosperity, for exactly the same reason that it's useful in mathematics: global optima are generally difficult to deduce, if they can be conclusively and authoritatively determined at all.
Saying Side X is "not being logical" or "can't think critically" is virtually always just a cop-out. It says you either a) don't understand or b) don't want to admit the validity of some of their concerns.
Most of the time when the other side's argument is understood, the disagreements are a matter of priority and/or credibility, not nonsensical thinking. And those priorities are usually determined intrinsically; values as such can't really be programmed or taught. They're the result of the years of experience each individual has endured in the real world.
A good example of this is that many engineers are known for a just-the-facts, no-frills approach. This is because engineers tend to prioritize facts and correctness over aesthetic and emotional value. Other people who don't do this aren't objectively wrong -- they just put different weights on the considerations, leading them to different conclusions.
Another example is outlet credibility. Your average Fox News viewer may believe that MSNBC is propaganda secretly dictated by the shadowy figures in the background, and vice versa. If you believe this, the logical conclusion is to dismiss or at least discount the perspective of the propagandist.
You cannot "prove" that one side is propaganda and the other side isn't, because it is impossible to definitely deduce the intentions and motives of other people. Reports that say reports from MSNBC were more frequently errant are of no value because you can just say "Oh yeah, says who? The same shadowy figures?" to that.
It is important to understand that humans hold a variety of totally non-falsifiable beliefs -- things that cannot be definitively proven one way or the other, even if you try, like the state of mind of the speakers we're around. These have to be approached from the subterranean to be understood, let alone addressed.
All we can do is understand that our own perspective is not the default or de-facto correct one, and that other people are entitled to their own assumptions and unfalsifiable opinions just as we are. They're entitled to their own credibility heuristics and decisions about who is worth trusting. People are free to make their own decisions and conclusions, whether we agree with them or not.
Understanding that is critical to learning that it's OK to disagree with people, without having to pretend that they're insane just to preserve your own ego and self-worth.
For opinions, perhaps. There are also people who reject facts. I don’t consider rejection of evolution or young-earth views as legitimate. Thus, those who cling to these views are empirically wrong.
Most people don't reject facts, they reject certain interpretations of facts.
For example, some people believed epilepsy came from evil spirits. They didn't deny that the person was shaking on the ground. They just had a different explanation for it than we do now.
When you build a runway for a plane or a long bridge, you do.
A model is not necessarily useful in all contexts. People still use the flat earth model in useful ways because it's simpler to assume the earth is flat in some situations. Of course, once you go beyond the capabilities of the flat earth model your numbers will wildly diverge into the realm of useless while the round or spherical models provide useful numbers for longer.
Appreciate the multiple snide attacks, though.
Is there not such a thing as conspiracy fact? Aren't some conspiracies, in fact, real? It seems both sides of the political aisle have pet conspiracy theories these days, so it's really hard for this to hold water anymore.
> people who don't understand facts
As another commenter said, people will usually agree on the clear and present facts, e.g., Donald Trump won the presidency. Where you'll find more disagreement is on rationale: either he won because he gave a voice to the discontented American working class, or he won because he worked in cahoots with Vladimir Putin to subvert American democracy.
People don't refuse to acknowledge the obvious state of affairs. They have different interpretations, based on different values and credibility heuristics, of the likely impetus for that state of affairs.
>people who are highly opinionated about things they don't understand, etc.
aka virtually everyone. How many of us know enough to hold our own with the experts in something that we're "highly opinionated" on? If we can in anything, it's very narrow. Are all of our other opinions invalid now? Humans use credibility heuristics to try to determine who is right about something, and then they follow based on that.
> are not behaving logically
I dunno, it sounds logical to me, at least in the practical sense. If we pretend we live in a world of infinite resources and time, you might be right, but considering the constraints of reality, the logical approach seems to be to have and express opinions in the moment according to one's best judgment, since everyone else is going to be doing that too. Just gotta try not to be too haughty about it.
> They can have valid concerns and still be behaving irrationally. You clearly think these are mutually exclusive but they aren't.
I agree someone can have a valid concern and also behave irrationally. I don't agree this is what you started out saying, though.
>Appreciate the multiple snide attacks, though.
No offense intended. Edit deadline is passed, but I wasn't thinking I put any such things in. My apologies if you felt I was being condescending or passive-aggressive.
Oh please, you think the average person has sufficient critical thinking skills to read the newspaper and pick out the parts that are "stretching the truth", use specious reasoning or various other logical fallacies, etc? You must roll with a different crew than I.
> Your average Fox News viewer may believe that MSNBC is propaganda secretly dictated by the shadowy figures in the background, and vice versa.
If they had critical thinking skills, wouldn't they be able to get a pretty decent handle on the degree to which they are propagandists?
It sounds to me like what you're saying is, most things within this realm are not knowable, except for the parts that are. The world is complex and confusing, but I don't think it's that confusing.
https://www.reddit.com/r/CBTS_Stream/
These 20,000 odd people unequivocally lack the type of critical thinking skills GP is referring to. I find it hard to believe that they are all under professional care. These people are straight out of The DaVinci Code, or National Treasure. They truly believe that they have uncovered a massive conspiracy to over throw the current American government, and they are organizing to stop it. Many subreddits choose a sort of mascot that defines their subredditors. For instance, people who subscribe to the tongue in cheek /r/evilbuildings are "6509 villains plotting", where they post pictures of buildings that have a nefarious apperance, no conspiracy in the comments. /r/CBTS_Stream has "21,333 Operators". As in mercenaries/militiamen. These people are rabid Trump supporters, seem to have a strong fundamentalist Christian bent, and appear to be extremely gullible and susceptible to any sort of theory that involves revenge upon the previous administration. They even have their own prophet, "Q". Everything from occult references, to nazis, to big pharma killing off holistic doctors, to arranging Trumps tweets into an 11x11 grid, and then playing word search to reveal a secret message. These people swear that Donald Trump's televised rallies are chock full of encoded messages and symbolism, both in what Trump is saying, and the clothes/posters of supporters in the background. These people buy toothpaste from Alex Jones, because it doesn't contain flouride. These people believe that all mainstream American history since the American Civil War is a lie created by the perpetrators of this current hoax these people have uncovered. They also believe that Trump has already secretly met with Kim Jong Un, and will soon unveil a world saving peace treaty, and that will "make the libs heads explode".
The truly sad part of this is that a lot of these people are also members of other subreddits dedicated to people who have escaped Mormonism, or Jehovah's Witnesses, or similar groups. So these people have already thrown off the shackles of psychological warfare once. But they believe now that they are "woke", and seem completely beyond talking down.
Good luck explaining to these people that they are being radicalized by Russians, or whoever. Good luck getting any of these people to not believe that any censorship is obvious proof that the sleuths are hot on the case, and that the global elite are silencing them.
And yet engineers are over-represented (compared to people with other degrees) amongst Creationists and conspiracy theorists and, I would guess, terrorists. I think engineers value simplicity and direct causation more than facts or correctness.
Education teaches critical thinking, science, history, numerical literacy, and the general skill and toolset to differentiate fact from falsehood, rhetoric, and manipulation-- regardless of where it is coming from.
Education is an immune system for the mind. Generally it is the manipulators who don't like an educated populace, because it decreases their power. They tend to be the ones labeling education as "indoctrination".
Right, in principle, it's agreed that "education" is "good knowledge" and "indoctrination" is "bad knowledge" and/or "fake news".
As long as you think that the inoculations being administered in the school system are valid, you'll call it education. Once you stop thinking that, you'll call it indoctrination.
So you're not really arguing anything. Every side calls training that biases you toward their preferred narrative "education" and training that biases in the opposite way "indoctrination". Is your point that "sometimes people disagree"?
This tends to last until someone realizes that an educational system is a wonderful indoctrination tool to advance their goals. Often enough this is followed by enacting that.
This isn't new. "Give me the child for the first seven years and I will give you the man."
People like you scare me.
I have a feeling a lot of people would have issues with this approach though.
Logical fallacies would be one place to start, you can see examples of this all day long on reddit for example.
I've been hearing claims of the need to teach "critical thinking" since I was in high school. To me it always came across as one of those things that can't easily be taught, particularly in a traditional academic setting. Everyone agrees it should be taught, but if there were a clear way of doing it, we would.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_logic
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-classical/
https://distancelearning.ubc.ca/courses-and-programs/distanc...
> If it's not being taught, then we'd need to do something differently.
When reading the news, forums, or overhearing conversations, do you not regularly encounter people who obviously have no significant skills in critical thinking?
Right. I took a logic class for my undergraduate degree. It's actually the source of the "modus" in my username. I guess to me that's a far cry from what people refer to as "critical thinking." Being able to identify textbook logical fallacies isn't the same thing as rationally and objectively forming a judgment about something.
It's certainly a helpful part, but I doubt most would remember it any better than geometry or 1800s history.
> When reading the news, forums, or overhearing conversations, do you not regularly encounter people who obviously have no significant skills in critical thinking?
I do, but it's rarely a clear-cut example of misunderstanding a logical fallacy. More often than not, it's the blind acceptance of supporting evidence while rejecting opposing evidence. Or assigning way too much value to a poorly-sourced news story. Or approaching the issue with a different worldview / values. Or any number of other biases that affect decision-making.
To be clear, though: I agree it's clearly not being taught. I'm just not convinced you can take a bunch of high schoolers, put them in a room, and after X weeks of doing something, they'll be critical thinkers. I agree you could probably teach them logical fallacies well enough to pass a test on them, but that's not the same thing.
If not, if critical thinking doesn't work, what could we do to improve this situation?
What country are you writing from, and could you give some specific examples?
But to be fair, the longer we get into the current era of politics, the harder it is to distinguish between earnestness and satire. Young people who watch the movie Network today don't see Howard Beale as satirical, because there are too many people like him today who are deadly serious.
Of course not.
> If not, if critical thinking doesn't work, what could we do to improve this situation?
I'm not sure "well-informed" and "critical thinking" are even relevant to each other, but putting that aside, I genuinely don't know. That's why I asked how you teach critical thinking.
It's possible people are bound to retreat to their biases and it's a futile effort. I'm just not convinced attempting to teach people "critical thinking" will work, because it hasn't.
Implying it's been tried, and failed.
Where has widespread teaching of critical thinking been tried?
> Public school teachers and administrators will tell you that one of the mandates of public education is to develop critical thinking skills in students. They believe that curricula are designed, at least in part, with this goal in mind. [1]
> Common Core, the federal curriculum guidelines adopted by the vast majority of states, describes itself as “developing the critical-thinking, problem-solving, and analytical skills students will need to be successful.” [2]
> Many teachers say they strive to teach their students to be critical thinkers. They even pride themselves on it; after all, who wants children to just take in knowledge passively? [3]
Are you willing to acknowledge educators / curricula commonly claim to teach critical thinking? To me it's always come across as something claimed to be taught pretty much everywhere. Yet we both seem to agree it's not working.
We could try teaching critical thinking differently and potentially meet some success, but that doesn't change how it's been claimed to have been taught for some time with poor results.
[1] http://argumentninja.com/public-schools-were-never-designed-...
[2] http://www.newsweek.com/youre-100-percent-wrong-about-critic...
[3] http://theconversation.com/lets-stop-trying-to-teach-student...
> Are you willing to acknowledge educators / curricula commonly claim to teach critical thinking?
I'm not in denial of some sort ffs, I'm frustrated at watching our society coming apart at the seams because the vast majority of the population seems to be incapable of intelligently reading a newspaper article, and will fall for seemingly any trick in the book.
Of the examples of "critical thinking education" listed above, do any remotely approach the critical thinking specific education I'm talking about here?: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16572861
People are absolutely inundated with propaganda nowadays, like no other time in history, with social media being the most powerful weapon by far. We are graduating our children and sending them intellectually defenseless into this new world, I don't know if the average human mind can be brought to a level sufficient to cope with the propaganda created by the world class experts in persuasion who are working for a variety of deep pocketed entities, but at least we could try.
Well no, but my claim wasn't that your suggestion has been tried. It's that other people have been claiming they've been teaching critical thinking for some time, and it's not working.
I agree it's a problem--I just don't think a class in logic will do it. I'm not sure it's teachable at all, and even if it is, I'm not sure those same skills won't be ignored the moment the argument questions one's identity or becomes emotional.
Is it worth trying? It's easy for me to say "sure," but it's not on me to implement, and I'm certainly not sure how to assess whether it'd be successful.
Of course this doesn't work when politics is taboo.
Take the same comment or opinion and air it among three friends in person (or a very tight social network). You only need to convince two or three people who likely trust and respect you already, and who are not inclined to want to spend an infinite number of hours debating such trivia across all time zones.
There is the perception that "the entire world" is watching you on the web, criticizing your every move, but that's not a fact.
Not every conversation has to become a burned bridges and salt the earth affair. If the other person is just trying to "win" then disengage from the argument. If the other person is arguing with you in good faith then maybe you're wrong or have something to learn from a new perspective.