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Comment by TameAntelope | Hacker News Reader

Much like the global economy made morality an infinitely complex problem (thanks The Good Place), the global Internet made digesting information equally as complex.

We don't equip people to do it through our education systems in America. What we're doing is sending millions of people out into the world, wholly unprepared to navigate it successfully, which leaves them vulnerable to manipulation and exploitation.

I don't personally blame Twitter. This is such a gigantic problem, that pinning it to a single source is just understating what's happening. If America wants to survive another 100 years, it will have to find a way to fix its "lack of critical thinking skills" problem in a way that flips the statistics, which is more or less impossible, without swift and decisive action to make large changes to how we educate our children.

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>We don't equip people to do it through our education systems in America.

Does the largely state run education system have an incentive to create critical thinkers?

Institutions trend towards group think. Credentials are granted by authorities. I'm not sure we can get there using the tools at hand.

Yes, the state has an incentive to create critical thinkers, the incentive is just obfuscated substantially from the average decision maker in "the state".

I don't believe so. The state by its nature wants to find equilibrium like practically every other system. One of the paths of least resistance is the manipulation of the public into an unthinking, docile, and generally inert individual. This makes everything much more predictable and controllable, which brings it closer to equilibrium.

You could intuit this sort of outcome, perhaps, from a reading of "Thinking, Fast and Slow". Humans don't really do well with probability, we want definitive binary outcomes that aren't reliant on probability. We want a quiet, well defined day to day. Politicians want the same thing (alongside a disproportionately large allotment of control and wealth in return). Want though, is the difficulty, because the reality is that the underpinnings of practically all human functions and the world in itself are fairly chaotic.

I think you're under the impression it's a noble goal in the name of progress, but [genuine] progress is disruptive in every field. That disruption breaks the equilibrium, and makes the quiet day a rather loud lifetime.

"May you live in interesting times."

The state is people. There is no difference between "the state" and "its people". If its people are manipulated, the state is manipulated itself.

The state wants compliance as much as the people want compliance, which is certainly one incentive, but it exists in parallel with other, competing incentives.

"The state" doesn't exist as an independent thinking body. I don't think it's healthy to treat it like it does.

I do agree though, the incentives are hidden, non-obvious. Progress is incentivized because it helps the state, and it helps the state because it helps the people.

I disagree with your premise. There has been a stratification of interests since the 70's which has isolated the state and has homogenized the state's interest with that of the elite echelon, they've intermingled to the point where they should be more accurately called the ruling class. Of course the body of the state as a whole is a different discussion, but the mind is what drives it forwards and is certainly interested, singularly, in maintaining current momentum and directionality over utilitarian or technological developments.

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