7 ms·
Well a hell of a lot of academics who claim to be critical thinkers didn't critically think about their own bias in this election. Critical thinking is not a s
by ThomPete 10y ago
Well a hell of a lot of academics who claim to be critical thinkers didn't critically think about their own bias in this election.
Critical thinking is not a shield against your own bias.
- splawn 10y ago>Critical thinking is not a shield against your own bias. You are correct, it is not, but at least it acknowledges that biases are there. Most people don't even know what personal biases are to begin with.
- ThomPete 10y agoBut it isn't and this election proved exactly the opposite of what you claim.
- splawn 10y ago<But it isn't Re-read the comment you responded to. I agreed with you. What is it that you think I am claiming? My only claim (admittedly that I am aware of) is that fake news would have a harder time having impact in a climate where people practiced more critical thinking than they do currently.
- ThomPete 10y agoMy claim is that fake news aren't important in shaping peoples opinions. People are not going to change their views based on news.
- dsjoerg 10y agoshaping opinion != changing views. fake news helps in reinforcing views already held, which matters.
- ThomPete 10y agoMatters to what?
- splawn 10y agoDemocracy (Not speaking for GP... Just a reminder that that is the context of what we are talking about)
- ThomPete 10y agoIn what way?
- splawn 10y agoAre you not following this thread? We are talking about critical thinking wrt democracy. We got on this tangent because the first comment paraphrased the Jefferson quote: "If we are to guard against ignorance and remain free, it is the responsibility of every American to be informed."
- ThomPete 10y agoI am following the thread, and you aren't answering the question.
- dougmany 10y agoIf the news said this person murders puppies for fun, most people would close their mind to the possibility of voting for them.
- ThomPete 10y agoI am assuming we are having this discussion on a more elevated level that obvious absurdities. But even if you want to go down that road that I am pretty sure that there would be plenty of self correction happening unless you decided to stay isolated from the rest of the world right after you read that. Thats obviously not whats happening at all.
- dougmany 10y agoSo what is the middle ground between these two absurdities? Parent said it does not matter. I am saying it is possible that it does matter.
- ThomPete 10y agoIt doesn't matter _enough_. You have any sources what so ever that proves that misinformation actually made Trump president?
- splawn 10y agoForgive me if I am wrong... but didn't his political momentum mainly start with his very public lead role in the "birther movement"? "Global Warming is a Chinese Hoax" "Ted Cruiz's father killed JFK" "Obama and Hillary founded ISIS" Is it even possible to separate that man from misinformation? Edit: I have anecdotal "evidence" that some of his voters where swayed by this stuff from conversations I have had with Trump supporters. While that isn't enough to make the claim that misinformation is the sole cause of his election (a claim btw, that I have not seen made on this thread.. you are the one that brought it up), it does show me that its impact was greater than 0.
- 10y ago
- guelo 10y agoWhat does this mean? What biases are you talking about?
- splawn 10y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases EDIT: I had assumed this is what we were talking about, excuse my own biases, lol :D
- chongli 10y agoI am not ThomPete but if I had to guess, it's PC bias that blinded many to the potential of this outcome. Perhaps most glaring of these biases is the idea that all women should demonstrate solidarity for their gender and vote for a woman, even if it means voting against their own best interests and the interests of their communities. I don't see too many people calling that for what it really is: sexism.
- guelo 10y agoIf you're talking about the pollsters, which are not necessarily academics (bias much?), it seems like a stretch to say that making a prediction of a complicated future event based on statistical techniques is due to a lack of critical thinking. Their prediction models will have to be adjusted, sure. But all the people that were "proven" right because their intuition happened to match the outcome are using a much worse critical thinking technique. Also, Clinton won women 54% to 42%.
- chongli 10y agoNo, I'm talking about all the columnists who openly refer to that 42% as traitors to their gender.
- ern 10y agoNo, I'm talking about all the columnists who openly refer to that 42% as traitors to their gender. I did a Google search (ironic, I know) for "Trump traitor gender" and I couldn't find columnists referring to Trump-voting women as traitors to their gender. Maybe I didn't look hard enough, but I think this illustrates the sort of problem we are faced with
- tzm 10y agoI agree and wish there were more 'viewpoint diversity' in academia, in addition to gender, racial, and cultural diversity. Social sciences should allow for more freedom of thought without fear of being ostracized. There is a reason why academia is a polarizing environment: personal ideologies of social psychologists can influence how the topic is studied. As such, for example, conservatives have little influence in the scholarly disciplines. Less that 10% of professors in these fields identify as conservative [1]. I hope more institutions can look at viewpoint diversity more closely [2]. [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-social-science-politically-biased/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-social-science... [2] http://heterodoxacademy.org/2015/09/10/welcome-to-heterodoxacademy/ http://heterodoxacademy.org/2015/09/10/welcome-to-heterodoxa...
- ern 10y agoIf by "bias" you mean the systemic blindness against the polling data showing the possibility of a Trump win, I agree with you. But if you are implying that having a strongly-held political opinion is "bias", then I disagree. The idea that academics, or anyone else should be perfectly neutral (if that's your implication) doesn't really make sense.
- ThomPete 10y agoWhat I am saying is that critical thinking in itself as OP seemed to claim isn't a solution. That's all really.
- splawn 10y agoIdk if you write code or not, but if you don't think critical thinking is good in general when dealing with unknowns (such as when making a decision on a democratic vote), then I bet your debug sessions are hilarious to observe.
- ThomPete 10y agoBecause the kind of critical thinking thats required for coding is the same as the one required for discussing politics? Care to back that idea up? Critical thinking isn't some magic sauce that once you learn it it allow you to approach everything with that. You still need experience and to build up an intuition about where and how to apply it in a given situation.
- splawn 10y agoI don't know about "magic sauce", but I do my best to apply it to everything I can.... Critical thinking is about as generalized as you can get. The definition google spits out is: "the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgment." Im curious... when would you not try to apply critical thinking when making a decision?
- 10y ago
- anigbrowl 10y agoTrue critical thinking involves the frequent re-examination of one's starting premises in the light of new input. Every time I gain some new insight or information, I become that much more likely to question my basic assumptions about, well, anything. It is a great error, upon finding a demonstrably correct solution to a problem, to assume that its correctness is everlasting. If it later turns out that the conclusion was correctly reasoned from incomplete information, it is all too easy to reject new and contradictory information because it would invalidate the conclusion, even though the conclusion in question was drawn without access to the new information.