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At the same time education is encouraging people to not trust the mainstream. There's a lot of reasons for that, thanks to tabloids and seemingly credible paper
by mantas 8y ago
At the same time education is encouraging people to not trust the mainstream. There's a lot of reasons for that, thanks to tabloids and seemingly credible papers going bananas once in a while. So educated people do their own research. Which sometimes goes wrong.
For example, a lot of conspiracy theorists are educated people. Their research just took an interesting turn at one point or another.
@bachbach's example of pro-Soviet intellectuals is a good one as well. There was a similar downtown on the other side of the wall too. Quite a few anti-soviet dissidents turned into conspiracy theorists later on. In both cases, people were happy to rebel and look for alternatives and their education did help them. But eventually their curiosity took them too far.
- jesseendahl 8y agoTruly effective education involves teaching people how to do their research in a way that stresses objectivity and apply a high degree of scrutiny to any argument. It gives people a toolkit for critical thinking, and how to assess the quality of one argument against another. We don't just need education, we education that places a renewed emphasis on critical thinking skills. This is an interesting article on this topic: http://www.apa.org/ed/precollege/ptn/2017/05/fake-news.aspx http://www.apa.org/ed/precollege/ptn/2017/05/fake-news.aspx
- mantas 8y agoYup. But some people think that education would make people flock back to mainstream media and listening to talking heads. Which is not going to happen. And that's good. Once you start evaluating arguments and doing your own research, a lot of difference opinions emerge. Which sometimes are labeled as fake news, even though they're not truly fake. If everyone did assess all news, most crazy fake news would be gone. Which is awesome. But many of non-mainstream opinions that technically are not fake would survive. Which is good too in my books, but some people wouldn't agree.