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Just fucking educate people on fact checking and elementary logic. Push for some lessons in high-school or whatever. Agreed, this is long overdue and the only

Just fucking educate people on fact checking and elementary logic. Push for some lessons in high-school or whatever. Agreed, this is long overdue and the only sustainable solution that isn’t just tyranny in waiting. The problem is that teaching critical thinking to kids makes them less prone to bing manipulated, and governments want people they can push and pull, as do advertisers, and so do a lot of parents even if they don’t realize it. When little Billy comes home and starts questioning his devout parents about inconsistencies in their religion, that’s enough for Billy’s parents to be against it. It’s not a hard thing to imagine either, just look at anti-evolution campaigning. I would guess that a majority of parents want kids that believe what they’re told by the parents regardless of merit. So it’s pushback from all sides, because so many people are strongly invested in manipulating each other. Critical thinking is like a broad spectrum antibiotic, insofar as you don’t really pick and choose what it acts against. From your and my perspective that’s the feature, but to a lot of people it’s the bug.

sdenton4 8y ago
On the other hand, when your best solution is 'educate everyone', you're pretty hosed. You're looking at like ten or twenty year horizon on the payoff (if it works at all), at which point we'll have an entirely different set of problems, perhaps exacerbated by our inability to deal with the problem at hand... (Also, come back when the teachers are paid appropriately.)
- Pharmakon 8y ago
  Competitive pay for teachers is a must, regardless of how we choose to approach the critical thinking aspect of things. You also don’t need to educate everyone, just a sufficient majority. As for the lag time, yeah of course it would take time, it took time to but the system in the first place. I would argue that whatever problems were facing by that time, a solid education and grounding in critical thinking skills would help. By contrast a pig-ignorant electorate that can be led by any group of random voices is always problematic.
munk-a 8y ago
The US is terrible at educating independent thinking, there are heavily religious curriculum being enforced in a few southern states and the government has backed off of viewing education as a funding priority. We need to change that because it's seriously impacting our ability to have a working democracy but... it has nothing to do with regulating Google & Facebook, both are news organizations and should be treated as such.

sdenton4 8y ago

On the other hand, when your best solution is 'educate everyone', you're pretty hosed. You're looking at like ten or twenty year horizon on the payoff (if it works at all), at which point we'll have an entirely different set of problems, perhaps exacerbated by our inability to deal with the problem at hand... (Also, come back when the teachers are paid appropriately.)

Pharmakon 8y ago
Competitive pay for teachers is a must, regardless of how we choose to approach the critical thinking aspect of things. You also don’t need to educate everyone, just a sufficient majority. As for the lag time, yeah of course it would take time, it took time to but the system in the first place. I would argue that whatever problems were facing by that time, a solid education and grounding in critical thinking skills would help. By contrast a pig-ignorant electorate that can be led by any group of random voices is always problematic.

munk-a 8y ago

The US is terrible at educating independent thinking, there are heavily religious curriculum being enforced in a few southern states and the government has backed off of viewing education as a funding priority. We need to change that because it's seriously impacting our ability to have a working democracy but... it has nothing to do with regulating Google & Facebook, both are news organizations and should be treated as such.