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> A 5 year old kid worried about climate change or anti-vaccination or abortion debate or any of the hot-button political issues is someone who has been brainw

> A 5 year old kid worried about climate change or anti-vaccination or abortion debate or any of the hot-button political issues is someone who has been brainwashed by their parents or environment. At a young age it is a parents and the community's role to shape their values. Brainwashing is a very harsh term. If taught correctly based on these values learned young it would make sense that they would come to a similar conclusion. I do admit however their is a fine line between teaching an opinion vs. teaching core values. For example, political affiliation in my opinion is not a value. However, the fundamental issues are. It is unfortunate that as a society the two are so closely intertwined which leads to a very binary choice and not insight and learning of the actual issues. Let's take vaccination. Teaching a child that it is important for their health could be constructive. However teaching a child that there are crazy people who who don't vaccinate their children would not be a lesson I would teach. If you instead stated that there are people with another point of view, but it currently lacks scientific evidence, but their is a possibility they are correct and we should have an open mind and continue to try to understand medicine and vaccinations would lead to a adult with an open mind who would make their own decisions without bias. In a decade we may have scientific proof that both sides had a point. In short, don't look for judgement, but understanding.

AstralStorm 8y ago
You would teach your kid to be accepting of any random belief anyone would ever have and to apply no filter? To engage with every ridiculous and proven wrong or not even wrong belief in the world? Tremendous waste of time and most importantly invalid way to approach current complexity of the world. You would get instantly tangled within insanity of you actually did that. Never learn anything because the opposite may in some alternate universe be true. Most people who progress open mind actually use availability heuristic instead or more complicated filters on top of that. At some point, you have to rely on at least pools of experts. There is no way anyone who isn't immortal can even come close to understanding enough about basic physics, biology, much less everything relevant to life. The world is too big and complex for that. How do you know who is an expert and even if they are one, when they're incorrect? That is a billion dollar plus question. As it is, for simple small area practical questions the proof is in doing. For complex and wide ranging ones? Who knows. Perhaps the most trustworthy experts are the ones who know their and the field's limits. But then, every field had its stages where it failed badly at interpreting world while everyone believed the predictions to be true and they were, given the context... Some multiple times. The rules I found is to distrust simplicity, simple explanations and prefer data with known methodology to credentials. Distrust higher order sources and especially direct opinions. (But not experience. That's data.)

AstralStorm 8y ago

You would teach your kid to be accepting of any random belief anyone would ever have and to apply no filter? To engage with every ridiculous and proven wrong or not even wrong belief in the world? Tremendous waste of time and most importantly invalid way to approach current complexity of the world. You would get instantly tangled within insanity of you actually did that. Never learn anything because the opposite may in some alternate universe be true. Most people who progress open mind actually use availability heuristic instead or more complicated filters on top of that. At some point, you have to rely on at least pools of experts. There is no way anyone who isn't immortal can even come close to understanding enough about basic physics, biology, much less everything relevant to life. The world is too big and complex for that. How do you know who is an expert and even if they are one, when they're incorrect? That is a billion dollar plus question. As it is, for simple small area practical questions the proof is in doing. For complex and wide ranging ones? Who knows. Perhaps the most trustworthy experts are the ones who know their and the field's limits. But then, every field had its stages where it failed badly at interpreting world while everyone believed the predictions to be true and they were, given the context... Some multiple times. The rules I found is to distrust simplicity, simple explanations and prefer data with known methodology to credentials. Distrust higher order sources and especially direct opinions. (But not experience. That's data.)