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The difficult truth that no one wants to acknowledge is that determining the truth when confronted with contradictory sources requires intelligence, critical th
by empath75 7y ago
The difficult truth that no one wants to acknowledge is that determining the truth when confronted with contradictory sources requires intelligence, critical thinking and education.
The reason the us was so vulnerable to fake news is that we’ve spent the last several generations educating our children to be compliant consumers that don’t question authority or use critical thinking skills.
The funny thing about this thread is I bet that half of the people think of very different things that the other half when they think of fake news.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y agoWhat's the difference between using your "intelligence, critical thinking and education" and using your bias?
- TeMPOraL 7y agoIntelligence, critical thinking and education are debiasing tools.
- ModernMech 7y agoDepends on the type of education, really. I know intelligent people (one who won 1st place at ISEF) who believe the Earth is 6000 years old thanks to their religious education. Or take me for example. I was raised to believe that Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492 and discovered America. End of story. Education gave me that bias. Then I went on to learn that the Civil War was fought over "state's rights". Education gave me that bias. So it seems to me some (most?) education is a bias inducing tool.
- Veen 7y agoBias and false beliefs aren't the same thing.
- ModernMech 7y agoThe sum of one's beliefs, false or otherwise, is one's bias.
- jpfed 7y agoIt is possible, though, to take a wrong idea- or even just a slightly incomplete impression- and use your intelligence to run very far with it. Amusing example: my son refused, for a couple years, to learn single-digit addition facts. He already understood that there was no limit to the number of integers, but since he didn't know that single-digit addition facts could be composed to add arbitrarily large numbers, he silently reasoned that the infinitude of integers doomed any attempt to learn addition. Everyone talking about specific addition problems was a chump! He just went on for a couple grades thinking everyone was stupidly wasting their time before we had a conversation that unearthed his reasoning. And that wasn't even starting with an incorrect belief- just some missing information. Imagine the sorts of explosions you could get yourself into starting with one of those and reasoning as far as you can with it!
- ska 7y agoIf you have those skills and are doing it right, it will lead you to change your thinking on things an appreciable amount of the time. Sometimes quite radically. Following your biases will never do this.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y agoBut how do you know that that is what you're actually doing? I don't think anyone can be truly objective.
- Veen 7y agoBecause there are rules of logic, reasoning, and evidence that are independent of your biases. You have to learn them and become skilled at applying them to sources of information (something that everyone should be learning in school).
- SketchySeaBeast 7y agoSo which particular logical heuristics would you apply to determining if a nation was in fact in recession, and what the causes of that recession were? The simple model works when you're dealing with proving that your cat is on fire, it's much harder when the topic gets complicated.
- empath75 7y agoComplicated topics that you know little about should entail a lot of uncertainty and that’s fine. Nobody needs to know everything about everything.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y agoBut then how are you supposed to make decision in regards to which political candidate has the best response to the problem?