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The solution is good education. Teach children critical reading skills, i.e. question what you read, conduct a debate in your head rather than simply accepting
by blisterpeanuts 6y ago
The solution is good education. Teach children critical reading skills, i.e. question what you read, conduct a debate in your head rather than simply accepting it because it's the printed word.
Unfortunately, in the U.S. at least, children are not being taught to think critically. They barely have read a single book by the end of high school, let alone the panoply of the great classics. I know this for a fact; I have a high schooler currently finishing 9th grade and it seems as if her history and literature teachers are more focused on social justice topics than the grand pageant of Western culture. Too bad.
- lowdose 6y agoIt is the same in Europe where fallacies are only taught to the class prepped to go to universities. Almost as if logical thinking is preserved to a special kind of people. Critical thinking what I learned in the first year of university like Carl Popper and such should have been given to every child after writing. If children do not understand it is on the teachers that they do not get the point. More investment is maybe necessary in visuals, animations to put life into stories that are otherwise to abstract for kids to grasp.
- fossuser 6y agoIt's not just the kids, a lot of the teachers are terrible at critical thinking too. I suspect it's actually a minority of the population that does it at all in any capacity.
- lowdose 6y agoExactly but for many people it is an unknown unknown in this case and for the minority of people that are aware of this choose for a significant amount of time to exclude 90% of the population in this matter.
- mcphage 6y ago> are more focused on social justice topics than the grand pageant of Western culture What is the grand pageant of Western culture if not the rise of social justice for all?
- aswanson 6y agoI don't think education is enough. If people want to believe crazy things, they will. Back when I was on fb, there was an older guy who had a college degree in the classics and was sharing crazy gateway pundit articles and demonic, proto pizzagate Hillary memes. If it affirms your priors, people will believe almost anything.
- tootie 6y agoRead the headline. This guy worked at Google. He's not the only out there with a strong education and high IQ who has turned irrational.
- cmurf 6y agoMaybe his education was strong but vertical, and thus inadequate, leaving him susceptible to irrationality? At my university, the arts and sciences school had broad requirements: math, chemistry or physics, a language, history, humanities, and also a critical thinking requirement that could be fullfilled by specific classes: philosophy, logic/heuristics, political science, etc. Intro classes never qualified for the critical thinking requirement. Most of my friends were in the engineering school and got none of this. They could took only engineering related classes, they had no history or language requirement possibly not even an offering. All of them hated the single "non-engineering" class they had to take: writing. That was apparently as critical thinking as it got.
- aswanson 6y agoI've given up on humans in general being amenable to reason. If an obvious 2-bit incompetent conman can get 40 percent of the population to swear unwavering alliegance, the species has no chance. Dinosaurs lasted far longer, we're just too stupid as a collective.