7 ms·

While it wasn't that hard, general public does not know where to even look for primary or even preliminary evidence. Much less how to evaluate the densely writt

While it wasn't that hard, general public does not know where to even look for primary or even preliminary evidence. Much less how to evaluate the densely written papers. So in the end it is reliant on science communicators, and there is enough people who are either bad at it, fake it or altogether evil and misrepresenting scientific evidence for it to fail. You always will have some authority needed as you have to be able to read really well and a lot of practice with the specific field to handle the outputs of science.

konjin 6y ago
In the middle ages multiplication was a skill that was taught at universities. Somehow we now teach it to 7 year olds. The reason why we haven't done the same for critical thinking is that the people in charge won't be if we had a citizenry which could think logically. Case in point: NYC and SF have the worst homelessness problem of any city despite being in the hands of the party that keeps saying they are for the poor. That you now have dozens of reasons lined up in your head why it's not their fault despite having the power to solve it for decades and should be let off the hook is the lack of critical thinking in American education at work.
- AstralStorm 6y ago
  The bigger problem is that in many fields, even if you can read and understand the paper, it is not actionable, much less verifiable by you. It may be incomplete, hide an asterisk as some other branch may mention, or be altogether written as to be unverifiable. The last bit is especially common in the most important but soft sciences like psychology, sociology, economy, history or anthropology... Or worse, it may be in principle verifiable but only at high expense, or the results of the analysis are incomplete or buried.
  - ntsplnkv2 6y ago
    Reading cutting edge papers is not something the layman can do, it's a waste of time. This is why we have things like the CDC offer guidelines, taking into account the changes and growth in our knowledge base. Knowledge is collected and verified over time and eventually becomes distilled in easy to understand ways to the public.
- XorNot 6y ago
  Remember to vote Republican! This is a rich take coming from anyone living in the US. It's a two party system - the failure of the party partially aligned with your views does not and has never made voting for the party expressly against your views the correct outcome. This is you telling people to think critically while failing to think critically (because it suits the politics you want to advocate for).
  - konjin 6y ago
    > Remember to vote Republican! In NYC and SF? Sure. Or Greens, Independents, Socialists, anyone but Democrats. I'd be giving the same advice to anyone from Alabama about voting not Republican. Politics isn't about good and evil, it's about who gets what. If people who keep failing to give you what you want keep getting your vote they will keep doing what they were doing.
    - runsWphotons 6y ago
      Alabama has one of the lowest homelessness rates in the country. What's wrong with Alabama? :)
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
  - ulucs 6y ago
    It's a two party system because everyone in US tries their hardest to keep it a two party system. Every election is the most important one ever, so there are "no options". Instead of this, you can stop acting myopic towards elections and punish your party (vote the other one, 3rd party, or even write-in Bernie Sanders/Ron Paul) and force the political powers to answer accordingly if they want your vote for the next time.
    - XorNot 6y ago
      You do not understand your own country's electoral system. Question: in a first past the post electoral system, what happens if the vote between two parties in a three party election is split 35% and 20%? Does either party take power? Do any of their candidates take power? NO. The other party wins - with 45% of the vote. EVERY TIME. Third parties in the US literally cannot win, unless some mysterious outcome hands them an immediate largest share of the vote. Which isn't going to happen in one electoral cycle, which means the ascendancy of such a party has to involve decades of losses for whichever party they accidentally poach more voters from each cycle.
- wisty 6y ago
  What do you mean by "Critical Thinking"? If something can be explicitly explained, it can be taught. But a lot of people who want "critical thinking" just seem to think "I wish people weren't stupid and would all agree with me".
  - konjin 6y ago
    Second and higher order cognition. For starters realizing that what people in power say and what they do are very different. Preferably for their own side first because I am really sick of predicting what the next 4 years will be like, being called shill, having that prediction borne out and then being told that it was actually impossible for anything else to happen from the start.
  - vengefulduck 6y ago
    This may not be what the parent meant, but I think teaching logical reasoning in grade school would be a good first step. Understanding logical arguments and fallacies would go a long way to having a more informed, and less gullible populace.
    - watwut 6y ago
      I dont think it is nearly enough. Mostly because of my experience with how people who fancy "facts and logic", but dont know much else end up arguing. The knowledge itself matters. The ability to see when is the statement subtly exaggerating what facts say, so that one can use it in manipulative "logical" claim matters great deal. The ability to understand nuance matters a lot too. So does the ability to deal with bad actors in discussion, to understand motivations of whoever wrote this or that document matters.
    - unishark 6y ago
      I totally think we should be teaching logical fallacies and such in schools. Along with basic ethics (as in the various competing schools of thought). But in fairness to the average person, scammers have to play big numbers games to find suckers and pick weaker targets like elderly because the average person isn't that incapable of critical thinking.
- eevilspock 6y ago
  You're making the assumption that either party can solve homelessness simply by being in power. Homelessness is a deeper problem that requires cultural change. It's not simply an economic problem. For example, when I lived in Taiwan in the early 90s there was nary a homeless person. That's not because Taiwan's government had a better social net, nor was it because Taiwan . It was simply because in Taiwan's culture it was unheard of for anyone to let anyone else in their family go homeless. That in America people could have a homeless sibling or child or parent was almost unfathomable. I'm not suggesting America adopt Taiwan's culture. But I am saying American culture's hyper-individualistic sink-or-swim culture has consequences. It's only in the context of such a culture that the neoliberal Democratic party appears "left", when in fact it is quite center if not center-right.
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    > You're making the assumption that either party can solve homelessness simply by being in power. There are several obvious ways of doing this, from "just build more homeless shelters" to a UBI to less restrictive zoning so that people aren't priced out of housing etc. But these all cost money or political capital, so we see where the priorities are. > It's only in the context of such a culture that the neoliberal Democratic party appears "left", when in fact it is quite center if not center-right. This is old talking point that might have been true in 1994: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/interactives/political-polarization-1994-2017/ https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/interactives/political-... Unless you're talking about what they do instead of what they say they're going to do. Then you might still be correct.
    - eevilspock 6y ago
      > Unless you're talking about what they do instead of what they say they're going to do. Yes. That’s my point about culture. There’s a reason racism and sexism still dominate despite a constitution that has said “all men are created equal” for nearly 250 years and then clarifying amendments 150 and 100 years ago. It’s the culture. Both problems could have been vanquished long ago if they were truly priorities in people’s hearts. But there are not. American culture, both liberal and conservative subcultures, always put self-interest ahead of common good when the chips are down. Your link speaks of liberal vs conservative. Talk to any true leftist: Liberal != Left. See “neoliberalism”. See the nomination of Biden by the Dems. See Diane Feinstein continuing to be California’s senior senator. Etc. See the amount of wealth inequality just within the liberal subset of the population. New York has the most segregated school system of any big city despite being liberal, and then look at the backlash by liberals over attempts to desegregate both in NYC and SF. I could go and on.
- godelski 6y ago
  > The reason why we haven't done the same for critical thinking is that the people in charge won't be if we had a citizenry which could think logically. I think this is only true because people think its true. There's plenty of PhD holding scientists that still participate in tribal politics. There's also plenty that are smart in their field and nothing more. This was logic that was used in the past and every time we've educated people the elite haven't lost their positions of power. But everyone's lives have increased in quality, I mean we don't use the streets of London as a sewer.
- watwut 6y ago
  > In the middle ages multiplication was a skill that was taught at universities. Somehow we now teach it to 7 year olds. I think that this is [citation needed] category. Actually in both ways, my kids were not taught multiplication as 7 years old. At that age, they were still doing additions in school.
passivate 6y ago
>While it wasn't that hard, general public does not know where to even look for primary or even preliminary evidence. Much less how to evaluate the densely written papers. I feel like its much worse than that. All of current research is very specialized. I am not a scientist but I do work in vaccines. After having worked for the past eight years in this field, I feel I can generally get the gist of scientific articles/papers, and understand if its something useful or junk - but only in my niche areas. Outside of that, I'm pretty much your average Joe.
- xiphias2 6y ago
  Vaccines (especially mRNA vaccines) are not a bad field to be an expert in. As an example I have chronic sinusitis without polyps which totally destroys my quality of life, while I can probably live with it for a long time. I’m looking at the successful cystic fibrosis inhaled vaccine trials that looks like a great way to help the cells produce missing proteins. I’m hoping for similar treatments to be available in the near future, and I have some money that I would happily use to invest / donate in a chronic sinusitis vaccine development, but so far I see only biologics trials that are probably much slower to go through because of the greater toxicity. Actually your knowledge is enough for you to have an edge over other people in investing in biotech companies.
  - passivate 6y ago
    Well vaccines as a field is super-mega broad, there are so many pure research sub-disciplines one can choose to be an expert on due to the intersection of medicine/immunology/chemistry/biology. And even those are super broad themselves. From an applied sciences standpoint again there are various disciplines depending on the particular vaccine technology - fermentation, protein purification, conjugation chemistry, formulation, drug delivery, etc, etc, etc. From an analytical chemistry/biology standpoint there are dozens more fields that come into the picture when testing. You can spend years and decades in any of these niche fields and still not probe the depths of our accumulated knowledge. And once you have a product, you get into the regulatory domain - finding the quickest and shortest path to the market - which is its own nightmare. I don't know much about the particulars of the vaccine you are referring to, but when it comes to investing, I think it is always safe to assume that all major investing firms have ready access to SMEs that can give them the scoop on any company they're interested in.
Ambolia 6y ago
The general public could choose to inform themselves through alternative institutions that got it correctly in the first place. But this is disincentiviced and labeled as conspiracy theories.
- czzr 6y ago
  What alternative institutions?
vagrantJin 6y ago
> You always will have some authority needed as you have to be able to read really well and a lot of practice with the specific field to handle the outputs of science. In other words, prophets, pastors and priests. The conflation of academia and science is starting to grate.

konjin 6y ago

In the middle ages multiplication was a skill that was taught at universities. Somehow we now teach it to 7 year olds. The reason why we haven't done the same for critical thinking is that the people in charge won't be if we had a citizenry which could think logically. Case in point: NYC and SF have the worst homelessness problem of any city despite being in the hands of the party that keeps saying they are for the poor. That you now have dozens of reasons lined up in your head why it's not their fault despite having the power to solve it for decades and should be let off the hook is the lack of critical thinking in American education at work.

AstralStorm 6y ago
The bigger problem is that in many fields, even if you can read and understand the paper, it is not actionable, much less verifiable by you. It may be incomplete, hide an asterisk as some other branch may mention, or be altogether written as to be unverifiable. The last bit is especially common in the most important but soft sciences like psychology, sociology, economy, history or anthropology... Or worse, it may be in principle verifiable but only at high expense, or the results of the analysis are incomplete or buried.
- ntsplnkv2 6y ago
  Reading cutting edge papers is not something the layman can do, it's a waste of time. This is why we have things like the CDC offer guidelines, taking into account the changes and growth in our knowledge base. Knowledge is collected and verified over time and eventually becomes distilled in easy to understand ways to the public.
XorNot 6y ago
Remember to vote Republican! This is a rich take coming from anyone living in the US. It's a two party system - the failure of the party partially aligned with your views does not and has never made voting for the party expressly against your views the correct outcome. This is you telling people to think critically while failing to think critically (because it suits the politics you want to advocate for).
- konjin 6y ago
  > Remember to vote Republican! In NYC and SF? Sure. Or Greens, Independents, Socialists, anyone but Democrats. I'd be giving the same advice to anyone from Alabama about voting not Republican. Politics isn't about good and evil, it's about who gets what. If people who keep failing to give you what you want keep getting your vote they will keep doing what they were doing.
  - runsWphotons 6y ago
    Alabama has one of the lowest homelessness rates in the country. What's wrong with Alabama? :)
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- ulucs 6y ago
  It's a two party system because everyone in US tries their hardest to keep it a two party system. Every election is the most important one ever, so there are "no options". Instead of this, you can stop acting myopic towards elections and punish your party (vote the other one, 3rd party, or even write-in Bernie Sanders/Ron Paul) and force the political powers to answer accordingly if they want your vote for the next time.
  - XorNot 6y ago
    You do not understand your own country's electoral system. Question: in a first past the post electoral system, what happens if the vote between two parties in a three party election is split 35% and 20%? Does either party take power? Do any of their candidates take power? NO. The other party wins - with 45% of the vote. EVERY TIME. Third parties in the US literally cannot win, unless some mysterious outcome hands them an immediate largest share of the vote. Which isn't going to happen in one electoral cycle, which means the ascendancy of such a party has to involve decades of losses for whichever party they accidentally poach more voters from each cycle.
wisty 6y ago
What do you mean by "Critical Thinking"? If something can be explicitly explained, it can be taught. But a lot of people who want "critical thinking" just seem to think "I wish people weren't stupid and would all agree with me".
- konjin 6y ago
  Second and higher order cognition. For starters realizing that what people in power say and what they do are very different. Preferably for their own side first because I am really sick of predicting what the next 4 years will be like, being called shill, having that prediction borne out and then being told that it was actually impossible for anything else to happen from the start.
- vengefulduck 6y ago
  This may not be what the parent meant, but I think teaching logical reasoning in grade school would be a good first step. Understanding logical arguments and fallacies would go a long way to having a more informed, and less gullible populace.
  - watwut 6y ago
    I dont think it is nearly enough. Mostly because of my experience with how people who fancy "facts and logic", but dont know much else end up arguing. The knowledge itself matters. The ability to see when is the statement subtly exaggerating what facts say, so that one can use it in manipulative "logical" claim matters great deal. The ability to understand nuance matters a lot too. So does the ability to deal with bad actors in discussion, to understand motivations of whoever wrote this or that document matters.
  - unishark 6y ago
    I totally think we should be teaching logical fallacies and such in schools. Along with basic ethics (as in the various competing schools of thought). But in fairness to the average person, scammers have to play big numbers games to find suckers and pick weaker targets like elderly because the average person isn't that incapable of critical thinking.
eevilspock 6y ago
You're making the assumption that either party can solve homelessness simply by being in power. Homelessness is a deeper problem that requires cultural change. It's not simply an economic problem. For example, when I lived in Taiwan in the early 90s there was nary a homeless person. That's not because Taiwan's government had a better social net, nor was it because Taiwan . It was simply because in Taiwan's culture it was unheard of for anyone to let anyone else in their family go homeless. That in America people could have a homeless sibling or child or parent was almost unfathomable. I'm not suggesting America adopt Taiwan's culture. But I am saying American culture's hyper-individualistic sink-or-swim culture has consequences. It's only in the context of such a culture that the neoliberal Democratic party appears "left", when in fact it is quite center if not center-right.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  > You're making the assumption that either party can solve homelessness simply by being in power. There are several obvious ways of doing this, from "just build more homeless shelters" to a UBI to less restrictive zoning so that people aren't priced out of housing etc. But these all cost money or political capital, so we see where the priorities are. > It's only in the context of such a culture that the neoliberal Democratic party appears "left", when in fact it is quite center if not center-right. This is old talking point that might have been true in 1994: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/interactives/political-polarization-1994-2017/ https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/interactives/political-... Unless you're talking about what they do instead of what they say they're going to do. Then you might still be correct.
  - eevilspock 6y ago
    > Unless you're talking about what they do instead of what they say they're going to do. Yes. That’s my point about culture. There’s a reason racism and sexism still dominate despite a constitution that has said “all men are created equal” for nearly 250 years and then clarifying amendments 150 and 100 years ago. It’s the culture. Both problems could have been vanquished long ago if they were truly priorities in people’s hearts. But there are not. American culture, both liberal and conservative subcultures, always put self-interest ahead of common good when the chips are down. Your link speaks of liberal vs conservative. Talk to any true leftist: Liberal != Left. See “neoliberalism”. See the nomination of Biden by the Dems. See Diane Feinstein continuing to be California’s senior senator. Etc. See the amount of wealth inequality just within the liberal subset of the population. New York has the most segregated school system of any big city despite being liberal, and then look at the backlash by liberals over attempts to desegregate both in NYC and SF. I could go and on.
godelski 6y ago
> The reason why we haven't done the same for critical thinking is that the people in charge won't be if we had a citizenry which could think logically. I think this is only true because people think its true. There's plenty of PhD holding scientists that still participate in tribal politics. There's also plenty that are smart in their field and nothing more. This was logic that was used in the past and every time we've educated people the elite haven't lost their positions of power. But everyone's lives have increased in quality, I mean we don't use the streets of London as a sewer.
watwut 6y ago
> In the middle ages multiplication was a skill that was taught at universities. Somehow we now teach it to 7 year olds. I think that this is [citation needed] category. Actually in both ways, my kids were not taught multiplication as 7 years old. At that age, they were still doing additions in school.

passivate 6y ago

>While it wasn't that hard, general public does not know where to even look for primary or even preliminary evidence. Much less how to evaluate the densely written papers. I feel like its much worse than that. All of current research is very specialized. I am not a scientist but I do work in vaccines. After having worked for the past eight years in this field, I feel I can generally get the gist of scientific articles/papers, and understand if its something useful or junk - but only in my niche areas. Outside of that, I'm pretty much your average Joe.

xiphias2 6y ago
Vaccines (especially mRNA vaccines) are not a bad field to be an expert in. As an example I have chronic sinusitis without polyps which totally destroys my quality of life, while I can probably live with it for a long time. I’m looking at the successful cystic fibrosis inhaled vaccine trials that looks like a great way to help the cells produce missing proteins. I’m hoping for similar treatments to be available in the near future, and I have some money that I would happily use to invest / donate in a chronic sinusitis vaccine development, but so far I see only biologics trials that are probably much slower to go through because of the greater toxicity. Actually your knowledge is enough for you to have an edge over other people in investing in biotech companies.
- passivate 6y ago
  Well vaccines as a field is super-mega broad, there are so many pure research sub-disciplines one can choose to be an expert on due to the intersection of medicine/immunology/chemistry/biology. And even those are super broad themselves. From an applied sciences standpoint again there are various disciplines depending on the particular vaccine technology - fermentation, protein purification, conjugation chemistry, formulation, drug delivery, etc, etc, etc. From an analytical chemistry/biology standpoint there are dozens more fields that come into the picture when testing. You can spend years and decades in any of these niche fields and still not probe the depths of our accumulated knowledge. And once you have a product, you get into the regulatory domain - finding the quickest and shortest path to the market - which is its own nightmare. I don't know much about the particulars of the vaccine you are referring to, but when it comes to investing, I think it is always safe to assume that all major investing firms have ready access to SMEs that can give them the scoop on any company they're interested in.

Ambolia 6y ago

The general public could choose to inform themselves through alternative institutions that got it correctly in the first place. But this is disincentiviced and labeled as conspiracy theories.

czzr 6y ago
What alternative institutions?

vagrantJin 6y ago

> You always will have some authority needed as you have to be able to read really well and a lot of practice with the specific field to handle the outputs of science. In other words, prophets, pastors and priests. The conflation of academia and science is starting to grate.