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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 fa

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.
dsego 6y ago
Grammar schools in Croatia teach it, there is a subject called Logika, with all the moduses (ponens, tollens, etc) and mnemonics (barbara, celarent, etc) and everything in between. And it's probably been a subject since the austrian empire (the inherited school system here is slow to change). As you might imagine, students mostly learn this for the exams and forget everything when they leave schools. The poor political and economical situation in the country reflects the ineffectiveness of this approach. And hey, schools in yugoslavia also taught marxism as a subject I kid you not (it was an established science back then!). Yet the whole generation in the 90s soon abandoned it for the next shiny thing. Most probably expected to become capitalists themselves, forgetting that even in capitalism someone has to actually do the work and only cca 200 families would actually own the businesses. (Logika curriculum in croatian) https://mzo.gov.hr/UserDocsImages/dokumenti/Publikacije/Predmetni/Kurikulum%20nastavnog%20predmeta%20Logika%20za%20gimnazije.pdf https://mzo.gov.hr/UserDocsImages/dokumenti/Publikacije/Pred...
- jfengel 6y ago
  It's fascinating that they teach the medieval approach to syllogism. I learned about that in a history of logic class, not in the actual logic classes. Slow to change indeed.

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.

dsego 6y ago

Grammar schools in Croatia teach it, there is a subject called Logika, with all the moduses (ponens, tollens, etc) and mnemonics (barbara, celarent, etc) and everything in between. And it's probably been a subject since the austrian empire (the inherited school system here is slow to change). As you might imagine, students mostly learn this for the exams and forget everything when they leave schools. The poor political and economical situation in the country reflects the ineffectiveness of this approach. And hey, schools in yugoslavia also taught marxism as a subject I kid you not (it was an established science back then!). Yet the whole generation in the 90s soon abandoned it for the next shiny thing. Most probably expected to become capitalists themselves, forgetting that even in capitalism someone has to actually do the work and only cca 200 families would actually own the businesses. (Logika curriculum in croatian) https://mzo.gov.hr/UserDocsImages/dokumenti/Publikacije/Predmetni/Kurikulum%20nastavnog%20predmeta%20Logika%20za%20gimnazije.pdf https://mzo.gov.hr/UserDocsImages/dokumenti/Publikacije/Pred...

jfengel 6y ago
It's fascinating that they teach the medieval approach to syllogism. I learned about that in a history of logic class, not in the actual logic classes. Slow to change indeed.