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Teaching critical thinking at schools would solve this problem instead of spending huge amount of resources on censorship algorithms.

ngokevin 5y ago
I think financial security for the 60-70% of Americans living paycheck-to-paycheck. It's hard to think critically or rationally when you're barely floating. Misinformation offers them respite when they're given scapegoats for their problems.
SQueeeeeL 5y ago
Would having 99% of the country immune to conspiracy theories somehow suddenly make gore and crazy political ramblings friendly to advertisers?
AnotherGoodName 5y ago
Unfortunately we're at the point where this would count as indoctrination. Crazy people want their kids to have the same beliefs as them.
- erie 5y ago
  No, it is the other way around, current indoctrination is intentional and the powers that be would not allow such a switch. Edward Said mentioned this once, he delivered his plans to overhaul the English curriculum in oil rich gulf countries, yet upon the authorities refusal for his plans to include critical thinking, cultural contexts,and values for schools,they explicitly said the target of the English we need was to produce people able to answer calls and do transactions. He said such indoctrination was universal.
- DethNinja 5y ago
  It doesn’t have to be indoctrination. Logic is a mathematical concept, and can be thought in the classes, along with common logical fallacies.
  - AnotherGoodName 5y ago
    Yes but what I'm saying is that even a class of pure logic will be unfortunately met with opposition in this day and age since logic can harm the fragile belief systems some parents try to instill on their children.
- moistly 5y ago
  Too true. Texas GOP, 2012: > Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/texas-gop-rejects-critical-thinking-skills-really/2012/07/08/gJQAHNpFXW_blog.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/texas...
asimpletune 5y ago
Honestly this is a huge reason why I’m opposed to public schooling… as crazy as that may sound. First, I don’t mean to say I’m opposed to accessible and free schooling. Second, I don’t really have a better alternative. However, I’ve said for years - growing up in Texas - that the temptation to use school as a political tool is too great. It makes no logical sense, in a highly competitive political sphere, for lawmakers not to try and foment ideology in state-sponsored curriculums. That said, I was also home schooled for the first part of my life - not weird home schooling I promise, just I had immigrant parents who were shocked when they came to the USA about how rude and intellectually incurious kids were - and it was really great. Critical thinking was a big part of what we did, not so much the accumulation of facts. As it turns out, it made me not so good as a student - i did not try very hard for good grades - but paid of fantastically in my experience with learning new subjects and applying them, especially later in life. Ultimately, I wish there was a silver bullet. I really like the platonic ideal for schooling, just without the infanticide..,
- runnerup 5y ago
  Did you mean, "infantilizing"?
  - asimpletune 5y ago
    Haha no, at one point he suggests a form of eugenics for the “philosophy king class” in the form of discarding some of the babies
pjc50 5y ago
How is teaching anything at all to under-18s going to solve the problem of conspiracy theories among the over-65s? Or is the plan to wait 47 years?
- shakezula 5y ago
  This is the detail people miss in these conversations. The problem could only have been solved a decade ago. The current worst offenders of spreading misinformation are at retirement age.
- beej71 5y ago
  A stitch in time saves nine, but doesn't do anything for those whose garments have already unraveled. But it's still very important to exercise prevention.
criddell 5y ago
Students learn plenty of critical thinking skills by the time they graduate from high school. People aren't vulnerable to misinformation because of a lack of education, they embrace information (true or false) because it backs up what they believe. You can teach critical thinking, but you can't make people use it in the way you want.
- blacksmith_tb 5y ago
  That's an interesting argument, we tend to use 'belief' to mean 'uncritical acceptance' though? I am also skeptical about how much critical thinking is imparted in typical US curricula - there's a ton of rote learning, and a lot of socialization to encourage you to follow instructions, work in teams, etc. (which is of course good training for the workplace, where there's even less room from critical thinking, typically). But there's no doubt that the more traditional and conservative a student's background is, the less excited their family will be about them asking tough questions. For kids whose families will let them (and can afford it) that freedom tends to happen in college.
  - BitwiseFool 5y ago
    I see critical thinking as a voluntary process. You have to be willing to violate your worldview - not just entertaining the idea that you are wrong. Additionally, the tools for critical thinking can just as easily be used to reinforce one's own worldview. I see the issue as an mindset problem rather than a lack of education problem.
    - blacksmith_tb 5y ago
      Sure, I see your point, I guess I'd say it strikes me as sort of hardare-and-software problem. Education can introduce you to the techniques, their application (or non-application) is up to you. But if you haven't ever been introduced to them, the chances you will spontaneously develop them are small.
      - criddell 5y ago
disambiguation 5y ago
What if misinformation leaks into the class room? ex. creationism The problem is fractal in nature, it's the same at any scale. Having critical thinking is better than not, but even experts in one field aren't always eligible to do expert level analysis in another field. Further it doesn't solve the problem that bullshit can be made faster than it can be reviewed. Having a trusted authority is essential for truth.
s5300 5y ago
Our last secretary of education was quite literally the heir to the largest MLM scheme in the United States. Do you really think they wanted any of their potential future clients “thinking critically” ?
hairofadog 5y ago
This proposed solution strikes me as overly simplistic. Many people don't want to learn critical thinking, and doubly don't want their kids to learn it. Many people who produce and/or consume misinformation distrust public schools and so fight to divert resources from teaching anything at all in schools, and especially things that would undermine their worldview. I'm not saying critical thinking shouldn't be taught in schools – it definitely should – but (a) it's a solution that would take generations to have an impact, (b) many people don't want to or are incapable of learning it, (c) it's a threat to current power structures and so current power structures will fight against it, and (d) no amount of critical thinking will save you from the actions of people who don't learn critical thinking. Saying "if they would just teach people critical thinking" is like saying "if they would just teach people not to drink alcohol, there would be no need for DUI laws". Sure, if everyone learned that and practiced it, the problem would be solved! There's just that one tiny flaw in the plan: people.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
trutannus 5y ago
An interesting study would be to compare quality of public education in a given country, as well as the prevalence of conspiracy theories, or the breakdown of trust in verifiably correct information. How does the spread and proliferation of nonsense in Norway compare to somewhere like Germany? To American and Canada? This could give some interesting insight on what exactly we can tune up in a given system to improve critical analysis skills.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
RobertRoberts 5y ago
What if the official curriculum included exceptions for government mandated beliefs? This is already happening in our schools. "Critical thinking" can be twisted to mean what anyone wants it to mean.
BitwiseFool 5y ago
>"Teaching critical thinking at schools" This is everyone's go-to answer, probably because it seems like an obvious magic-bullet solution. If only we taught critical thinking, people would actually act intelligently as adults! I must ask, is it really the case that critical thinking isn't being taught in schools today? The idea of teaching people how to think critically isn't some revolutionary new concept, this has been around since antiquity. I suspect the answer is that despite trying to teach critical thinking skills, we are all still human and fall back to relying on our cognitive biases. I sense the problem of "making" critical thinkers is just as hard as teaching kids to be healthy. "If only we taught children to eat healthy and exercise in schools"
- jl2718 5y ago
  Yes; it is. Teacher tells students something. Student is physically restricted from continuing on their life path until they memorize and repeat it as a belief, over and over again. Critical thinking would be like: - how can this be disproven? - what is inconsistent about this story? - what physical evidence would exist if this were true? - what sources can you find that contradict this explanation? - is [historical character] a believable person? Could this have happened with the normal people that you know today? But this is probably not what they have in mind. It seems they want everybody to accept what is written in their textbooks, and ignore other sources. Unfortunately, nearly everything in them is objectively untrue, greatly exaggerated, or over-simplified. How do I know this? Do I know the ‘real’ truth? I don’t, and that’s precisely why it works, but somehow every expert in every field will be the first to tell you that the textbook got it completely wrong for their discipline, and of course it was correct everywhere else. Oh and by the way, the other experts from the slightly-differentiated field are even more wrong.
all2 5y ago
Teaching your children about absolute truth, rhetoric, logic, propaganda, and so on. Don't farm it out to schools. The schools in the United States have unilaterally failed to preserve any kind of rational thought. Feelings prevail, the math doesn't have to be "right", only social justice has to be served [0]. [edit] I should expand this. Critical thinking isn't enough. Public debate is the second part. The ability to haul out an idea and flog it mercilessly until there is nothing left of it is how the US wound up with the Constitution it has. Men got together and debated until they all agreed. We have a distinct lack of debate in the US, and free speech (especially "hate speech") is sequestered to the backwaters of the internet where it festers, grows, and gets increasingly radical. If we had public debate (not the name-calling propaganda you see in national cable news) many of those ideas would fizzle and die, people would abandon them and move on to other things. Expose ugly ideas and they die. Conceal them and hide them away and they grow. [0] https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/04/15/california-weighs-equitable-math-goal-obtaining-correct-answer-racist/ https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/04/15/california-wei...
- panarky 5y ago
  The editor of Breitbart admitted their coverage was intentionally dishonest in order to achieve their political objectives. This is the very definition of misinformation. Naturally we'll get a Breitbart citation to "prove" that black is white and up is down in a thread about misinformation. Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/12/the-ongoing-mistreatment-of-right-leaning-news-consumers/549335/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/12/the-ong...
  - all2 5y ago
    I'd like to know more. That link is from 2017, and the article I posted is from 2021. Do you have a link to the retraction?
    - panarky 5y ago
      Retractions are generally published by news outlets that make mistakes while honestly trying to get it right. Purveyors of intentional misinformation rarely publish retractions. So when you're searching for reliable sources of information, the ones with the most retractions are generally the most trustworthy.
ScoobleDoodle 5y ago
Additionally teaching probability and statistics. Many things are not deterministic and not strictly true or false. They have a chance with a confidence interval. That background needs to be used in conjunction with critical thinking skills.
evandwight 5y ago
Critical thinking is taught in schools. The issue is it's rarely applied. Critical thinking takes a lot of mental effort and often boils down to who do you trust. A group of flat earthers designed an experiment to test their belief. Performed it and showed the Earth was round. Then dismissed the result.[0] When your priors say the probability is nearly 0 then no evidence is strong enough to change your belief. It's why science sometimes only advances when people die. [0] - https://brain-sharper.com/science/flat-earthers-tried-prove/ https://brain-sharper.com/science/flat-earthers-tried-prove/
raffraffraff 5y ago
A very famous philosopher who wrote a book on critical thinking has demonstrated that logic and critical thinking are not enough. You need to be aware of your own motivated reasoning, and your fears. What are you afraid of thinking? Which groups are you afraid of offending? If you get past that, then you have to ask yourself if you're willing to risk your good name and your career for the sake of truth and honesty.
ykevinator2 5y ago
You can't teach critical thinking if the textbook has creationism.

ngokevin 5y ago

I think financial security for the 60-70% of Americans living paycheck-to-paycheck. It's hard to think critically or rationally when you're barely floating. Misinformation offers them respite when they're given scapegoats for their problems.

SQueeeeeL 5y ago

Would having 99% of the country immune to conspiracy theories somehow suddenly make gore and crazy political ramblings friendly to advertisers?

AnotherGoodName 5y ago

Unfortunately we're at the point where this would count as indoctrination. Crazy people want their kids to have the same beliefs as them.

erie 5y ago
No, it is the other way around, current indoctrination is intentional and the powers that be would not allow such a switch. Edward Said mentioned this once, he delivered his plans to overhaul the English curriculum in oil rich gulf countries, yet upon the authorities refusal for his plans to include critical thinking, cultural contexts,and values for schools,they explicitly said the target of the English we need was to produce people able to answer calls and do transactions. He said such indoctrination was universal.
DethNinja 5y ago
It doesn’t have to be indoctrination. Logic is a mathematical concept, and can be thought in the classes, along with common logical fallacies.
- AnotherGoodName 5y ago
  Yes but what I'm saying is that even a class of pure logic will be unfortunately met with opposition in this day and age since logic can harm the fragile belief systems some parents try to instill on their children.
moistly 5y ago
Too true. Texas GOP, 2012: > Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/texas-gop-rejects-critical-thinking-skills-really/2012/07/08/gJQAHNpFXW_blog.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/texas...

asimpletune 5y ago

Honestly this is a huge reason why I’m opposed to public schooling… as crazy as that may sound. First, I don’t mean to say I’m opposed to accessible and free schooling. Second, I don’t really have a better alternative. However, I’ve said for years - growing up in Texas - that the temptation to use school as a political tool is too great. It makes no logical sense, in a highly competitive political sphere, for lawmakers not to try and foment ideology in state-sponsored curriculums. That said, I was also home schooled for the first part of my life - not weird home schooling I promise, just I had immigrant parents who were shocked when they came to the USA about how rude and intellectually incurious kids were - and it was really great. Critical thinking was a big part of what we did, not so much the accumulation of facts. As it turns out, it made me not so good as a student - i did not try very hard for good grades - but paid of fantastically in my experience with learning new subjects and applying them, especially later in life. Ultimately, I wish there was a silver bullet. I really like the platonic ideal for schooling, just without the infanticide..,

runnerup 5y ago
Did you mean, "infantilizing"?
- asimpletune 5y ago
  Haha no, at one point he suggests a form of eugenics for the “philosophy king class” in the form of discarding some of the babies

pjc50 5y ago

How is teaching anything at all to under-18s going to solve the problem of conspiracy theories among the over-65s? Or is the plan to wait 47 years?

shakezula 5y ago
This is the detail people miss in these conversations. The problem could only have been solved a decade ago. The current worst offenders of spreading misinformation are at retirement age.
beej71 5y ago
A stitch in time saves nine, but doesn't do anything for those whose garments have already unraveled. But it's still very important to exercise prevention.

criddell 5y ago

Students learn plenty of critical thinking skills by the time they graduate from high school. People aren't vulnerable to misinformation because of a lack of education, they embrace information (true or false) because it backs up what they believe. You can teach critical thinking, but you can't make people use it in the way you want.

blacksmith_tb 5y ago
That's an interesting argument, we tend to use 'belief' to mean 'uncritical acceptance' though? I am also skeptical about how much critical thinking is imparted in typical US curricula - there's a ton of rote learning, and a lot of socialization to encourage you to follow instructions, work in teams, etc. (which is of course good training for the workplace, where there's even less room from critical thinking, typically). But there's no doubt that the more traditional and conservative a student's background is, the less excited their family will be about them asking tough questions. For kids whose families will let them (and can afford it) that freedom tends to happen in college.
- BitwiseFool 5y ago
  I see critical thinking as a voluntary process. You have to be willing to violate your worldview - not just entertaining the idea that you are wrong. Additionally, the tools for critical thinking can just as easily be used to reinforce one's own worldview. I see the issue as an mindset problem rather than a lack of education problem.
  - blacksmith_tb 5y ago
    Sure, I see your point, I guess I'd say it strikes me as sort of hardare-and-software problem. Education can introduce you to the techniques, their application (or non-application) is up to you. But if you haven't ever been introduced to them, the chances you will spontaneously develop them are small.
    - criddell 5y ago

disambiguation 5y ago

What if misinformation leaks into the class room? ex. creationism The problem is fractal in nature, it's the same at any scale. Having critical thinking is better than not, but even experts in one field aren't always eligible to do expert level analysis in another field. Further it doesn't solve the problem that bullshit can be made faster than it can be reviewed. Having a trusted authority is essential for truth.

s5300 5y ago

Our last secretary of education was quite literally the heir to the largest MLM scheme in the United States. Do you really think they wanted any of their potential future clients “thinking critically” ?

hairofadog 5y ago

This proposed solution strikes me as overly simplistic. Many people don't want to learn critical thinking, and doubly don't want their kids to learn it. Many people who produce and/or consume misinformation distrust public schools and so fight to divert resources from teaching anything at all in schools, and especially things that would undermine their worldview. I'm not saying critical thinking shouldn't be taught in schools – it definitely should – but (a) it's a solution that would take generations to have an impact, (b) many people don't want to or are incapable of learning it, (c) it's a threat to current power structures and so current power structures will fight against it, and (d) no amount of critical thinking will save you from the actions of people who don't learn critical thinking. Saying "if they would just teach people critical thinking" is like saying "if they would just teach people not to drink alcohol, there would be no need for DUI laws". Sure, if everyone learned that and practiced it, the problem would be solved! There's just that one tiny flaw in the plan: people.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

trutannus 5y ago

An interesting study would be to compare quality of public education in a given country, as well as the prevalence of conspiracy theories, or the breakdown of trust in verifiably correct information. How does the spread and proliferation of nonsense in Norway compare to somewhere like Germany? To American and Canada? This could give some interesting insight on what exactly we can tune up in a given system to improve critical analysis skills.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

RobertRoberts 5y ago

What if the official curriculum included exceptions for government mandated beliefs? This is already happening in our schools. "Critical thinking" can be twisted to mean what anyone wants it to mean.

BitwiseFool 5y ago

>"Teaching critical thinking at schools" This is everyone's go-to answer, probably because it seems like an obvious magic-bullet solution. If only we taught critical thinking, people would actually act intelligently as adults! I must ask, is it really the case that critical thinking isn't being taught in schools today? The idea of teaching people how to think critically isn't some revolutionary new concept, this has been around since antiquity. I suspect the answer is that despite trying to teach critical thinking skills, we are all still human and fall back to relying on our cognitive biases. I sense the problem of "making" critical thinkers is just as hard as teaching kids to be healthy. "If only we taught children to eat healthy and exercise in schools"

jl2718 5y ago
Yes; it is. Teacher tells students something. Student is physically restricted from continuing on their life path until they memorize and repeat it as a belief, over and over again. Critical thinking would be like: - how can this be disproven? - what is inconsistent about this story? - what physical evidence would exist if this were true? - what sources can you find that contradict this explanation? - is [historical character] a believable person? Could this have happened with the normal people that you know today? But this is probably not what they have in mind. It seems they want everybody to accept what is written in their textbooks, and ignore other sources. Unfortunately, nearly everything in them is objectively untrue, greatly exaggerated, or over-simplified. How do I know this? Do I know the ‘real’ truth? I don’t, and that’s precisely why it works, but somehow every expert in every field will be the first to tell you that the textbook got it completely wrong for their discipline, and of course it was correct everywhere else. Oh and by the way, the other experts from the slightly-differentiated field are even more wrong.

all2 5y ago

Teaching your children about absolute truth, rhetoric, logic, propaganda, and so on. Don't farm it out to schools. The schools in the United States have unilaterally failed to preserve any kind of rational thought. Feelings prevail, the math doesn't have to be "right", only social justice has to be served [0]. [edit] I should expand this. Critical thinking isn't enough. Public debate is the second part. The ability to haul out an idea and flog it mercilessly until there is nothing left of it is how the US wound up with the Constitution it has. Men got together and debated until they all agreed. We have a distinct lack of debate in the US, and free speech (especially "hate speech") is sequestered to the backwaters of the internet where it festers, grows, and gets increasingly radical. If we had public debate (not the name-calling propaganda you see in national cable news) many of those ideas would fizzle and die, people would abandon them and move on to other things. Expose ugly ideas and they die. Conceal them and hide them away and they grow. [0] https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/04/15/california-weighs-equitable-math-goal-obtaining-correct-answer-racist/ https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/04/15/california-wei...

panarky 5y ago
The editor of Breitbart admitted their coverage was intentionally dishonest in order to achieve their political objectives. This is the very definition of misinformation. Naturally we'll get a Breitbart citation to "prove" that black is white and up is down in a thread about misinformation. Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/12/the-ongoing-mistreatment-of-right-leaning-news-consumers/549335/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/12/the-ong...
- all2 5y ago
  I'd like to know more. That link is from 2017, and the article I posted is from 2021. Do you have a link to the retraction?
  - panarky 5y ago
    Retractions are generally published by news outlets that make mistakes while honestly trying to get it right. Purveyors of intentional misinformation rarely publish retractions. So when you're searching for reliable sources of information, the ones with the most retractions are generally the most trustworthy.

ScoobleDoodle 5y ago

Additionally teaching probability and statistics. Many things are not deterministic and not strictly true or false. They have a chance with a confidence interval. That background needs to be used in conjunction with critical thinking skills.

evandwight 5y ago

Critical thinking is taught in schools. The issue is it's rarely applied. Critical thinking takes a lot of mental effort and often boils down to who do you trust. A group of flat earthers designed an experiment to test their belief. Performed it and showed the Earth was round. Then dismissed the result.[0] When your priors say the probability is nearly 0 then no evidence is strong enough to change your belief. It's why science sometimes only advances when people die. [0] - https://brain-sharper.com/science/flat-earthers-tried-prove/ https://brain-sharper.com/science/flat-earthers-tried-prove/

raffraffraff 5y ago

A very famous philosopher who wrote a book on critical thinking has demonstrated that logic and critical thinking are not enough. You need to be aware of your own motivated reasoning, and your fears. What are you afraid of thinking? Which groups are you afraid of offending? If you get past that, then you have to ask yourself if you're willing to risk your good name and your career for the sake of truth and honesty.

ykevinator2 5y ago

You can't teach critical thinking if the textbook has creationism.