4 ms·

Yeah I've heard this way too much too. Why are humans so bad at second-order thinking and understanding that it's possible and, barring politics, straightforwar

• toomuchtodo 4y ago
  130 million adults in the US have low literacy skills, meaning that more than half (54%) of Americans between the ages of 16 and 74 read below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level, according to a piece published in 2022 by APM Research Lab. https://www.apmresearchlab.org/10x-adult-literacy https://www.apmresearchlab.org/10x-adult-literacy My note: critical thinking is not as prevalent as one might think, and there are also folks at various levels of gov and corp acting maliciously about the topic (fossil fuel consumption, climate change) due to entrenched interests. “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
  • fbdab103 4y ago
    That the article did not make a bigger reference to immigrants makes me suspect. What are the percentages for native English speakers vs ESL? The states with the largest rates of Level 1 are all in the southwest where I expect there to be larger numbers of native-Spanish speakers.
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  • osigurdson 4y ago
    I don't like "most people are dumb" arguments. Most people have average intelligence (i.e. a normal distribution). It is generally most accurate to assume that "the masses" are just as smart as us - even if it hurts.
    • dragonwriter 4y ago
      > I don’t like “most people are dumb” arguments. Most people have average intelligence “low literacy skills” or lacking "critical thinking" is a description of learning/education, not intelligence. > It is generally most accurate to assume that “the masses” are just as smart as us IF “us” refers to people of average intelligence only, this is accurate, though irrelevant here for the same reason as the preceding.
    • JamesBarney 4y ago
      If you do believe in intelligence it's pretty clear the average professional software engineer is probably up there with other professionals which are half to a full standard deviation above the rest.
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  • rayiner 4y ago
    The map in your link suggests that low literacy rates are the result of states with large minority populations and immigrants. For example Iowa and Idaho have much higher literacy rates than say New York or California. Mississippi and Alabama have comparably low literacy rates to New York and California, but I’d hazard a guess that this is a product of their Democrat-voting minority population. Because it’s not like education funding or anything like that otherwise distinguishes North Dakota from Alabama. So I’m not sure what point you’re trying to get across here.
    • dheera 4y ago
      English proficiency != literacy Most immigrants are fully literate in another language and if they can speak broken English are more intellectually accomplished than a huge fraction of Americans who speak only 1 instead of 1.5 or 2 or even more languages. I'm not convinced that correlation is due to immigrants, unless they mistakenly equated English proficiency to literacy. Anecdotally though, I feel there are a whole lot more homeless people in New York than in Idaho, and maybe that's the reason for the correlation.
      • rayiner 4y ago
        The survey linked above relies on English language material to gauge literacy: > Some of these high county-level percentages stem from high populations of immigrants, whose first language is not English. The PIAAC only assesses English literacy… Also you can just see this in the chart. The highest literacy rates are in states with the highest native born white American populations, but are otherwise very different in terms of politics (Minnesota and North Dakota). Meanwhile the lowest literacy states are those with large minority or immigrant populations, but again are otherwise very different politically (California and Mississippi).
• imtringued 4y ago
  The politicians in Germany somehow believe in synthetic fuel... Hydrogen is difficult enough, adding carbon makes it absurd.
• sokoloff 4y ago
  Was there any significant evolutionary pressure to reward better second-order thinking? Better thinking? Yes. Better long-term, second-order, or very nuanced thinking? Probably not.
  • ianai 4y ago
    Raising a kid for over a decade before they’re biologically mature is actually pretty long term. Granted, they were probably able to contribute to a hunt before puberty so maybe my points not so sharp. But humans are clearly tasked with survival for decades. Modern society being able to invent scenarios basic human logic fails is probably more a reflection of poor design or lack of accountability somewhere. Ie the periodic learning that things that seemed good were poisonous (lead paint, asbestos) is more about lack of perfect knowledge and thus unforeseeable consequences. Or outright malignant intent. Ok so definitely the capacity for one human to decide a slight increase in some metric is a fine reason to lie/cheat/steal/kill another human is definitely a bug. There are species which don’t kill one another.
    • sokoloff 4y ago
      Are there any large mammal species (say, bigger than a rabbit) that don’t? In an environment of limited resources, I can easily reason my way to a harsher filter being optimal for a species long-term, including more fit members killing less fit members of another sub-group.
      • ianai 4y ago
        They’re all damnable together.