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I've never seen anyone defend and make excuses for people not thinking critically. Sure, trust is one thing, and we relax critical thinking....but trust among

I've never seen anyone defend and make excuses for people not thinking critically. Sure, trust is one thing, and we relax critical thinking....but trust among people we know has nothing to do with failures as large as thinking, say 5G causes covid. Trust has nothing to do with that really. And I'm not ignoring the risk. I absolutely acknowledge it Trump almost got elected twice for chrissakes. I just don't see what can be done about it with a population resistant to thinking.

wpietri 4y ago
I am a big fan of critical thinking, but shouting "think harder people" is just not a solution to anything, and neither is giving up. We can and should change our system to support critical thinking, and we can change it to demand much less critical thinking to make effective decisions.
- Zurrrrr 4y ago
  It's not so much I'm shouting "think harder people", more lamenting that I think it's too late. The shouting should have been done about 30 years ago. I'm cynical, but I don't really see a path forward for the US when half the population is so resistant to truth. But absolutely, I agree with should be improving education and changing things so not every single thing should have to be analyzed to make a decision.
pixl97 4y ago
You're looking at such a short time frame, that it's not a surprise that this all seems like a new phenomenon to you. Lets jump back to 90 years ago to Europe. Do you think the lead up to world war two was caused by a lack of critical thinking? Do you think if I sent you back to 1920 so you could howl into the wind about critical thinking if you believe you'd have made one iota of difference to the devastation that occurred? I would like you to give me a power, that is to make critical thinking an uninterruptable process in your mind, and also have the ability to spam the shit out of you with things that you should probably be thinking critically about anyway. You would be a wreck in days. The number of things you take for granted about the world around you, things society and the social contract take care of silently and with little notice would now be things you have to think about. You would have to back process that entire queue of completely dumb shit we don't think critically about but likely should. You wouldn't get anything else done. Instead you, me, and Mr McGhee push those things out of our mind because we have work do to, relationships to work on, food to eat, stress to relieve, new things to learn, etc. Humans require a lot of time doing a lot of illogical human crap to remain sane, and not set around being machines.
- Zurrrrr 4y ago
  Where did I ver say anything that indicated I thought it was a new phenomenon or that I was limiting what I was describing to a short time frame? That aside, no idea what you are arguing here. It seems to be that because critical thinking won't solve every single problem it's worthless?
  - pixl97 4y ago
    You're very close to a breakthrough there... The first thing you have to accept is that 'critical thinking' is not a thing. There is only thinking. When you have that realization it is much easier to see when a person gets themselves in a situation that requires nonbiased, factual, information based processing to get out of they are exceptionally unlikely to do it as they lack the nonbiased factual data in the first place and likely have no realization it even exists. And that's not even the hard part. No, that's the easy part. The hard part is when there is a set of biased agents that keep feeding you bad information that keep you away from that thinking revolution that would allow you to escape the trap. Friends, politics, advertizing, these are all ever present agents that bias you to things like societal norms, to acceptable behaviors, that tell you what to think and not think about. And these are things that you also spread to other people. It's just part of being a society, a civilization.
    - Zurrrrr 4y ago
      I'm guessing from your username you were born in 97. How are you that young and arrogant and condescending lol. There's no 'breakthrough' I'm close to or need to have. I said everything I needed to say and it remains accurate. You said a bunch of nonsense based on your own assumptions, and you're acting like you're trying to teach me something or some bullshit. The only thing you continue to prove with your comments is that you yourself could really benefit from learning how to think critically before you reply. I won't be replying again to you, it's simply not worth the effort. Cheers.
      - pixl97 4y ago
        Poor assumption, that was the year I picked this particular username, far far older than that, and seemingly very agist on your part too. If any problem involves "Everybody all of a sudden doing the right thing" the problem is not solvable if that is the only solution. May we both live in interesting times.

wpietri 4y ago

I am a big fan of critical thinking, but shouting "think harder people" is just not a solution to anything, and neither is giving up. We can and should change our system to support critical thinking, and we can change it to demand much less critical thinking to make effective decisions.

Zurrrrr 4y ago
It's not so much I'm shouting "think harder people", more lamenting that I think it's too late. The shouting should have been done about 30 years ago. I'm cynical, but I don't really see a path forward for the US when half the population is so resistant to truth. But absolutely, I agree with should be improving education and changing things so not every single thing should have to be analyzed to make a decision.

pixl97 4y ago

You're looking at such a short time frame, that it's not a surprise that this all seems like a new phenomenon to you. Lets jump back to 90 years ago to Europe. Do you think the lead up to world war two was caused by a lack of critical thinking? Do you think if I sent you back to 1920 so you could howl into the wind about critical thinking if you believe you'd have made one iota of difference to the devastation that occurred? I would like you to give me a power, that is to make critical thinking an uninterruptable process in your mind, and also have the ability to spam the shit out of you with things that you should probably be thinking critically about anyway. You would be a wreck in days. The number of things you take for granted about the world around you, things society and the social contract take care of silently and with little notice would now be things you have to think about. You would have to back process that entire queue of completely dumb shit we don't think critically about but likely should. You wouldn't get anything else done. Instead you, me, and Mr McGhee push those things out of our mind because we have work do to, relationships to work on, food to eat, stress to relieve, new things to learn, etc. Humans require a lot of time doing a lot of illogical human crap to remain sane, and not set around being machines.

Zurrrrr 4y ago
Where did I ver say anything that indicated I thought it was a new phenomenon or that I was limiting what I was describing to a short time frame? That aside, no idea what you are arguing here. It seems to be that because critical thinking won't solve every single problem it's worthless?
- pixl97 4y ago
  You're very close to a breakthrough there... The first thing you have to accept is that 'critical thinking' is not a thing. There is only thinking. When you have that realization it is much easier to see when a person gets themselves in a situation that requires nonbiased, factual, information based processing to get out of they are exceptionally unlikely to do it as they lack the nonbiased factual data in the first place and likely have no realization it even exists. And that's not even the hard part. No, that's the easy part. The hard part is when there is a set of biased agents that keep feeding you bad information that keep you away from that thinking revolution that would allow you to escape the trap. Friends, politics, advertizing, these are all ever present agents that bias you to things like societal norms, to acceptable behaviors, that tell you what to think and not think about. And these are things that you also spread to other people. It's just part of being a society, a civilization.
  - Zurrrrr 4y ago
    I'm guessing from your username you were born in 97. How are you that young and arrogant and condescending lol. There's no 'breakthrough' I'm close to or need to have. I said everything I needed to say and it remains accurate. You said a bunch of nonsense based on your own assumptions, and you're acting like you're trying to teach me something or some bullshit. The only thing you continue to prove with your comments is that you yourself could really benefit from learning how to think critically before you reply. I won't be replying again to you, it's simply not worth the effort. Cheers.
    - pixl97 4y ago
      Poor assumption, that was the year I picked this particular username, far far older than that, and seemingly very agist on your part too. If any problem involves "Everybody all of a sudden doing the right thing" the problem is not solvable if that is the only solution. May we both live in interesting times.