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The problem is that educating people to do critical thinking doesn't scale. This should be taught in elementary school when children are learning to learn, but

by imiric 3y ago

The problem is that educating people to do critical thinking doesn't scale. This should be taught in elementary school when children are learning to learn, but adults are mostly a lost cause. Psyops and information warfare work to a frightening degree, and today the internet is the primary weapon of delivery. It takes decades to destabilize a nation, but it also takes decades to bring it back on track. The latter to my knowledge has never been done. The affected nation is in a state of confusion and desbelief about its actual situation, and it takes time to even realize they're under attack. We've already seen the effects of this: unfit political leaders elected, breakdown of democratic processes, rejection of nationalism, increase in internal sociopolitical conflict and belief in conspiracy theories, etc. Modern warfare is waged online, not on the battlefield.

jpadkins 3y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth-generation_warfare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth-generation_warfare Also note that since 2012, it is now legal for US IC to use propaganda on US citizens https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/mhastings/congressmen-seek-to-lift-propaganda-ban https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/mhastings/congressmen-s...
awesomeMilou 3y ago
The whole idea of "information warfare" is based on the assumption that people are rational and have a vested interest in learning the truth. What if they don't? Nazism doesn't only work because of misinformation, it works because people are happy and content with accepting easy answers to complex problems. This has such far reaching consequences that people leave school with a feeling of contentedness, believing because they attended an institution that claims to teach critical thinking, they're now able to categorize information with total clarity, forever, without any major effort. The reality is, you cannot "educate" people to do critical thinking. You can expose them to knowledge and challenge them to verify whether said knowledge is true, but in the end you can only hope that they start questioning their own beliefs. I don't want to sound pretentious, because I know that I follow the same fallacy, but realistically: How many people question the information they absorb from their environment? And with an outlook into the future, how many people will have the facilities to do so in an effective way? It's a stupid example, but ask people around you on what factual basis they believe the planet Mars exist. If they do, ask them how they can verify their knowledge and whether they have ever seen it with their own eyes. Mars is visible to the naked Eye in both hemispheres, which is why I find it so fascinating to ask: It's easy to verify by just looking up at night. If they can't give you a plan on how to verify it after a while (just look up!) I like to ask how they know that Mars isn't an elaborate hoax created by the government to fool them.
- imiric 3y ago
  I mostly agree with what you said, but critical thinking can indeed be taught in elementary education. Children can learn from an early age to question the reality presented to them, to apply analytical reasoning to arrive at their own conclusions, and perhaps most importantly in this golden age of bullshit, to be extremely critical of the information they consume online, from mainstream media sources, and even their peers. Not all children will pick up this practice equally and carry it through their adult life, but it's important that they're presented with these crucial tools that can help them be less susceptible, though not invulnerable, to information warfare. Unfortunately, education is mostly based around memorizing and regurgitating facts, rather than teaching people critical thinking skills. To be clear, we're all vulnerable to IW in varying degrees. Thinking critically at the very least makes people more skeptical of the information they consume, and lowers the chance they would spread it further and "infect" others. There's no easy protection against IW or a quick cure from the effects of it. It takes at least a couple of decades to educate a new generation of people to slow down the bleeding, and for the oldest "infected" generation to die out. But first the nation's government must realize that they are indeed a victim of IW, which is difficult to do because there's no direct link that points to it since it's an operation that spans decades, and because of the confused state it inflicts in its victims. Judging by the actions of most Western countries, they haven't even accepted this as a possibility yet. This is an interesting interview[1] where all this was outlined 40 years ago. So this is certainly well known to all intelligence agencies. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOmXiapfCs8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOmXiapfCs8
- treadmill 3y ago
  > you cannot "educate" people to do critical thinking Why would you think that? It is a learned skill, of course you can.
  - awesomeMilou 3y ago
    Because what constitutes as actual critical thinking, i.e. when do you know something over mere belief is a problem going back to ancient greece: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_cave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_cave "Slowly, his eyes adjust to the light of the sun. First he can see only shadows. Gradually he can see the reflections of people and things in water and then later see the people and things themselves. Eventually, he is able to look at the stars and moon at night until finally he can look upon the sun itself (516a)."[2] Only after he can look straight at the sun "is he able to reason about it" The fallacy here though is believing that there exists a teacher that can drag you out of the cave. I'm not some nutjob that believes in the government trying to indoctrinate our children, but my teachers happily repeated the whole bit about the personal carbon footprint to us, when years later it was revealed that it was a huge (and by reasonable thinking somewhat obvious) false flag campaign led by Exxon.
mrangle 3y ago
Critical thinking? GMAB. People would have to be taught how to critique research. Common critical thinking doesn't cut it, and in the example of politicized science substitutes for the craven "believe me or you aren't a critical thinker". Science's public credibility has always fully depended on its publicly perceived integrity, not the public's "critical thinking". Science / academia undermined its foundation decades ago and the current whining about it being challenged by soccer dads amounts to wanting to avoid acknowledging the sociopolitical consequences of science's self-debasement. It amounts to wanting to both own and eat cake. It's a child's whine. The reality is that official representatives of science cannot successfully browbeat people into giving it and them credibility, especially not in one of the most politicized environments that this Nation has known. That credibility had to be earned and maintained, and it wasn't. And so now the situation is that people will instinctually look for perceived inconsistencies (lies) as their technique in order to try to survive science and its representatives. Science created this situation. Its doubters did not. We see that the irony isn't lost on you to claim "psyops", being "under attack". and disparaging "conspiracies" in the same paragraph. We might assume that this roughly correlates with positions that you do and do not agree with.
- imiric 3y ago
  I don't understand what you're arguing for. Science is responsible for information warfare? Huh? > We might assume that this roughly correlates with positions that you do and do not agree with. I'm not agreeing nor disagreeing with anything in that paragraph. I'm just pointing out that the bullshit TFA refers to are signs of information warfare, and that the sociopolitical climate we've seen in Western countries in recent years is a clear effect of it. I'm also saying that nudging people to think critically can help a small percentage of people, as the referenced study shows, but that this isn't a cure for the high efficacy of IW.
JohnFen 3y ago
It would help a lot even if the focus was on one particular aspect of critical thinking: being able to tell the difference between a statement of opinion and a statement of fact. (This comment is a statement of opinion.)

by imiric 3y ago

jpadkins 3y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth-generation_warfare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth-generation_warfare Also note that since 2012, it is now legal for US IC to use propaganda on US citizens https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/mhastings/congressmen-seek-to-lift-propaganda-ban https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/mhastings/congressmen-s...

awesomeMilou 3y ago

The whole idea of "information warfare" is based on the assumption that people are rational and have a vested interest in learning the truth. What if they don't? Nazism doesn't only work because of misinformation, it works because people are happy and content with accepting easy answers to complex problems. This has such far reaching consequences that people leave school with a feeling of contentedness, believing because they attended an institution that claims to teach critical thinking, they're now able to categorize information with total clarity, forever, without any major effort. The reality is, you cannot "educate" people to do critical thinking. You can expose them to knowledge and challenge them to verify whether said knowledge is true, but in the end you can only hope that they start questioning their own beliefs. I don't want to sound pretentious, because I know that I follow the same fallacy, but realistically: How many people question the information they absorb from their environment? And with an outlook into the future, how many people will have the facilities to do so in an effective way? It's a stupid example, but ask people around you on what factual basis they believe the planet Mars exist. If they do, ask them how they can verify their knowledge and whether they have ever seen it with their own eyes. Mars is visible to the naked Eye in both hemispheres, which is why I find it so fascinating to ask: It's easy to verify by just looking up at night. If they can't give you a plan on how to verify it after a while (just look up!) I like to ask how they know that Mars isn't an elaborate hoax created by the government to fool them.

imiric 3y ago
I mostly agree with what you said, but critical thinking can indeed be taught in elementary education. Children can learn from an early age to question the reality presented to them, to apply analytical reasoning to arrive at their own conclusions, and perhaps most importantly in this golden age of bullshit, to be extremely critical of the information they consume online, from mainstream media sources, and even their peers. Not all children will pick up this practice equally and carry it through their adult life, but it's important that they're presented with these crucial tools that can help them be less susceptible, though not invulnerable, to information warfare. Unfortunately, education is mostly based around memorizing and regurgitating facts, rather than teaching people critical thinking skills. To be clear, we're all vulnerable to IW in varying degrees. Thinking critically at the very least makes people more skeptical of the information they consume, and lowers the chance they would spread it further and "infect" others. There's no easy protection against IW or a quick cure from the effects of it. It takes at least a couple of decades to educate a new generation of people to slow down the bleeding, and for the oldest "infected" generation to die out. But first the nation's government must realize that they are indeed a victim of IW, which is difficult to do because there's no direct link that points to it since it's an operation that spans decades, and because of the confused state it inflicts in its victims. Judging by the actions of most Western countries, they haven't even accepted this as a possibility yet. This is an interesting interview[1] where all this was outlined 40 years ago. So this is certainly well known to all intelligence agencies. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOmXiapfCs8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOmXiapfCs8
treadmill 3y ago
> you cannot "educate" people to do critical thinking Why would you think that? It is a learned skill, of course you can.
- awesomeMilou 3y ago
  Because what constitutes as actual critical thinking, i.e. when do you know something over mere belief is a problem going back to ancient greece: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_cave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_cave "Slowly, his eyes adjust to the light of the sun. First he can see only shadows. Gradually he can see the reflections of people and things in water and then later see the people and things themselves. Eventually, he is able to look at the stars and moon at night until finally he can look upon the sun itself (516a)."[2] Only after he can look straight at the sun "is he able to reason about it" The fallacy here though is believing that there exists a teacher that can drag you out of the cave. I'm not some nutjob that believes in the government trying to indoctrinate our children, but my teachers happily repeated the whole bit about the personal carbon footprint to us, when years later it was revealed that it was a huge (and by reasonable thinking somewhat obvious) false flag campaign led by Exxon.

mrangle 3y ago

Critical thinking? GMAB. People would have to be taught how to critique research. Common critical thinking doesn't cut it, and in the example of politicized science substitutes for the craven "believe me or you aren't a critical thinker". Science's public credibility has always fully depended on its publicly perceived integrity, not the public's "critical thinking". Science / academia undermined its foundation decades ago and the current whining about it being challenged by soccer dads amounts to wanting to avoid acknowledging the sociopolitical consequences of science's self-debasement. It amounts to wanting to both own and eat cake. It's a child's whine. The reality is that official representatives of science cannot successfully browbeat people into giving it and them credibility, especially not in one of the most politicized environments that this Nation has known. That credibility had to be earned and maintained, and it wasn't. And so now the situation is that people will instinctually look for perceived inconsistencies (lies) as their technique in order to try to survive science and its representatives. Science created this situation. Its doubters did not. We see that the irony isn't lost on you to claim "psyops", being "under attack". and disparaging "conspiracies" in the same paragraph. We might assume that this roughly correlates with positions that you do and do not agree with.

imiric 3y ago
I don't understand what you're arguing for. Science is responsible for information warfare? Huh? > We might assume that this roughly correlates with positions that you do and do not agree with. I'm not agreeing nor disagreeing with anything in that paragraph. I'm just pointing out that the bullshit TFA refers to are signs of information warfare, and that the sociopolitical climate we've seen in Western countries in recent years is a clear effect of it. I'm also saying that nudging people to think critically can help a small percentage of people, as the referenced study shows, but that this isn't a cure for the high efficacy of IW.

JohnFen 3y ago

It would help a lot even if the focus was on one particular aspect of critical thinking: being able to tell the difference between a statement of opinion and a statement of fact. (This comment is a statement of opinion.)