8 ms·

We have such a divide due to the difference in education. It's primarily the uneducated who fall for nonsense arguments and don't see how they are being misled

We have such a divide due to the difference in education. It's primarily the uneducated who fall for nonsense arguments and don't see how they are being misled and used. There is no easy way to fix this, because they are resistant to education and wish to indoctrinate their children into their same nonsense beliefs. The only hope is that with access to the internet the kids will be able to teach themselves and break free.

acdanger 3y ago
Sorry, do you mean the “un-educated” in your first paragraph? I’m having trouble understanding how the educated are the ones who resist education.
- PrimeMcFly 3y ago
  Yes, fixed.
- totetsu 3y ago
  I think they do
- CrzyLngPwd 3y ago
  Often people think they knw things they don't. Their cup is full already.
- tekla 3y ago
  Look at HN. People who are good at programming who know nothing about anything else, but post like they do.
cykotic 3y ago
It's primarily the educated who fall for nonsense arguments and don't see how they are being misled and used. Are you able to justify this belief with anything more concrete than selective memory of anecdotal encounters?
- CrzyLngPwd 3y ago
  Joost Meerloo, in The Rape of the Mind, noted that the ones most susceptible to some methods of interrogation or propaganda were often those trained to withstand it. Perhaps it's a false sense of security, or the dunning-kruger effect.
  - cykotic 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - cj 3y ago
      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effec... > The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people with limited competence in a particular domain overestimate their abilities.
      - cykotic 3y ago
        That isn’t quite what Dunning-Kruger is about. People with less competence tend to overestimate their abilities more than people with higher competence. For example, a person with ability 3 out of 10 might say their skill is a 5 whilst a person with ability 9 out of 10 might say their skill is a 10. Where was the overestimation of one’s abilities in the comment made by Crzy? The alleged fact that people trained to resist propaganda are more susceptible to it is only an instance of Dunning-Kruger if said people overestimate their abilities in this area greater than people with a higher ability to resist propaganda. That wasn’t established. From webmd.com https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/dunning-kruger-effect-what-to-know https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/dunning-kruger-effect-wh... : To observe this phenomenon, Dunning and Kruger gave students tests of grammar, logical reasoning, and humor. The psychologists found that those who scored in the bottom 25% tended to overestimate their ability and test score. Most predicted their scores to be above the 60th percentile. On the other hand, those who overperformed -- those in the top 25% of the students -- also incorrectly assessed their final result. Most of these students estimated their scores to be in the 70th- to 75th-percentile range. But most actually scored above the 87th percentile. While this is also not a realistic self-assessment, the researchers found that this group was competent enough to understand how they got a higher score, unlike the low performers. In other words, the gap between perceived and actual performance is smaller.
cogman10 3y ago
> It's primarily the uneducated who fall for nonsense arguments I'd be careful with this line of thinking. Cults can often grab well educated individuals. Heck, I've had cult members proposition me on HN. Cults don't generally grab members by appealing to knowledge. They do it by being friendly, providing community, filling needs. The people sucked into cults generally get there because of loneliness, trama, or high stress. It can be super rewarding when that nice neighbor you know invites you to a social activity sponsored by their church, after all, what's the harm? Cults love the "love bomb" and it's effective. Don't underestimate them. I was born into a high demand religion and I'm pretty familiar with the techniques used to get new members. The defense against a cult is recognizing how they operate. Most cults do the same thing. They don't start you with the weird beliefs, they start you with "we just love having parties together. We're not like other churches, we're fun!"
- PrimeMcFly 3y ago
  Cults are a different, far more specialized thing than general widespread polarization though.
  - cogman10 3y ago
    A bit different but not as much as you'd think. If you ever look into radicalized organizations the playbook is remarkably similar to how cults operate. It's a lot of trying to fill a void and dissatisfaction with society with the purpose of the movement. "You feel this way because those people are ruining society. We know the answer, it's xyz". Even right down to the love bombing to get someone in "You aren't like the rest of society, you've found the secret truth that makes you better than everyone else. If only others could know what you know, then the world would be better. It's a conspiracy that keeps the world from the truth." The cross over between radicalization, cults, and conspiracy mindset is extensive. Each feeding and stealing the others greatest hits. In my childhood cult, everyone believes they're the chosen, the ones that have figured everything out. When someone points out "hey, you are wrong about X" they just laugh because obviously those people aren't as good or loved as you are. Before anyone gets out of such a cult, the first thing that has to happen is the question "What if I'm wrong?". That's why the cult spends so much time telling you to "doubt your doubts" and "everything bad you hear about us is actually the devil trying to trick you". You can see this in radicalized groups all the time. "We are right. It's all a lie when someone says we did something bad. It was actually this group we hate, a psyop"
mensetmanusman 3y ago
No, the only hope is not the internet, that’s techno-utopianism. Also, we see little correlation with access to internet and common sense-abilities. Also, I run in circles where PhDs are still wearing cloth masks at the beach because of Covid (very old priors). Education has little to do with it, it’s mostly resistance to fear.
- PrimeMcFly 3y ago
  Education is by far the biggest factor. Do you think most republicans would be voting against abortion, to ignore climate change, to let the rich pay less taxes etc if they were educated? There's a reason it's mainly non college educated voters who vote that party.
  - logicchains 3y ago
    > Do you think most republicans would be voting against abortion, to ignore climate change, to let the rich pay less taxes etc Opinions on abortion and taxes are entirely moral judgements, so if the university system is swaying its graduates' opinions regarding them, this confirms what its critics say: that the system is a form of indoctrination.
    - kgwxd 3y ago
      Morals are learned like everything else. Nothing is entirely a moral judgment (especially taxes?). “indoctrination” is just flat out the wrong word. Being presented facts and views from different angles then reaching the same conclusion most other people reach isn’t “indoctrination”, it’s just education.
    - PrimeMcFly 3y ago
      Opinions on abortion can be moral judgements, but allowing abortion is objectively the better option, since it's going to happen regardless. Not to mention separation of church and state being a thing.
      - 3y ago
keiferski 3y ago
The best lesson Socrates taught (over 2,400 years ago) was that the wisest person is the one that realizes he knows very little - a lesson that “the educated” would do well to learn.
- PartiallyTyped 3y ago
  What Socrates understood was that wise people exhibit humility. Educated people usually exhibit such humility because they understand how limited their breadth and depth of knowledge is. On the other hand, neither the proudly uneducated nor the proudly educated have such a trait. Of the two, at least the latter is easier to reason with than the former. The qualifier "proud" makes all the difference.
  - keiferski 3y ago
    I’m not actually sure that “education” writ large is useful for helping people understand the fact that the world is complex and can’t be divided into simple good-bad dimensions. A number of other things that aren’t traditionally considered to be education would have a better effect, I think. Things like living abroad, making friends of different social classes, reading books by people that you strongly disagree with.
    - PartiallyTyped 3y ago
      I take it our definitions of "education" are different. I do not refer to academic education. Everything you expressed are forms of "education", and the core tenet is putting aside your beliefs and attempting to understand a different point of view. This, by construction, requires humility because it implies that the person has something to teach you. This identical to pure-land view [1], where every person you meet in one way or the other is a small Buddha[1], enlightened with something you can learn, if you only set aside your existing beliefs and listen. [1] https://vividness.live/pure-land https://vividness.live/pure-land
      - keiferski 3y ago
bell-cot 3y ago
Above: > It's primarily the uneducated who fall for nonsense arguments... Article: > Personally, I saw this when I first arrived at Yale. I recall being stunned at how status anxiety pervaded elite college campuses. Though they might lack official names, formal rolls of members, and designated leaders...I'd say that there are some rather strong mass movements with majority-educated membership.
WeylandYutani 3y ago
The Netherlands became a post religious society in a single generation. It wasn't education, it wasn't ideology. It was materialism. Capitalism responded to rising wages with entertainment and leisure. Sunday became fun day.
- smokel 3y ago
  Materialism could have taken over thousands of years before, so I don't think this reasoning makes sense. What seems more likely (to me) is that due to advancements in transport and information technology people increasingly learned about different world religions, and did the math. If there is only one God, how can other people worship a different one who is also the only one? Also, religion started to fade during The Enlightenment, and things took a little while to completely crumble.
  - supazek 3y ago
    You think people didn’t know about other gods until they could drive? Technology gives people corn syrup and adderall while religion can’t fix a toothache. People increasingly believe this means that one is better than another or that they are even attempting to solve the same problems and must be exclusively selected. And Science is just as much a religion as Christianity or any other religion at this point. “Trust the Science”, “I Believe Science is Real”, “Science is True Whether You Believe in it or Not”
    - smokel 3y ago
      I don't fully understand the point you are trying to make, and how science plays a role in this discussion. Apart from this diversion, I do think people heard about other gods alright, but communities used to be quite isolated. It has been possible to collectively ignore other religions for centuries. Technological developments in transport and information distribution, such as the printing press, may have made it increasingly harder to keep a lid on the group think. Seems like a reasonable argument, no?
- monlockandkey 3y ago
aaron695 3y ago
[dead]
hahn-kev 3y ago
Uneducated maybe. But uneducated about what, is the real question. I'm sure there's something that you are uneducated about, just like there is with all people.
jacquesm 3y ago
I wish it were so. Plenty of smart and well educated people fall into all kinds of obvious traps and conspiracies.
photochemsyn 3y ago
Education and indoctrination are often surprisingly difficult to distinguish. If one is 'educated' to have absolute faith in institutions (e.g. the New York Times / Wall Street Journal / Washington Post, the NIH, the CDC, the US State Department and Pentagon, cable news outlets, Ivy League academic councils, religious organizations, etc.), while also believing oneself to be 'well-educated' even though one has never learned how to apply skeptical analysis to the claims of these institutions, well, hasn't one merely been indoctrinated into a system of faith-based obedience to higher powers? Isn't it curious how teaching the ability to argue the opposing point of view (e.g. in what used to be called debate clubs) has been largely written out of the American educational curriculum, for example?
- PrimeMcFly 3y ago
  > Isn't it curious how teaching the ability to argue the opposing point of view (e.g. in what used to be called debate clubs) has been largely written out of the American educational curriculum, for example? This is a huge problem, as well as the lack of critical thinking skills being taught in general.
neonsunset 3y ago
So you’re suggesting that people who do not go through the organizations doing the most of the indoctrination heavy lifting of today somehow end up being more indoctrinated? Interesting.
- PrimeMcFly 3y ago
  I'm suggesting no such thing.
fulladder 3y ago
>It's primarily the uneducated who fall for nonsense arguments We have to move away from this idea that level of education == intelligence. Historically, this was probably true, since there was no economic benefit for education beyond primary school. The people who ended up in universities would have to have been strongly intrinsically motivated to learn and discover, likely because those activities played to one of their strengths (high IQ). The world today is much different; there are high economic returns to completing formal education even if one is not naturally inclined to do that. My guess would be that people who are more intelligent, while not immune to falling in with cults or mass movements or any other wrongheaded idea, are going to be quicker to observe what is happening to them and modify their beliefs or behavior accordingly. Aside: why is parent being down voted?
- PrimeMcFly 3y ago
  > We have to move away from this idea that level of education == intelligence. I agree, but I'm not saying that. Education however does grant a better understanding and allow for people to make more informed decisions.

acdanger 3y ago

Sorry, do you mean the “un-educated” in your first paragraph? I’m having trouble understanding how the educated are the ones who resist education.

PrimeMcFly 3y ago
Yes, fixed.
totetsu 3y ago
I think they do
CrzyLngPwd 3y ago
Often people think they knw things they don't. Their cup is full already.
tekla 3y ago
Look at HN. People who are good at programming who know nothing about anything else, but post like they do.

cykotic 3y ago

It's primarily the educated who fall for nonsense arguments and don't see how they are being misled and used. Are you able to justify this belief with anything more concrete than selective memory of anecdotal encounters?

CrzyLngPwd 3y ago
Joost Meerloo, in The Rape of the Mind, noted that the ones most susceptible to some methods of interrogation or propaganda were often those trained to withstand it. Perhaps it's a false sense of security, or the dunning-kruger effect.
- cykotic 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - cj 3y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effec... > The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people with limited competence in a particular domain overestimate their abilities.
    - cykotic 3y ago
      That isn’t quite what Dunning-Kruger is about. People with less competence tend to overestimate their abilities more than people with higher competence. For example, a person with ability 3 out of 10 might say their skill is a 5 whilst a person with ability 9 out of 10 might say their skill is a 10. Where was the overestimation of one’s abilities in the comment made by Crzy? The alleged fact that people trained to resist propaganda are more susceptible to it is only an instance of Dunning-Kruger if said people overestimate their abilities in this area greater than people with a higher ability to resist propaganda. That wasn’t established. From webmd.com https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/dunning-kruger-effect-what-to-know https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/dunning-kruger-effect-wh... : To observe this phenomenon, Dunning and Kruger gave students tests of grammar, logical reasoning, and humor. The psychologists found that those who scored in the bottom 25% tended to overestimate their ability and test score. Most predicted their scores to be above the 60th percentile. On the other hand, those who overperformed -- those in the top 25% of the students -- also incorrectly assessed their final result. Most of these students estimated their scores to be in the 70th- to 75th-percentile range. But most actually scored above the 87th percentile. While this is also not a realistic self-assessment, the researchers found that this group was competent enough to understand how they got a higher score, unlike the low performers. In other words, the gap between perceived and actual performance is smaller.

cogman10 3y ago

> It's primarily the uneducated who fall for nonsense arguments I'd be careful with this line of thinking. Cults can often grab well educated individuals. Heck, I've had cult members proposition me on HN. Cults don't generally grab members by appealing to knowledge. They do it by being friendly, providing community, filling needs. The people sucked into cults generally get there because of loneliness, trama, or high stress. It can be super rewarding when that nice neighbor you know invites you to a social activity sponsored by their church, after all, what's the harm? Cults love the "love bomb" and it's effective. Don't underestimate them. I was born into a high demand religion and I'm pretty familiar with the techniques used to get new members. The defense against a cult is recognizing how they operate. Most cults do the same thing. They don't start you with the weird beliefs, they start you with "we just love having parties together. We're not like other churches, we're fun!"

PrimeMcFly 3y ago
Cults are a different, far more specialized thing than general widespread polarization though.
- cogman10 3y ago
  A bit different but not as much as you'd think. If you ever look into radicalized organizations the playbook is remarkably similar to how cults operate. It's a lot of trying to fill a void and dissatisfaction with society with the purpose of the movement. "You feel this way because those people are ruining society. We know the answer, it's xyz". Even right down to the love bombing to get someone in "You aren't like the rest of society, you've found the secret truth that makes you better than everyone else. If only others could know what you know, then the world would be better. It's a conspiracy that keeps the world from the truth." The cross over between radicalization, cults, and conspiracy mindset is extensive. Each feeding and stealing the others greatest hits. In my childhood cult, everyone believes they're the chosen, the ones that have figured everything out. When someone points out "hey, you are wrong about X" they just laugh because obviously those people aren't as good or loved as you are. Before anyone gets out of such a cult, the first thing that has to happen is the question "What if I'm wrong?". That's why the cult spends so much time telling you to "doubt your doubts" and "everything bad you hear about us is actually the devil trying to trick you". You can see this in radicalized groups all the time. "We are right. It's all a lie when someone says we did something bad. It was actually this group we hate, a psyop"

mensetmanusman 3y ago

No, the only hope is not the internet, that’s techno-utopianism. Also, we see little correlation with access to internet and common sense-abilities. Also, I run in circles where PhDs are still wearing cloth masks at the beach because of Covid (very old priors). Education has little to do with it, it’s mostly resistance to fear.

PrimeMcFly 3y ago
Education is by far the biggest factor. Do you think most republicans would be voting against abortion, to ignore climate change, to let the rich pay less taxes etc if they were educated? There's a reason it's mainly non college educated voters who vote that party.
- logicchains 3y ago
  > Do you think most republicans would be voting against abortion, to ignore climate change, to let the rich pay less taxes etc Opinions on abortion and taxes are entirely moral judgements, so if the university system is swaying its graduates' opinions regarding them, this confirms what its critics say: that the system is a form of indoctrination.
  - kgwxd 3y ago
    Morals are learned like everything else. Nothing is entirely a moral judgment (especially taxes?). “indoctrination” is just flat out the wrong word. Being presented facts and views from different angles then reaching the same conclusion most other people reach isn’t “indoctrination”, it’s just education.
  - PrimeMcFly 3y ago
    Opinions on abortion can be moral judgements, but allowing abortion is objectively the better option, since it's going to happen regardless. Not to mention separation of church and state being a thing.
    - 3y ago

keiferski 3y ago

The best lesson Socrates taught (over 2,400 years ago) was that the wisest person is the one that realizes he knows very little - a lesson that “the educated” would do well to learn.

PartiallyTyped 3y ago
What Socrates understood was that wise people exhibit humility. Educated people usually exhibit such humility because they understand how limited their breadth and depth of knowledge is. On the other hand, neither the proudly uneducated nor the proudly educated have such a trait. Of the two, at least the latter is easier to reason with than the former. The qualifier "proud" makes all the difference.
- keiferski 3y ago
  I’m not actually sure that “education” writ large is useful for helping people understand the fact that the world is complex and can’t be divided into simple good-bad dimensions. A number of other things that aren’t traditionally considered to be education would have a better effect, I think. Things like living abroad, making friends of different social classes, reading books by people that you strongly disagree with.
  - PartiallyTyped 3y ago
    I take it our definitions of "education" are different. I do not refer to academic education. Everything you expressed are forms of "education", and the core tenet is putting aside your beliefs and attempting to understand a different point of view. This, by construction, requires humility because it implies that the person has something to teach you. This identical to pure-land view [1], where every person you meet in one way or the other is a small Buddha[1], enlightened with something you can learn, if you only set aside your existing beliefs and listen. [1] https://vividness.live/pure-land https://vividness.live/pure-land
    - keiferski 3y ago

bell-cot 3y ago

Above: > It's primarily the uneducated who fall for nonsense arguments... Article: > Personally, I saw this when I first arrived at Yale. I recall being stunned at how status anxiety pervaded elite college campuses. Though they might lack official names, formal rolls of members, and designated leaders...I'd say that there are some rather strong mass movements with majority-educated membership.

WeylandYutani 3y ago

The Netherlands became a post religious society in a single generation. It wasn't education, it wasn't ideology. It was materialism. Capitalism responded to rising wages with entertainment and leisure. Sunday became fun day.

smokel 3y ago
Materialism could have taken over thousands of years before, so I don't think this reasoning makes sense. What seems more likely (to me) is that due to advancements in transport and information technology people increasingly learned about different world religions, and did the math. If there is only one God, how can other people worship a different one who is also the only one? Also, religion started to fade during The Enlightenment, and things took a little while to completely crumble.
- supazek 3y ago
  You think people didn’t know about other gods until they could drive? Technology gives people corn syrup and adderall while religion can’t fix a toothache. People increasingly believe this means that one is better than another or that they are even attempting to solve the same problems and must be exclusively selected. And Science is just as much a religion as Christianity or any other religion at this point. “Trust the Science”, “I Believe Science is Real”, “Science is True Whether You Believe in it or Not”
  - smokel 3y ago
    I don't fully understand the point you are trying to make, and how science plays a role in this discussion. Apart from this diversion, I do think people heard about other gods alright, but communities used to be quite isolated. It has been possible to collectively ignore other religions for centuries. Technological developments in transport and information distribution, such as the printing press, may have made it increasingly harder to keep a lid on the group think. Seems like a reasonable argument, no?
monlockandkey 3y ago

aaron695 3y ago

[dead]

hahn-kev 3y ago

Uneducated maybe. But uneducated about what, is the real question. I'm sure there's something that you are uneducated about, just like there is with all people.

jacquesm 3y ago

I wish it were so. Plenty of smart and well educated people fall into all kinds of obvious traps and conspiracies.

photochemsyn 3y ago

Education and indoctrination are often surprisingly difficult to distinguish. If one is 'educated' to have absolute faith in institutions (e.g. the New York Times / Wall Street Journal / Washington Post, the NIH, the CDC, the US State Department and Pentagon, cable news outlets, Ivy League academic councils, religious organizations, etc.), while also believing oneself to be 'well-educated' even though one has never learned how to apply skeptical analysis to the claims of these institutions, well, hasn't one merely been indoctrinated into a system of faith-based obedience to higher powers? Isn't it curious how teaching the ability to argue the opposing point of view (e.g. in what used to be called debate clubs) has been largely written out of the American educational curriculum, for example?

PrimeMcFly 3y ago
> Isn't it curious how teaching the ability to argue the opposing point of view (e.g. in what used to be called debate clubs) has been largely written out of the American educational curriculum, for example? This is a huge problem, as well as the lack of critical thinking skills being taught in general.

neonsunset 3y ago

So you’re suggesting that people who do not go through the organizations doing the most of the indoctrination heavy lifting of today somehow end up being more indoctrinated? Interesting.

PrimeMcFly 3y ago
I'm suggesting no such thing.

fulladder 3y ago

>It's primarily the uneducated who fall for nonsense arguments We have to move away from this idea that level of education == intelligence. Historically, this was probably true, since there was no economic benefit for education beyond primary school. The people who ended up in universities would have to have been strongly intrinsically motivated to learn and discover, likely because those activities played to one of their strengths (high IQ). The world today is much different; there are high economic returns to completing formal education even if one is not naturally inclined to do that. My guess would be that people who are more intelligent, while not immune to falling in with cults or mass movements or any other wrongheaded idea, are going to be quicker to observe what is happening to them and modify their beliefs or behavior accordingly. Aside: why is parent being down voted?

PrimeMcFly 3y ago
> We have to move away from this idea that level of education == intelligence. I agree, but I'm not saying that. Education however does grant a better understanding and allow for people to make more informed decisions.