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If you're waiting for everyone on the planet to just get smarter you're going to be waiting a long time. People can also be critical in one area yet turn their

If you're waiting for everyone on the planet to just get smarter you're going to be waiting a long time. People can also be critical in one area yet turn their brain off in others.

qwerty456127 2y ago
It seems impossible to make everyone on the planet perfectly smart, yet it seems possible to make the majority smarter than it is, in this specific aspect. We already mass-teach reading and writing, also essentials of sexual hygiene etc. Why not just add basic logic, rhetoric and philosophy to the list of the essentials?
- anigbrowl 2y ago
  Sure, now you just need to convince the people who shriek about it being pagan indoctrination designed to smuggle in a communist agenda. Take a look at the people one US state have decided are best qualified to overhaul their social studies curriculum: https://x.com/tylerkingkade/status/1810746515750875537/photo/1 https://x.com/tylerkingkade/status/1810746515750875537/photo...
maxglute 2y ago
You also don't want people so media savvy that they see through domestic propaganda.
- qwerty456127 2y ago
  I do want such people because it's the only way to make them see through enemy propaganda. Easiness of controlling your people is less important than making it hard for opposing parties to control them.
southernplaces7 2y ago
This is a valuable point that gets understated in much of the discourse about public manipulation and intelligence on an individual level, or as a concept. People, even smart people, are very, very rarely what you could call fully rounded in their reasoning and intelligence. Sure, we know that many people aren't quite as robust in certain areas of intelligence as they are in others, and on the other hand we know that some are particularly resistant to bad reasoning and dogmatic habits, but as a general trait, people of all stripes and positions, often with mostly rounded intelligence in most things, can be absolutely blind or idiotic in very specific areas of thought, to an irrational degree. You can have a perfectly skilled engineer that is absolutely convinced the earth really is flat, or a highly capable doctor who simply won't accept any amount of evidence that AIDs is caused by a virus. Or you could have a political genius with all the pragmatism that comes with that, but who's fanatically obsessed with a very specific dogma that drags his country to ruin. Examples abound. No amount of strong education in logic and critical thinking is going to eliminate these curious but very widespread human tendencies toward deep fissures in otherwise rounded reasoning. You might only reduce the number or depth of fissures as a tendency, but their existence in general is simply too entrenched to really be banished from our psyche.

If you're waiting for everyone on the planet to just get smarter you're going to be waiting a long time. People can also be critical in one area yet turn their brain off in others.

qwerty456127 2y ago

It seems impossible to make everyone on the planet perfectly smart, yet it seems possible to make the majority smarter than it is, in this specific aspect. We already mass-teach reading and writing, also essentials of sexual hygiene etc. Why not just add basic logic, rhetoric and philosophy to the list of the essentials?

anigbrowl 2y ago
Sure, now you just need to convince the people who shriek about it being pagan indoctrination designed to smuggle in a communist agenda. Take a look at the people one US state have decided are best qualified to overhaul their social studies curriculum: https://x.com/tylerkingkade/status/1810746515750875537/photo/1 https://x.com/tylerkingkade/status/1810746515750875537/photo...

maxglute 2y ago

You also don't want people so media savvy that they see through domestic propaganda.

qwerty456127 2y ago
I do want such people because it's the only way to make them see through enemy propaganda. Easiness of controlling your people is less important than making it hard for opposing parties to control them.

southernplaces7 2y ago

This is a valuable point that gets understated in much of the discourse about public manipulation and intelligence on an individual level, or as a concept. People, even smart people, are very, very rarely what you could call fully rounded in their reasoning and intelligence. Sure, we know that many people aren't quite as robust in certain areas of intelligence as they are in others, and on the other hand we know that some are particularly resistant to bad reasoning and dogmatic habits, but as a general trait, people of all stripes and positions, often with mostly rounded intelligence in most things, can be absolutely blind or idiotic in very specific areas of thought, to an irrational degree. You can have a perfectly skilled engineer that is absolutely convinced the earth really is flat, or a highly capable doctor who simply won't accept any amount of evidence that AIDs is caused by a virus. Or you could have a political genius with all the pragmatism that comes with that, but who's fanatically obsessed with a very specific dogma that drags his country to ruin. Examples abound. No amount of strong education in logic and critical thinking is going to eliminate these curious but very widespread human tendencies toward deep fissures in otherwise rounded reasoning. You might only reduce the number or depth of fissures as a tendency, but their existence in general is simply too entrenched to really be banished from our psyche.