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That is what you get when you stop funding general education because you think people should pay for it themselves. People lose the ability to separate fact fro

by ako 2y ago

That is what you get when you stop funding general education because you think people should pay for it themselves. People lose the ability to separate fact from fiction, lack the ability for critical thinking. I benefit when others around me get better education, that's why I'm happy when my taxes are used to fund schools and universities and other ways of educating people. And it also benefits the economy, so every tax dollar/euro spend on education has a huge ROI.

gjsman-1000 2y ago
I actually disagree. This is what you get when scandal after scandal happens to public institutions. People go flat earth most often, not because of the "science," but because they do not trust the government for honesty. This also happens whenever there is an apparent "win" even if it isn't quite so. For example, when a judge last week ordered federal Fluoride standards to be re-examined. It doesn't need to be a total vindication of the conspiracy theorists, for trust to be substantially damaged. Same for the Iraq war, with "weapons of mass destruction" - imagine if your child died from that lie. Repeat this every year, in multiple institutions, for 20+ years straight; and yes, observant people might well think that everything the government has ever said is a hoax. It's not about the science, or their ability to track truth from falsehood, but their reactionary hate of anything the institutions say.
- zpeti 2y ago
  I don’t know why you are getting downvoted. This is just as valid as saying education has gotten worse. It’s likely both are causes, and some other things too.
- rootusrootus 2y ago
  > People go flat earth Isn't the joke here that for most of modern history the flat earth discussions were a debate contest by people who didn't actually believe the earth was flat but enjoyed trying to prove it was? And then it leaked out and found a welcome home amongst people gullible enough to believe all of the "evidence" that had been concocted.
  - krapp 2y ago
    Modern flat earth theory owes more to fringe Christian theology and the general normalization of conspiracy theory and meme culture than anything to do with the Flat Earth Society.
- justsocrateasin 2y ago
  People going to flat earth and believing in flat earth are two separate things. As OP said - > People lose the ability to separate fact from fiction, lack the ability for critical thinking. Distrusting governments is not the cause of people believing flat earth, people believe flat earth because they are unable to separate fact from fiction, which, I believe is a consequence of poor education.
  - gjsman-1000 2y ago
    > Distrusting governments is not the cause of people believing flat earth, people believe flat earth because they are unable to separate fact from fiction, which, I believe is a consequence of poor education. That's what your gut reaction may tell you; but I don't believe this is reality. The refusal to accept widely-accepted science is often rooted in distrust of the official narrative. It's like saying people commit violence, just because they like violence, or must be stupid. Most of the time there's an underlying cause.
    - danaris 2y ago
      Yes: and in this case, one of the big underlying causes is one of our two political parties—in particular its presidential candidate—aggressively spreading disinformation specifically in order to win him the presidency. (Just as they did the last two times he was trying.) Another is....a systemic lack of education in critical thinking and how to tell mis- and disinformation from truth. There is a decrease in people's trust in institutions, but my read on it is that it is an effect of these other phenomena, rather than a cause. I know that HN tends to frown on partisan politics, but it's really not possible (or at least, not intellectually honest) to talk about the rise in misinformation, distrust, and conspiracy theories without talking about Trump and his role in it.
      - gjsman-1000 2y ago
        Oh whatever; presidents have been lying for decades now. I remember a president whose error on "weapons of mass destruction" left my uncle nearly suicidal and killed countless Americans for nothing. I remember a president whose DOJ wiretapped the Associated Press in 2012. I remember a president who allowed his own Director of National Intelligence to lie to Congress about the NSA's activities before Snowden. I can go on.
- ako 2y ago
  When you defund science and education, these institutions have to turn elsewhere for funding, and now you're at the mercy of the one providing the funds...
- philipkglass 2y ago
  Observant people learn to evaluate the words of government officials as critically and analytically as they would treat any source. Credulous people switch from uncritical trust in government officials to uncritical trust in talk radio hosts, podcasters, and social media.
- smt88 2y ago
  This isn't just distrust of the government and other public institutions. It's also distrust of: - first-hand reports from other people - private news networks - the governments of other countries The scale and degree of this distrust of other people is new. Arguably the US government was far, far less trustworthy in the past, such as when it was massacring people in Vietnam or secretly conducting experiments on Black people. These revelations did not lead to meteorologists getting death threats.
  - gjsman-1000 2y ago
    > first-hand reports from other people Anecdotal evidence? I thought we were supposed to reject that. > private news networks You mean rebranded affiliates? https://youtu.be/rknON89H35o?t=35 https://youtu.be/rknON89H35o?t=35 > the governments of other countries Are governments inherently trustworthy? I can do this all day. There is no end to fallacies of thought.
    - pj_mukh 2y ago
      The idea that government institutions suddenly got more scandal ridden after 1990's is just pure golden age fallacy. News networks, twitter and podcasts got 100x better at making mountains out of mole-hills because they had continuous access to an audience to fine-tune their reaction engines. That's it.
    - smt88 2y ago
      > Anecdotal evidence? I thought we were supposed to reject that. Not when it's thousands of people showing us photos and videos. It's not that it's impossible that [insert major event here] is a conspiracy, but you always have to ask: - is it possible for even a highly competent government to orchestrate this conspiracy with no whistleblowers? - what is the benefit of the conspiracy to the conspirators? - is the benefit of the conspiracy worth the effort? In the case of "faking a hurricane," there is no incentive (and in fact there are disincentives to being wrong about it for the meteorologists) and there is no possibly way to orchestrate that large of a conspiracy. If the CCP is unable to successfully disappear people or put Uyghurs in camps without people finding out about it, nothing this large could be pulled off in the US. > You mean rebranded affiliates? No, I mean the Weather Channel and others. > I can do this all day. There is no end to fallacies of thought. I don't think you're doing what you think you're doing.
- Spivak 2y ago
  I don't know, I think the biggest difference is that the view we have of government isn't heavily curated by a few major papers and news broadcasts. The dirty laundry is on display 24/7 and thanks to social media The Washington Post, The Flat Earth Society, and Dave the guy with "THE END IS NEAR" signs on the corner of main street are on the same newsstand. And I don't think it's intelligence, smart people get sucked into cults all the time, being smart makes you better at convincing yourself of the nonsense. It's self-administered cult indoctrination. I don't think anyone has defenses for this kind of stuff outside of being primed to believe it's nonsense.
- antisthenes 2y ago
  > People go flat earth most often, not because of the "science," but because they do not trust the government for honesty. It doesn't matter "why" someone chooses to believe a conspiracy theory. What matters is how they came to be an adult that still believes in conspiracy theories - and the failure lies somewhere between bad parenting and the education system, and definitely not with meteorologists, even IF the public agency that employs meteorologists was involved in a scandal.
- yongjik 2y ago
  > For example, when a judge last week ordered federal Fluoride standards to be re-examined. It doesn't need to be a total vindication of the conspiracy theorists, for trust to be substantially damaged. This is such a weird way of looking at it. Imagine, for simplicity, there's an optimal amount of fluoride to add, which is X. Also imagine science can guess the number but, obviously, it's not perfect. What will happen is that we will start at some number, and gradually change it as we get more knowledge. Sometimes we'll be below X, sometimes we'll be above X. When we're above X, and we find it out, we'll say "Oops it was too much fluoride, let's reduce it a bit." And obviously policymakers need to work on imperfect information, so sometimes we have to add Y amount of fluoride even though we know it's not optimal - because, the alternative, adding zero fluoride, would be actually worse. This is totally natural way of how science works, and saying that this undermines public trust of science is actually a point in support of GP, namely, the American public has poor understanding of how science works, due to poor education.
  - gjsman-1000 2y ago
    You assume that if people were better educated, they would trust science and wouldn't be so upset. I think it's the other way around: If people understood this is how science works, they would laugh off anything they disagreed with, as likely to be overturned a decade from now.
    - yongjik 2y ago
      > If people understood this is how science works, they would laugh off anything they disagreed with, as likely to be overturned a decade from now. I'm sorry, but it starts to sound like you have a poor understanding of how science works.
  - an_guy 2y ago
    When gov insist on a certain position, just to track back to conclusions of conspiracy theories, it does raise questions about where else they were wrong or lying. > This is totally natural way of how science works, and saying that this undermines public trust of science is actually a point in support of GP, namely, the American public has poor understanding of how science works, due to poor education. So what exactly would an educated person do if they were led to believe something based on false premises which affected their life? Are they not supposed to question the authority who makes decision based on such information? Or question the source that provides such information consistently? Or just ignore it because it doesn't aligns with their political view? Or are they supposed to just shut up and accept it because... SCIENCE(holy text)?
- jgeada 2y ago
  Staff government with people that hate government and got elected on the principle that government is the problem. Those people sabotage government at every opportunity, thus it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Use the chaos and dysfunction you created to sell public assets on the cheap to private companies. I've seen this trajectory far too often to think what is happening is accidental.
- EasyMark 2y ago
  There have always been scandals. What changes is that nearly half of America has given up its brain and free thought and allowed the right wing media machine and various messiahs (one in particular) to fill their brains with mush about conspiracies and fear of the other. It’s ridiculous that people don’t want to think for themselves.
- autoexec 2y ago
  the lack of integrity and accountability really has eroded trust in critical institutions society depends on. I can't blame people for being skeptical in science when anyone can see that scientists are routinely paid by corporations to to produce whatever results they want, and that you can pay to get even obvious garbage published in peer reviewed journals. The flat-earthers are wrong about the shape of the planet, the creationists are still wrong about evolution, but they're right that what passes for science these days is full of lies and can't be trusted. I feel a degree of sympathy for antivaxxers for the same reason. Pharmaceutical companies get away with literal murder, the makers of medical devices are serial killers, and doctors are taking kickbacks to overprescribe dangerous medications. Even the CDC cares more about politics than the truth. The antivaxxers are still wrong about vaccines, but they're right that the medical industry can't be trusted. When government waste and corruption goes unchecked people lose faith in the government. When the police are criminals, judges take kickbacks to send children into private prisons, and corrupt prosecutors go unpunished people lose faith in the justice system. Resentment, distrust, fear, and uncertainty are just natural and appropriate responses to what's going on around us. Even if drastic action was taken today to increase accountability and transparency to fight the corruption and greed undermining people's faith in these institutions it would still take decades to restore the trust that's been lost and realistically, I don't see any kind of drastic action being taken to fix the problem any time soon, so I expect things to get a lot worse before they get better.
the_gorilla 2y ago
> That is what you get when you stop funding general education because you think people should pay for it themselves. People lose the ability to separate fact from fiction, lack the ability for critical thinking. On the other hand, this sounds like something you just made up and decided to connect to the current topic. Is this fact or fiction?
- ako 2y ago
  It's a theory, that may need validation ;-)
  - the_gorilla 2y ago
    I haven't seen any evidence that giving more money to academia improves student results. It certainly hasn't worked for colleges, where you've seen a negative correlation over many years between quality of education and funding.
    - o11c 2y ago
      "Fewer students per teacher" is widely supported by research, and teachers do cost money. But obviously just blindly throwing money won't help.
      - the_gorilla 2y ago
        All anyone ever talks about is "blindly throwing money". That's what the original complaint I responded to was; This is because we didn't sacrifice enough money to the altar of public schools! If it was just about classroom size, it wouldn't have warranted a response.
    - cycomanic 2y ago
      Well then you haven't been looking very hard. If you look at PISA results (essentially the best data we have on this so far) there is a strong correlation between investment into education and performance.
programjames 2y ago
America spends $15k per child for education. That is a ridiculous amount of funding. I think most teachers are of the opinion that the educational decline is due to NCLB, Common Core, and other top-down initiatives that give them less power yet more responsibilities. Many teachers complain that 1-2 students disrupt a class of 25-30 students, but they can't do anything about it.
- sellmesoap 2y ago
  Even in Canada one of my kids decided to try a different school because their class was so disruptive.
- autoexec 2y ago
  The amount of money we spend "for education" isn't reflective of the money that goes to educating children. We have waste, corruption, and people stuffing their pockets everywhere. Schools spend more of that money on sports than actual teaching. In the end, criminally unpaid teachers have to buy even the most basic school supplies with their own money or beg parents to provide them for the over-crowded classrooms in buildings that are falling apart.
  - trilbyglens 2y ago
    Just popping in to say that school sports are a fuckkng cancer that bleeds the educational system and produces nothing much of value aside from a tiny percent of sports scholarships, and good feelies for cheerleader moms. I despise school sports.
    - autoexec 2y ago
      I can see value in it. Fitness, teamwork, dealing with winning and losing, there are valuable lessons to be learned from sports. Gets kids outside too. It's extremely over-prioritized though, and over-funded. As the kids get older it even becomes exploitative.
- EasyMark 2y ago
  Teachers are simply overloaded and parents have given up responsibility for keeping their kids in check. Little Tommy can do no wrong and is just misunderstood. I personally feel if a child is disrupting class and the experience for others, out they go, back to the parents. Public education should be free, but it has to have conditions that your little Tommy isn’t messing it up for those who are there to learn. We’ve grown too lenient and expect teachers to be cops, therapists, babysitters instead of teachers and instructors. It should be more like college.
pj_mukh 2y ago
Then why is the problem worst among Boomers [1]? Alternate Theory: This is purely the result of "too much news". Breathless coverage of every little detail means every little mis-step blows up to infinity, quickly eroding trust. The 24hr + internet news cycle is basically a reaction maximization optimization machine with a dt ~ 0. Fox News walked so Facebook could run and now Twitter is sprinting. Insert long form podcasts in the mix for a constant hum of algorithmic misinformation and this result is inevitable. tl;dr: more people need to go out and touch some grass. [1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7505057/#:~:text=Users%20over%2050%20were%20also,domains%20(see%20Figure%202) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7505057/#:~:tex....
- SketchySeaBeast 2y ago
  I think I'd move the quotes - the problem is too much "news", but I think you're right. It's 24/7 misinformation factories that push people to the point where they can assume that somehow the US government both has a hurricane machine and that it would use it on its own citizens, even though that doesn't stand up to any sort of rational introspection.
- ZeroGravitas 2y ago
  I'd argue that it is intentional nitpicking of science/institutions because they were a threat to concentrated business interests (tobacco, lead, fossil fuels, factory farming etc.)
- smrtinsert 2y ago
  Anecdotally you can spend some time on facebook and see exactly that they are not consuming news at all. The seem impervious to any link or discussion that doesn't automatically feed back into their trusted sources - which of course are not trustworthy
anigbrowl 2y ago
No it isn't. There people are not clueless ignoramuses, they're paranoid assholes who have chosen to weaponize their dislike of anything 'official' for political ends. There is a market for propaganda and it is thriving, because many people want their biases reinforced. Thinking the issue is a lack of education is a kind of procrastination, as if we can just fix this over a 20 year span. Ignorance is not the problem here, malice is. There are plenty of ignorant people who are uninformed or believe silly things without being assholes about it. There's an unwillingness on HN to engage with the fact that the amplification effect of the broadcast/internet/social media selects for liars and propagandists and fraudsters absent countering mechanisms. That's why spamming and scamming are ubiquitous in our super high tech civilization.
- consteval 2y ago
  While I agree with this, I will say that people most susceptible to propaganda and confirmation bias are people who lack critical thinking skills IMO. Critical thinking and evidence-based reasoning, as taught in your average language arts and social studies courses, specifically calls out bias and teaches kids how to be skeptical. When I was in school, we read passages and books and got to make whatever conclusion we wanted. But the essay we wrote had to be evidence-based. The teacher didn't care so much what we said, but rather that we could form a logical string to say it. All this is to say, I think yes - if public education is further destroyed this will only get worse.
  - illiac786 2y ago
    I remember some interesting stories about elections being stolen for example: this was a very popular story across all education levels. Same for antivax movement, it was present across all education levels. But I am not 100% on this.
  - ifyoubuildit 2y ago
    > I will say that people most susceptible to propaganda and confirmation bias are people who lack critical thinking skills IMO I think this is an uncontroversial statement. I also think virtually everyone who thinks this is probably certain ~they~ wouldn't be dumb enough to be taken in. Realistically, if information is coming at you for free (like pretty much all of it is), it's purpose is to get someone a return. We are swimming in a sea of marketing and propaganda. No class is going to save you from that.
slibhb 2y ago
This has little to do with education. It's just political polarization. Conservatives (of a certain variety) in the US are polarized against the establishment (the media, science, colleges, etc), and this is the result. Better education might save some of them, but not many. The smarter ones retain the same core beliefs without the abject silliness.
mindcrime 2y ago
I don't think it's (entirely) that. Did you see the recent story about how college entrants at even highly selective schools, entrants coming from highly regarded private prep schools, are struggling to read books? That seems to me to be indicative of a problem different from what you're pointing out.
lamontcg 2y ago
> That is what you get when you stop funding general education... These people are likely predominantly over 50 and were in high school in the 60s/70s/80s. They've just been deliberately choosing to stew themselves for the past decade or three in right wing and fringe media.
leokeba 2y ago
I don't think this is about education, but I suspect rather something more akin to "intellectual revenge". Let me explain : In my experience, people who are into conspiracy theories are usually people who have been intellectually marginalised or disparaged during their life. It's not about being stupid - I think that's besides the point - but it's about being called and made feel stupid, literally or metaphorically. People don't want to believe they are stupid, and they especially don't want to believe the people (or institutions) who call them stupid are superior to them. So they find a way out, by believing something that not only makes them feel important (they know but other people don't), but also superior to those who ostracised them in the first place. I've been thinking about this for a while, but somehow never came across any similar ideas anywhere, anybody got references (or comments) ?
- gitaarik 2y ago
  Yeah, that psychoanalysis makes sense, but why would there suddenly be so many people that supposedly had traumatic experiences in being judged stupid?
- Smoosh 2y ago
  There is also a component of this which is (some) people needing a simple explanation for problems and injustices and preferably one where _someone else_ (individual or group) is to blame.
QuantumGood 2y ago
Education does not automatically make the person getting it wiser, nor less prone to manipulation or cognitive errors. And remember that one of the effects of propaganda bombardment is to destroy judgement. I've hired students who graduated with a low "C" average in their area of study, who were D- at the parts of their job that required that study, and had no personal interest or accurate knowledge to share about their study.
GaryNumanVevo 2y ago
conspiracy isn't arrived at via some logical process. the outcome is decided and the steps to get there are hallucinated. it's all post-hoc rationalization.
- Smoosh 2y ago
  Can I point out that “the outcome” here that conspiracy theorists start with isn’t “space lasers control the weather” but “the government is to blame”.
raxxorraxor 2y ago
Another factor is that lies or misrepresentations have been thoroughly normalized. Almost all media products have a spin in some way, objectivity even became a bad word in modern "journalism". I think this is an example of education not working correctly. Readers only have superficial means to reward or punish journalism, which is much more focused on getting attention and clicks these days. Advertising always has been their main income, but the economy thoroughly changed in recent years. All these issues undermine trust and in the end more arcane conspiracy theories serve as an explanation, why we read so much shit left and right.

by ako 2y ago

gjsman-1000 2y ago

I actually disagree. This is what you get when scandal after scandal happens to public institutions. People go flat earth most often, not because of the "science," but because they do not trust the government for honesty. This also happens whenever there is an apparent "win" even if it isn't quite so. For example, when a judge last week ordered federal Fluoride standards to be re-examined. It doesn't need to be a total vindication of the conspiracy theorists, for trust to be substantially damaged. Same for the Iraq war, with "weapons of mass destruction" - imagine if your child died from that lie. Repeat this every year, in multiple institutions, for 20+ years straight; and yes, observant people might well think that everything the government has ever said is a hoax. It's not about the science, or their ability to track truth from falsehood, but their reactionary hate of anything the institutions say.

zpeti 2y ago
I don’t know why you are getting downvoted. This is just as valid as saying education has gotten worse. It’s likely both are causes, and some other things too.
rootusrootus 2y ago
> People go flat earth Isn't the joke here that for most of modern history the flat earth discussions were a debate contest by people who didn't actually believe the earth was flat but enjoyed trying to prove it was? And then it leaked out and found a welcome home amongst people gullible enough to believe all of the "evidence" that had been concocted.
- krapp 2y ago
  Modern flat earth theory owes more to fringe Christian theology and the general normalization of conspiracy theory and meme culture than anything to do with the Flat Earth Society.
justsocrateasin 2y ago
People going to flat earth and believing in flat earth are two separate things. As OP said - > People lose the ability to separate fact from fiction, lack the ability for critical thinking. Distrusting governments is not the cause of people believing flat earth, people believe flat earth because they are unable to separate fact from fiction, which, I believe is a consequence of poor education.
- gjsman-1000 2y ago
  > Distrusting governments is not the cause of people believing flat earth, people believe flat earth because they are unable to separate fact from fiction, which, I believe is a consequence of poor education. That's what your gut reaction may tell you; but I don't believe this is reality. The refusal to accept widely-accepted science is often rooted in distrust of the official narrative. It's like saying people commit violence, just because they like violence, or must be stupid. Most of the time there's an underlying cause.
  - danaris 2y ago
    Yes: and in this case, one of the big underlying causes is one of our two political parties—in particular its presidential candidate—aggressively spreading disinformation specifically in order to win him the presidency. (Just as they did the last two times he was trying.) Another is....a systemic lack of education in critical thinking and how to tell mis- and disinformation from truth. There is a decrease in people's trust in institutions, but my read on it is that it is an effect of these other phenomena, rather than a cause. I know that HN tends to frown on partisan politics, but it's really not possible (or at least, not intellectually honest) to talk about the rise in misinformation, distrust, and conspiracy theories without talking about Trump and his role in it.
    - gjsman-1000 2y ago
      Oh whatever; presidents have been lying for decades now. I remember a president whose error on "weapons of mass destruction" left my uncle nearly suicidal and killed countless Americans for nothing. I remember a president whose DOJ wiretapped the Associated Press in 2012. I remember a president who allowed his own Director of National Intelligence to lie to Congress about the NSA's activities before Snowden. I can go on.
ako 2y ago
When you defund science and education, these institutions have to turn elsewhere for funding, and now you're at the mercy of the one providing the funds...
philipkglass 2y ago
Observant people learn to evaluate the words of government officials as critically and analytically as they would treat any source. Credulous people switch from uncritical trust in government officials to uncritical trust in talk radio hosts, podcasters, and social media.
smt88 2y ago
This isn't just distrust of the government and other public institutions. It's also distrust of: - first-hand reports from other people - private news networks - the governments of other countries The scale and degree of this distrust of other people is new. Arguably the US government was far, far less trustworthy in the past, such as when it was massacring people in Vietnam or secretly conducting experiments on Black people. These revelations did not lead to meteorologists getting death threats.
- gjsman-1000 2y ago
  > first-hand reports from other people Anecdotal evidence? I thought we were supposed to reject that. > private news networks You mean rebranded affiliates? https://youtu.be/rknON89H35o?t=35 https://youtu.be/rknON89H35o?t=35 > the governments of other countries Are governments inherently trustworthy? I can do this all day. There is no end to fallacies of thought.
  - pj_mukh 2y ago
    The idea that government institutions suddenly got more scandal ridden after 1990's is just pure golden age fallacy. News networks, twitter and podcasts got 100x better at making mountains out of mole-hills because they had continuous access to an audience to fine-tune their reaction engines. That's it.
  - smt88 2y ago
    > Anecdotal evidence? I thought we were supposed to reject that. Not when it's thousands of people showing us photos and videos. It's not that it's impossible that [insert major event here] is a conspiracy, but you always have to ask: - is it possible for even a highly competent government to orchestrate this conspiracy with no whistleblowers? - what is the benefit of the conspiracy to the conspirators? - is the benefit of the conspiracy worth the effort? In the case of "faking a hurricane," there is no incentive (and in fact there are disincentives to being wrong about it for the meteorologists) and there is no possibly way to orchestrate that large of a conspiracy. If the CCP is unable to successfully disappear people or put Uyghurs in camps without people finding out about it, nothing this large could be pulled off in the US. > You mean rebranded affiliates? No, I mean the Weather Channel and others. > I can do this all day. There is no end to fallacies of thought. I don't think you're doing what you think you're doing.
Spivak 2y ago
I don't know, I think the biggest difference is that the view we have of government isn't heavily curated by a few major papers and news broadcasts. The dirty laundry is on display 24/7 and thanks to social media The Washington Post, The Flat Earth Society, and Dave the guy with "THE END IS NEAR" signs on the corner of main street are on the same newsstand. And I don't think it's intelligence, smart people get sucked into cults all the time, being smart makes you better at convincing yourself of the nonsense. It's self-administered cult indoctrination. I don't think anyone has defenses for this kind of stuff outside of being primed to believe it's nonsense.
antisthenes 2y ago
> People go flat earth most often, not because of the "science," but because they do not trust the government for honesty. It doesn't matter "why" someone chooses to believe a conspiracy theory. What matters is how they came to be an adult that still believes in conspiracy theories - and the failure lies somewhere between bad parenting and the education system, and definitely not with meteorologists, even IF the public agency that employs meteorologists was involved in a scandal.
yongjik 2y ago
> For example, when a judge last week ordered federal Fluoride standards to be re-examined. It doesn't need to be a total vindication of the conspiracy theorists, for trust to be substantially damaged. This is such a weird way of looking at it. Imagine, for simplicity, there's an optimal amount of fluoride to add, which is X. Also imagine science can guess the number but, obviously, it's not perfect. What will happen is that we will start at some number, and gradually change it as we get more knowledge. Sometimes we'll be below X, sometimes we'll be above X. When we're above X, and we find it out, we'll say "Oops it was too much fluoride, let's reduce it a bit." And obviously policymakers need to work on imperfect information, so sometimes we have to add Y amount of fluoride even though we know it's not optimal - because, the alternative, adding zero fluoride, would be actually worse. This is totally natural way of how science works, and saying that this undermines public trust of science is actually a point in support of GP, namely, the American public has poor understanding of how science works, due to poor education.
- gjsman-1000 2y ago
  You assume that if people were better educated, they would trust science and wouldn't be so upset. I think it's the other way around: If people understood this is how science works, they would laugh off anything they disagreed with, as likely to be overturned a decade from now.
  - yongjik 2y ago
    > If people understood this is how science works, they would laugh off anything they disagreed with, as likely to be overturned a decade from now. I'm sorry, but it starts to sound like you have a poor understanding of how science works.
- an_guy 2y ago
  When gov insist on a certain position, just to track back to conclusions of conspiracy theories, it does raise questions about where else they were wrong or lying. > This is totally natural way of how science works, and saying that this undermines public trust of science is actually a point in support of GP, namely, the American public has poor understanding of how science works, due to poor education. So what exactly would an educated person do if they were led to believe something based on false premises which affected their life? Are they not supposed to question the authority who makes decision based on such information? Or question the source that provides such information consistently? Or just ignore it because it doesn't aligns with their political view? Or are they supposed to just shut up and accept it because... SCIENCE(holy text)?
jgeada 2y ago
Staff government with people that hate government and got elected on the principle that government is the problem. Those people sabotage government at every opportunity, thus it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Use the chaos and dysfunction you created to sell public assets on the cheap to private companies. I've seen this trajectory far too often to think what is happening is accidental.
EasyMark 2y ago
There have always been scandals. What changes is that nearly half of America has given up its brain and free thought and allowed the right wing media machine and various messiahs (one in particular) to fill their brains with mush about conspiracies and fear of the other. It’s ridiculous that people don’t want to think for themselves.
autoexec 2y ago
the lack of integrity and accountability really has eroded trust in critical institutions society depends on. I can't blame people for being skeptical in science when anyone can see that scientists are routinely paid by corporations to to produce whatever results they want, and that you can pay to get even obvious garbage published in peer reviewed journals. The flat-earthers are wrong about the shape of the planet, the creationists are still wrong about evolution, but they're right that what passes for science these days is full of lies and can't be trusted. I feel a degree of sympathy for antivaxxers for the same reason. Pharmaceutical companies get away with literal murder, the makers of medical devices are serial killers, and doctors are taking kickbacks to overprescribe dangerous medications. Even the CDC cares more about politics than the truth. The antivaxxers are still wrong about vaccines, but they're right that the medical industry can't be trusted. When government waste and corruption goes unchecked people lose faith in the government. When the police are criminals, judges take kickbacks to send children into private prisons, and corrupt prosecutors go unpunished people lose faith in the justice system. Resentment, distrust, fear, and uncertainty are just natural and appropriate responses to what's going on around us. Even if drastic action was taken today to increase accountability and transparency to fight the corruption and greed undermining people's faith in these institutions it would still take decades to restore the trust that's been lost and realistically, I don't see any kind of drastic action being taken to fix the problem any time soon, so I expect things to get a lot worse before they get better.

the_gorilla 2y ago

> That is what you get when you stop funding general education because you think people should pay for it themselves. People lose the ability to separate fact from fiction, lack the ability for critical thinking. On the other hand, this sounds like something you just made up and decided to connect to the current topic. Is this fact or fiction?

ako 2y ago
It's a theory, that may need validation ;-)
- the_gorilla 2y ago
  I haven't seen any evidence that giving more money to academia improves student results. It certainly hasn't worked for colleges, where you've seen a negative correlation over many years between quality of education and funding.
  - o11c 2y ago
    "Fewer students per teacher" is widely supported by research, and teachers do cost money. But obviously just blindly throwing money won't help.
    - the_gorilla 2y ago
      All anyone ever talks about is "blindly throwing money". That's what the original complaint I responded to was; This is because we didn't sacrifice enough money to the altar of public schools! If it was just about classroom size, it wouldn't have warranted a response.
  - cycomanic 2y ago
    Well then you haven't been looking very hard. If you look at PISA results (essentially the best data we have on this so far) there is a strong correlation between investment into education and performance.

programjames 2y ago

America spends $15k per child for education. That is a ridiculous amount of funding. I think most teachers are of the opinion that the educational decline is due to NCLB, Common Core, and other top-down initiatives that give them less power yet more responsibilities. Many teachers complain that 1-2 students disrupt a class of 25-30 students, but they can't do anything about it.

sellmesoap 2y ago
Even in Canada one of my kids decided to try a different school because their class was so disruptive.
autoexec 2y ago
The amount of money we spend "for education" isn't reflective of the money that goes to educating children. We have waste, corruption, and people stuffing their pockets everywhere. Schools spend more of that money on sports than actual teaching. In the end, criminally unpaid teachers have to buy even the most basic school supplies with their own money or beg parents to provide them for the over-crowded classrooms in buildings that are falling apart.
- trilbyglens 2y ago
  Just popping in to say that school sports are a fuckkng cancer that bleeds the educational system and produces nothing much of value aside from a tiny percent of sports scholarships, and good feelies for cheerleader moms. I despise school sports.
  - autoexec 2y ago
    I can see value in it. Fitness, teamwork, dealing with winning and losing, there are valuable lessons to be learned from sports. Gets kids outside too. It's extremely over-prioritized though, and over-funded. As the kids get older it even becomes exploitative.
EasyMark 2y ago
Teachers are simply overloaded and parents have given up responsibility for keeping their kids in check. Little Tommy can do no wrong and is just misunderstood. I personally feel if a child is disrupting class and the experience for others, out they go, back to the parents. Public education should be free, but it has to have conditions that your little Tommy isn’t messing it up for those who are there to learn. We’ve grown too lenient and expect teachers to be cops, therapists, babysitters instead of teachers and instructors. It should be more like college.

pj_mukh 2y ago

Then why is the problem worst among Boomers [1]? Alternate Theory: This is purely the result of "too much news". Breathless coverage of every little detail means every little mis-step blows up to infinity, quickly eroding trust. The 24hr + internet news cycle is basically a reaction maximization optimization machine with a dt ~ 0. Fox News walked so Facebook could run and now Twitter is sprinting. Insert long form podcasts in the mix for a constant hum of algorithmic misinformation and this result is inevitable. tl;dr: more people need to go out and touch some grass. [1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7505057/#:~:text=Users%20over%2050%20were%20also,domains%20(see%20Figure%202) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7505057/#:~:tex....

SketchySeaBeast 2y ago
I think I'd move the quotes - the problem is too much "news", but I think you're right. It's 24/7 misinformation factories that push people to the point where they can assume that somehow the US government both has a hurricane machine and that it would use it on its own citizens, even though that doesn't stand up to any sort of rational introspection.
ZeroGravitas 2y ago
I'd argue that it is intentional nitpicking of science/institutions because they were a threat to concentrated business interests (tobacco, lead, fossil fuels, factory farming etc.)
smrtinsert 2y ago
Anecdotally you can spend some time on facebook and see exactly that they are not consuming news at all. The seem impervious to any link or discussion that doesn't automatically feed back into their trusted sources - which of course are not trustworthy

anigbrowl 2y ago

No it isn't. There people are not clueless ignoramuses, they're paranoid assholes who have chosen to weaponize their dislike of anything 'official' for political ends. There is a market for propaganda and it is thriving, because many people want their biases reinforced. Thinking the issue is a lack of education is a kind of procrastination, as if we can just fix this over a 20 year span. Ignorance is not the problem here, malice is. There are plenty of ignorant people who are uninformed or believe silly things without being assholes about it. There's an unwillingness on HN to engage with the fact that the amplification effect of the broadcast/internet/social media selects for liars and propagandists and fraudsters absent countering mechanisms. That's why spamming and scamming are ubiquitous in our super high tech civilization.

consteval 2y ago
While I agree with this, I will say that people most susceptible to propaganda and confirmation bias are people who lack critical thinking skills IMO. Critical thinking and evidence-based reasoning, as taught in your average language arts and social studies courses, specifically calls out bias and teaches kids how to be skeptical. When I was in school, we read passages and books and got to make whatever conclusion we wanted. But the essay we wrote had to be evidence-based. The teacher didn't care so much what we said, but rather that we could form a logical string to say it. All this is to say, I think yes - if public education is further destroyed this will only get worse.
- illiac786 2y ago
  I remember some interesting stories about elections being stolen for example: this was a very popular story across all education levels. Same for antivax movement, it was present across all education levels. But I am not 100% on this.
- ifyoubuildit 2y ago
  > I will say that people most susceptible to propaganda and confirmation bias are people who lack critical thinking skills IMO I think this is an uncontroversial statement. I also think virtually everyone who thinks this is probably certain ~they~ wouldn't be dumb enough to be taken in. Realistically, if information is coming at you for free (like pretty much all of it is), it's purpose is to get someone a return. We are swimming in a sea of marketing and propaganda. No class is going to save you from that.

slibhb 2y ago

This has little to do with education. It's just political polarization. Conservatives (of a certain variety) in the US are polarized against the establishment (the media, science, colleges, etc), and this is the result. Better education might save some of them, but not many. The smarter ones retain the same core beliefs without the abject silliness.

mindcrime 2y ago

I don't think it's (entirely) that. Did you see the recent story about how college entrants at even highly selective schools, entrants coming from highly regarded private prep schools, are struggling to read books? That seems to me to be indicative of a problem different from what you're pointing out.

lamontcg 2y ago

> That is what you get when you stop funding general education... These people are likely predominantly over 50 and were in high school in the 60s/70s/80s. They've just been deliberately choosing to stew themselves for the past decade or three in right wing and fringe media.

leokeba 2y ago

I don't think this is about education, but I suspect rather something more akin to "intellectual revenge". Let me explain : In my experience, people who are into conspiracy theories are usually people who have been intellectually marginalised or disparaged during their life. It's not about being stupid - I think that's besides the point - but it's about being called and made feel stupid, literally or metaphorically. People don't want to believe they are stupid, and they especially don't want to believe the people (or institutions) who call them stupid are superior to them. So they find a way out, by believing something that not only makes them feel important (they know but other people don't), but also superior to those who ostracised them in the first place. I've been thinking about this for a while, but somehow never came across any similar ideas anywhere, anybody got references (or comments) ?

gitaarik 2y ago
Yeah, that psychoanalysis makes sense, but why would there suddenly be so many people that supposedly had traumatic experiences in being judged stupid?
Smoosh 2y ago
There is also a component of this which is (some) people needing a simple explanation for problems and injustices and preferably one where _someone else_ (individual or group) is to blame.

QuantumGood 2y ago

Education does not automatically make the person getting it wiser, nor less prone to manipulation or cognitive errors. And remember that one of the effects of propaganda bombardment is to destroy judgement. I've hired students who graduated with a low "C" average in their area of study, who were D- at the parts of their job that required that study, and had no personal interest or accurate knowledge to share about their study.

GaryNumanVevo 2y ago

conspiracy isn't arrived at via some logical process. the outcome is decided and the steps to get there are hallucinated. it's all post-hoc rationalization.

Smoosh 2y ago
Can I point out that “the outcome” here that conspiracy theorists start with isn’t “space lasers control the weather” but “the government is to blame”.

raxxorraxor 2y ago

Another factor is that lies or misrepresentations have been thoroughly normalized. Almost all media products have a spin in some way, objectivity even became a bad word in modern "journalism". I think this is an example of education not working correctly. Readers only have superficial means to reward or punish journalism, which is much more focused on getting attention and clicks these days. Advertising always has been their main income, but the economy thoroughly changed in recent years. All these issues undermine trust and in the end more arcane conspiracy theories serve as an explanation, why we read so much shit left and right.