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‘It’s mindblowing’: US meteorologists face death threats as hurricane conspiracies surge
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2024
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The gutting of the educational system is part of the far right extremism you're describing: This is a systematic effort.
Being educated does not make you immune from propaganda (especially if your education was not quality in the first place) but giving everyone a quality education that teaches, among other things, critical thinking, absolutely does make people more resistant to disinformation.
From my experience, it seems to me that 99.9% of people commenting on the internet lack critical thinking. Looking at Reddit in particular, it's the comments that are the most outlandish or "popular" and often having little or nothing to do with the story they're commenting on that are risen to the top. No one cares about the actual news. They're engaged with headlines and chit chat. If the story takes a turn, if it no longer "supports their narrative", they turn tail and move on to the next thing to fume over.
We're generally focused on the maga crowd in the context of this story but the truth is that we are all subject to and fooled by misleading content. And when you, as an actual intelligent person with actual critical thinking skills, or just someone who read the article, tries to call attention to the fact that a headline is misleading or outright wrong, you get downvoted. So, why is that the case?
Also, fwiw, I have a shitty education, I'm not very smart, but I believe I have better critical thinking skills than the majority of people.
A perfect example of this is that recent claim that Geico stopped providing insurance for the Tesla “Cybertruck.” Tons of people, including many here on Lemmy, were quick to believe and share this story. A handful of users pointed out that the source couldn’t be verified, but those comments were drowned out by all the “Ha, take that, Musk!” comments.
It just goes to show that everyone is vulnerable to misinformation. If we want to claim to be well-informed, we have to question everything - even (or especially) the stories that reinforce our existing beliefs.
The beliefs we hold by analysing information may not be the actual state. The only thing a blank slate logical mind can do is that to think a bit, verify multiple sources and get to a conclusion. Multiple sources points to different views having some reasonable practicality. Blank Slate refers to a neutral unbiased mindset.