There is no greater enemy to logic, common sense and critical thinking than religion. Religion punishes skepticism and logic. In many places you can still be killed for blasphemy. When children discover Santa isn't real, this should be an opportunity for them to break free of the gaslighting of their family religion, instead many parents double down on the gaslighting. When people are too brainwashed to accept something as simple as "fairy tale creatures are not real" their brains become mush. What would you say if I told you, yesterday on my way home I crossed a footbridge and I saw a man walking on the water. Not only that, the man was a zombie. I saw him raise another man from the dead. We should probably be getting ready for a zombie apocalypse? You would immediately think i was either insane or making some kind of joke. And if you didn't, I would ask you to give me all your money for my new church.
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Something like host over half of all Americans cannot read above a 5th grade level. Almost a third are functionally illiterate.
It’s not that they don’t have critical thinking skills. It’s that the entire lower-90% have been so badly nerfed that it is increasingly difficult for anyone in that cohort to get to a point where they can educate themselves without copious assistance.
And that’s exactly how Republicans prefer the population - uneducated, illiterate, ignorant and gullible. The better with which to scam them for their votes.
Well, here is me, who fell into nuclear propaganda.
Considering that critical thinking has to be thought to you, I think most people who skipped college may not have a good grasp on it.
Most school curriculums nowadays have critical thinking interwoven as important parts of the STEM classes, in both primary and high school. Its not exclusive to college graduates, however if you do a philosophy course then you will have learned the highest level of it - and I'm sure many school systems around the world have varying degrees of quality of education.
But agreed it is absolutely something that people are not born with and must (and should) be taught.
I would draw a distinct line between the critical thinking of engineering and the critical thinking of the humanities, but yes. Just in the sense that engineering alone is good, but definitely not sufficient.
There is a common archetype of person in stem who thinks that because they're very good at programming that they're also very good at everything, and so spends half of their college tenure in a fratboy flophouse reinventing basic philosophy ideas Isaac Asimov thought of 70 years ago as part of their mission to solve society's problems with bitcoin.
"Think twice? I don't even thinks once."
Propaganda doesn't necessarily need to convince people, but can instead attack the peoples ability to differentiate truth and lie by sowing mistrust about the most mundane and conventional things. When people stop believing their own eyes or following logic, they become easier to manipulate. A bit like gas-lighting, where you sort of turn the critical thinking against them, but on a large scale.
Do you believe in religion? Do you believe in any home remedies? Do you eat the same foods you grew up with?
It's a very rare person that questions literally everything and logically analyzes why they think what they think.
As someone who has always done this, this has been a very hard lesson to learn. It doesn't make sense to me how you can go through life and NOT do that. Like.... Fuck dude... I just feel like everyone is so fucking DUMB. Like I don't want to be narcissistic and shit but Jesus people .... Maybe try a little??!?!
What does eating the same foods you grew up with have to do with it?
i try all new things even bugs, but some foods I grew up with are delicious
That is fantastic. I'm glad you like them.
The difference here, presumably, is that you've thought about what you eat and continue to do so knowing full well what that means, whatever it means. But~ not everybody thinks about it. Some people are carried forward through life just by the sheer momentum of their childhood.
And I say some people, but really, everybody is in some way or another. It takes active effort to change your course in life.
For example, no idea what your diet is like: if you eat a lot of junk food, do you know how much sugar you're consuming? Have you ever thought about whether that's a good thing?
Questioning beliefs takes a lot of time and courage. Very few people do it.
It's so nice of you to tell us what would you do and how you'd behave in an hypothetical situation that you have never been nurtured and raised on, and how good you'd do facing it under your current morals and mental framework that may or may not be available during that situation
Good times, critical thinking was had by all
Intelligent people in those countries do realize though...
I was idly thinking about this the other day, how absolutely lonely it must be in say North Korea, where if you're caught by the regime to be thinking the wrong thing you'll get killed. I'd know its bullshit, but I'd be terrified of speaking out or asking questions, incase the person I'm speaking to is an agent of the state, or will suspect me of being an agent and inform the authorities incase I'm testing them.
It must be awful not knowing who's a secret police, who's a gullible rube for buying the propaganda and who's just hiding behind forced conformity.
I don't think many of them will believe the propaganda, but I bet the ones who do will be the happiest. Or least miserable I guess.
I thought you were talking about the US a moment there
The average person has lots of critical thinking.
It's just not a life hack to truth. You can critical think yourself into any conclusion. The average person uses critical thinking to reinforce their biased instead of challenge them.
Sorry but that is wrong. You are using the textbook definition of confirmation bias.
Critical thinking "is the process of analyzing available facts, evidence, observations, and arguments to make sound conclusions or informed choices. It involves recognizing underlying assumptions, providing justifications for ideas and actions, evaluating these justifications through comparisons with varying perspectives, and assessing their rationality and potential consequences."
All of that can be done, badly. Which is how people do it. See the discourse around any popular drama, people have the skills, they just use them in service of their own pre conceived notions.
I haven't thought about it like that, but now that you've made me, it makes a lot of sense.
It's bleak, but if you want to persuade a large number of people to think differently, you don't challenge their worldview, you create new biases that they will then defend in their own.
See: trump's constant repetition of blatant lies.
Do you believe that your media isn’t propaganda? Just because it seems less extreme doesn’t mean you’ve not been duped too.
There's too much lies in the world, I kinda developed a sort of "solipcistic" view of the world.
If I never witnessed it, I categorize it as "potentially false".
Of course, the entire news could be just fabricated. Nobody can tell for sure.
Anything beyond my immediate sorroundings could just be a stage. I could be in a truman show with everything I see being a deception, or in other terms "propaganda".
I'm not saying that everything isn't real, I just feel like that possibility should be entertained, to keep in mind as a potential possible explanation of what appears to be reality. Just as how a nation can lie to its people about reality, even the people closest to you, your parents, could also just be liars as well.
People never question if they are, in fact, the biological children of their parents, and just assume they are. That is another form of "propaganda". People just accept their parent's words as truth.
Propaganda is certainly everywhere. You cannot be sure what is real, other than the fact that "you" exist, in some form.
The thing about propaganda that's often overlooked is the fact that it isn’t just about controlling what people think - it’s about controlling what people think other people think.
Completely agree.
People are tribal - they tend to conform to what the group thinks and does. We're also primed with strong us vs. them tendencies, that is you want your team to win whatever happens.
As you say, if you believe that (for example) your friends and neighbours think democrats are radical socialists out to destroy American life, it would be highly dangerous to vote democrat let alone be on team democrat.
Do people in authoritarian countries actually just eat the propaganda?
They surely do in the USia, why wouldn't they do it in other countries. It is only takes to convince third of a population but it has to be the loud third to maintain power in a modern "Democracy"
No, the average person does not have critical thinking. You are correct.
Social media is designed to override your critical thinking faculties.
Human beings aren't evolved to get news/information from such a wide variety of sources at such a fast rate. Your critical thinking faculties just get overrun.
Everyone has experienced this and accidentally shared an article from The Onion or whatever without noticing in the short term that they are responding to some kind of bias being confirmed.