More generally, it is shockingly easy to frame an issue with disinformation to misguide the general public.
The only solution to this is better education that teaches critical thinking rather than mechanical parroting-exams based system that is widespread today in majority of the world.
Cognitive Dissonance is a real thing. I think those nonsensical views are largely possible to hold because they're commonly held and not that they have any merit. Unfortunately we are extremely susceptible to conformity and social proof.
Fair enough. Critical thinking is a way to think about a problem that does not guarantee similar conclusions, nor does it imply that it can used effectively for all problems.
"Everyone is capable of anything" is a bit of a stretch, but as general rule critical thinking is not improbable for majority of the people.
That is, I believe with better education we can have a substantially larger number of people who are capable of critical thinking and can navigate through trickery and misinformation at a basic level.
Even under assumptions of universal inherent capability, the dirty truth is that we simply don't know how to reliably teach critical thinking en masse. That's nominally what college is for, but the universalization of college admissions has exposed the fact that the difference between a degreed and non-degreed worker had more to do with the input population to colleges than any direct effect of a college education.
This is an unsolved problem, and a really important one in the modern cognitive economy, which is why theories about inherent cognitive capability have gained so much purchase recently. For my part, I think these theories are plausible, but also think that their implications are significant enough that I don't want to be too hasty and buy into them until I've been convinced that we've exhausted the possibility that thinking can be taught.
IMO critical thinking seems to appear when multiple conflicting hypothesis of truth are thrust upon the individual.
The people I’ve met who are least capable of critical thinking seem to have accepted some form of universal or protouniversal truth, usually an ideology that sort of explains all things away they don’t want to think about. Religion, strong societal rules and position, and lack of unwanted interference in your life can do that.
Some degree of oppression doesn’t seem to harm either as it seems to me it forces people to confront the fundamental sense of fairness they might want to believe in has no grounds in society. So it’s a mix of things.
I’ve also always had trouble meeting very uncritical students of history or philosophy. I think both sort of have a tendency to remove illusions from your mind, although philosophy in particular is not too useful I think beyond the fundamentals.
Learning Socratic dialogue seems useful though.
Probably the least critical thought-inclined people I’ve met are students of economics who take the theories at face value though. Interestingly they are very often quite sheltered and privileged people, which goes into my point about oppression.
I don't know what direction the causal arrow flows here though: it's just as plausible to me that those inclined towards or capable of critical thinking gravitate towards those degrees. Like I said, I have no idea what the reality is, but I don't think anyone does, and what I'm pushing back against is the notion held by so many that throwing arbitrary education at people magically grows critical thinking skills
In fact I’d like to add that I said above - probably the best education for critical thinking I can imagine is teaching people about cognitive biases and heuristics.
Right, I didn't mean to suggest that _you_ were falling into this trap in your comment. My second sentence isn't too tied to my first, it's just a clarification that I'm not completely fatalist about the issue (yet).
"everybody is capable of improving anything if only they were given more education than they are now and cared enough to study"
Is probably more accurate. You can bring a horse to water but you can't make them drink. It's impossible to know but it may be that those who are willing to be educated already have been and those who are left are willfully ignorant or have low enough intelligence that education isn't possible.
As society becomes more complex, greater and greater numbers of people will be unable to successfully interact with it. What we do with them is a unsolved problem.
>The only solution to this is better education that teaches critical thinking rather than mechanical parroting-exams based system that is widespread today in majority of the world.
As long as...
a) The politicians find it easier to manipulate dumb voters and realize that voters with good critical thinking skills are more capable of calling out their BS.
and
b) The bureaucrats deciding what gets taught in public school are ultimately accountable to people appointed by and accountable to politicians
and
c) Most of the voting public gets a public school education.
...we will never have a general public with good critical thinking skills.
Now, before anyone puts words in my mouth, no there isn't some grand conspiracy to keep the proles stupid, it just so happens that there's a disincentive to making them smart and making them smart takes resources so obviously there's no will to get it done.
You'd be surprised how much good stuff the government doesn't do is attributable to this incentive structure.
The only solution to this is better education that teaches critical thinking rather than mechanical parroting-exams based system that is widespread today in majority of the world.