Comment by cynicalsecurity
2 days ago
Critical thinking needs to be taught in schools. Either that or the society of the future is going to be hugely screwed.
If we teach kids critical thinking, they will not only be able to recognise scam, they will also stop being religious, which is another good thing.
I wonder why we still don't have critical thinking in schools.
Teaching math is a great foundation for learning how to think. Logical fallacies, for example, can be expressed as math.
Math teaches nothing in terms of critical thinking.
this is fundamentally not true. while math has a tone of rote learning in the same sense one may learn grammars in their native tongue over time, formulating proofs or fluent articulations of quantities involves the same problem solving and critical thinking one also applies to thoughtful communication.
math is communication, and the deeper you go, the more fluent you become, and the more open ended your application gets because you are problem solving, which is a direct consequence of applying critical thinking skills -- you have to consider your solution against a set of possible solutions, and determine pros, cons, and also attempt to disprove your own ideas.
wild statement.
A implies B does not mean B implies A.
I see failure to understand this in all sorts of critical thinkers.
Critical thinking is taught in schools though. People in the real world don't, by and large, fall for this shit. The very small fraction that do ends up being a rather large number in absolute terms when spread across the whole world though.
Critical thinking doesn't make people less religious nor should less religious people be a goal in society.
I struggle to explain, but I feel like our data-obssessed society has completely thrown out the baby with the bathwater when it comes to these things. No one labels themselves with a religion or political party because there is a flaw in each one and anything with a flaw can't be correct, scientifically, so we just don't believe in any grand purpose to our lives, don't believe in any world leaders, don't believe in any shared tenets, and basically are all lonely and weak (because we abandon every group with a flaw).
The result of critical thinking shouldn't be a worse off society...
We don’t reject religion because of “a flaw.” We reject it because the fundamental basis of it is unsupported. It’s not “a flaw” when a house has no foundation. There is no baby, only bathwater.
"The Simulation" is the new modern religion. It explains everything yet explains nothing.
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The fundamental basis of theism is that this world and everything in it was created, and it has some higher purpose, being planned. While that may be unsupported, the alternative, nihilism, is equally unsupported and also very negative for people and most people who claim to believe that, don't actually act like their life is worthless. They don't practice what they preach
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Nonsense. Religion serves some needs of the human mind. It's like saying having friends is fundamentally flawed. We don't need friends but we spend hours saying pointless words to each other and somehow feel good about all that wasted time. Humans have these emotional needs. We're not robots that can just program ourselves to be pure truth and productivity machines.
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I think before we teach critical thinking we may have to provide food and shelter security for the students.
Critical thinking won't save you. Emotion trumps rationality. This stuff plays on emotions.
...which critical thinking skills help you to notice, so that you are less likely to fall prey to it.
The point, perhaps, is that you can't use reason to convince someone to be more reasonable. Humans are fundamentally emotional animals, and if you want to get them to start valuing reason, you have to use emotional arguments to do so, by definition.