This would have been my guess prior to the previous three years. Alas, I’ve had a PROFOUND shift in my assessments many institutions and their employees.
I fall into that ~25% of not caving to Asch-style conformity not due to my intellect, but due to my stubbornness. Which has been a problem in th…
This would have been my guess prior to the previous three years. Alas, I’ve had a PROFOUND shift in my assessments many institutions and their employees.
I fall into that ~25% of not caving to Asch-style conformity not due to my intellect, but due to my stubbornness. Which has been a problem in the past, but served me admirably the last three years.
I didn’t really have doubts about my position, but the cognitive dissonance in watching (purportedly) intelligent/highly credentialed people act like a piece of cloth over their face would help prevent them from a microscopic virus, was REALLY hard to reconcile.
(Along with all the other safety theater based on nothing more than wishful thinking.)
I’m reminded of the meme you posted a few months back (I’m paraphrasing): we used to think that all people needed to behave in a sane, rational way was access to information. Now we have the internet. How’d that theory work out for us?
It just boggles the mind how educated we are, yet how fundamentally lacking in common sense, wisdom and courage.
I remember going to my small liberal arts college in 1980 and being told repeatedly that the point was not to teach us facts, but to teach us how to think. Somewhere along the way, that basic fundamental of higher education was flushed down the toilet.
This was my experience too! Just commented above about that before I saw your comment! One of the few things that has helped me keep my sanity over the years.
At my state school, there were two exceptional professors in the Speech Communications department. One also served as the forensics team coach. She taught us how to apply critical thinking skills to all that we took in whether it was a news broadcast, or articles we read in magazines like TIME, Newsweek, US News & World Report, et al.
The weekly assignment was to objectively analyse an article from any previous week's issue of the periodical of our choice – that exercise forced us to recognise our own biases, and to keep them out of the analysis. One of the best courses I in which I enrolled, ever!
The other taught public speaking – so every week, we had to prepare and give a speech, but we were not allowed to use 3x5 cards – whatever was our topic, we were expected to know it inside and out. Eventually, those speeches became akin to press conferences because we had to allow for a few minutes of Q & A.
We learned to think more critically, and to think on our feet because we knew our material so well. I doubt the likes of those two professors exist anywhere, anymore – though I do hope I'm wrong.
I've never been taught critical thinking, but i think i have been doing it without realising since this Covid fiasco began. I call it "my gut feeling", read as Faith.
Have enjoyed experiences similar to yours. My English literature professors taught me how to approach thinking critically/analytically. To ask questions. One reminded us of the who/what/when/where/why to get us started in that direction. Later by a few decades, I had a speech class, with a conservative professor (indeed a rarity!) who would allow us a few notes at the podium but would also grade us on maintaining eye contact and the more eye contact we had with the audience, the better the grade. We also had Q&A sessions afterwards. Loved what these experiences have done for me!
I'm being a devil's advocate here, but that doesn't really answer the question.
1. Giving speeches isn't critical thinking. If it were then politicians would be widely acknowledged as the sharpest minds in society, never prone to fallacious or incautious thought.
2. You were asked to analyze an article from any magazine, and the magazine was chosen by you. So you were probably selecting magazines and articles that already agreed with your biases without even being aware of it, making the feeling of being objective easy. Even if you managed to avoid this obvious trap, by what objective criteria did the professor evaluate your analysis? They don't necessarily know anything about the topic so that sounds very hard.
Over time, I've come to believe that the idea universities teach objective thinking is some sort of very clever trap. There's absolutely no detail on what they mean when they say this, I've seen no evidence of degree holders being more critical thinkers (if anything it's the opposite), and blatantly low quality thought is rampant in universities especially in the humanities that make the boldest claims in this regard.
My guess is that people go along with this because a humanities course is the first time people get asked to write something about their own thoughts as an adult. They're told that bias exists and to watch out for it. Then whatever is submitted, they're told that this is learning "critical thinking skills" which sounds so great nobody wants to object especially because it's usually the only generalizable skill the course claims to teach at all!
If they were really teaching critical thinking, the first thing students would ask is "what justifies this claim that you're teaching us critical thinking?"
Your response betrays a great deal you don't know - can't know - and that you don't acknowledge that ignorance, I'll respectfully decline on the advice of Mark Twain.
I once was a representative for Jeeps. I had to memorize the specifications and marketing talking points. Then I had to engage people in public. It didn't mean that I believed it all, but I agreed to be paid to convey their points. This is like speech and a press conference without needing to believe nor question it at all, and with no bother of analysis.
I don't really think that taking an article, doing your analysis, and then making yourself capable to speak to it in a press conference is the final word on critical thinking either.
I also went to a fancy critical thinking boasting university. We were all told how we were truly engaging in critical thinking there. Did I?
I think I have had some pride in seeing more, questioning more, but I have consistently discovered my past self not thinking and questioning about things I thought must be true at that time, and I would often discover this in a moment in which it was to my detriment. My best supposition right now is that I can think independently to a certain degree, but I also happen to miss quite a lot. I'm not God, so I figure it is pretty straightforward to have humility and accept my condition, but also to be vigorous and alive and participate in my own maturation to the best of my ability.
When I think of my family members who buy into the Covid crap, I don't really want to spend too long lamenting their lack of critical thinking. I do want to notice where they are inquisitive, curious, or have had experiences of coming to new awareness or standing apart with an independent viewpoint, and then I want to see where they might go with that. I've been wrong often enough that I'd prefer to shift my focus from us/them regarding critical thinking. I think we all have plenty to work with.
"I don't really think that taking an article, doing your analysis, and then making yourself capable to speak to it in a press conference is the final word on critical thinking either."
Absolutely correct – it is not – but it was a place to begin, to acquire the skills that would need to be developed for the rest of one's life. An attorney need not believe his client is not guilty, but he needs to be able to think like his opposite to raise reasonable doubt.
A crucial part of the exercise was to read the article, and begin to parse editorial comment presented as fact, from actual fact, then subject to scutiny both the editorial content, and the reported fact for accuracy, truth (supported by contextual data, or someone else's talking point?); put in writing, and write a paper that presents the analysis, conclusions, and reasoning behind them in a readable manner.
Yes. One professor stated on the first day of class to say nothing without several supporting quotes and context must be considered, etc. The difference as I see it from them till today is that then, we were required to study it, research it, ask questions, take a position on it and defend that position (often being required to take the opposite position and defend it as well!), and so. But today, it seems information is presented, swallowed whole uncritically, and how well it is regurgitated determined what your final grade is.
I'm wondering about a function of era. I had classes like these - debate classes, speech classes, critical thinking, logic. Many of them in high school. I graduated HS in 1980 - so . . . . I think it's gone downhill, since.
Stubbornness. Yes. I've been accused of digging in my heels. Also, according to management, of being strident and combative. Somehow made it to retirement before covid. Phew! Never took the asch test but can not lie to conform. Probably would have scolded my fellow test takers. Stridently.
So many red flags with covid policy. Denial of early treatment. Completely new technology for vaccines completed testing in months rather than years or decades. Banning use of existing antivirals with long histories of safety. Money trail from pharma into government oversight agencies. Data late, missing, confounded. Administering a brand new intervention to pregnant women! Quashing discussion, contrary views. All that before the vaccine injury signals began to cry for attention.
My faith in my fellow citizens is fairly well shattered.
Charlatans and fear mongers abounded, especially in 2020/2021.
No one was trying to stem the FULL-ON panic. Anyone with a mainstream platform was actively encouraging the lunacy. Therefore, I did not believe any of them.
The mitigation measures being pushed gave off such a stench of authoritarian CCP I couldn’t reconcile the dissonance being an American.
Therefore, when the “vaccines” arrived, I said, pass.
I was not going to justify the hysterics nor the trampling of our (supposed) rights as Americans by lining up to get injected to maybe get those rights back. They should have NEVER been touched in the first place!
More than a few must have felt similar in not wanting Pfizer’s wears, so then the politicos and media applied the full-court press of “vaccine” passes and mandates. Certain Democratic politicians made the CCP look like Libertarians. (Not that I don’t have a great deal of anger at the Republicans who also went nuts.)
I’m glad you got to your retirement. The stubborn, obnoxious American is why this is a great country; those are also crucial element for a dynamic, prosperous and joyous society.
I think I understand: you’re saying that people doing idiotic things does not prevent them from positively impacting society.
I don’t disagree necessarily (there are people I care about that displayed some very similar idiocy to your hypothetical driver), even though the use of masks everywhere was an unmissable statement that SOMETHING was very wrong.
My ultimate concern, though is a lack of confidence that many people now in positions of authority, and people who will one day take over those positions are power hungry tyrants that think nothing about personal liberty.
The graduating classes of the University of Michigan and, the following week, Princeton each gave Fauci a standing ovation at their commencements. Many of those kids are obviously bound for influential and powerful gigs graduating from such (once?) prestigious schools. To graduate from such institutions lacking such basic character assessment, well not thinking they are going to make great choices in the future.
One does not need any Ivy League education to know Fauci is a supreme narcissist who was instrumental in pushing massively destructive mitigation measures. To think otherwise shows a profound ignorance.
As you say, the amount of “Germans/npcs/sheep” that are helpful to society is weird, but that’s what SO disturbing. I’m not a doctor, so I do occasionally need to see one, but my level of confidence in the entire medical profession is extremely low to say the least, as an example.
The other frustrating part is how those highly educated and credentialed “German’s” so willing turned Nazi at the mention of a virus.
If it were just the landscaper that was freaking out about a virus, I’d cut the grass myself. But when years of proven methods, definitions and basic, really, really recent history gets forgotten or twisted out of any recognizable form by the very class of people steeped in this knowledge, well, that’s a different ball of wax entirely.
That’s what’s been so surprising: how fear and propaganda over rode decades of excellent educations.
Successful societies are based on trust. Trust is built over long periods of time, but pissed down the toilet in seconds. The damage done/propagated/defended by the elites will take decades to fully see but it’s coming and in the mean time I hold nothing but contempt for them. Not for those still driving in there cars alone in a mask—I feel really sorry for those people.
“is intelligence proof against authority?”
This would have been my guess prior to the previous three years. Alas, I’ve had a PROFOUND shift in my assessments many institutions and their employees.
I fall into that ~25% of not caving to Asch-style conformity not due to my intellect, but due to my stubbornness. Which has been a problem in the past, but served me admirably the last three years.
I didn’t really have doubts about my position, but the cognitive dissonance in watching (purportedly) intelligent/highly credentialed people act like a piece of cloth over their face would help prevent them from a microscopic virus, was REALLY hard to reconcile.
(Along with all the other safety theater based on nothing more than wishful thinking.)
I’m reminded of the meme you posted a few months back (I’m paraphrasing): we used to think that all people needed to behave in a sane, rational way was access to information. Now we have the internet. How’d that theory work out for us?
It just boggles the mind how educated we are, yet how fundamentally lacking in common sense, wisdom and courage.
I remember going to my small liberal arts college in 1980 and being told repeatedly that the point was not to teach us facts, but to teach us how to think. Somewhere along the way, that basic fundamental of higher education was flushed down the toilet.
This was my experience too! Just commented above about that before I saw your comment! One of the few things that has helped me keep my sanity over the years.
And how did they teach people how to think, exactly?
At my state school, there were two exceptional professors in the Speech Communications department. One also served as the forensics team coach. She taught us how to apply critical thinking skills to all that we took in whether it was a news broadcast, or articles we read in magazines like TIME, Newsweek, US News & World Report, et al.
The weekly assignment was to objectively analyse an article from any previous week's issue of the periodical of our choice – that exercise forced us to recognise our own biases, and to keep them out of the analysis. One of the best courses I in which I enrolled, ever!
The other taught public speaking – so every week, we had to prepare and give a speech, but we were not allowed to use 3x5 cards – whatever was our topic, we were expected to know it inside and out. Eventually, those speeches became akin to press conferences because we had to allow for a few minutes of Q & A.
We learned to think more critically, and to think on our feet because we knew our material so well. I doubt the likes of those two professors exist anywhere, anymore – though I do hope I'm wrong.
I've never been taught critical thinking, but i think i have been doing it without realising since this Covid fiasco began. I call it "my gut feeling", read as Faith.
Have enjoyed experiences similar to yours. My English literature professors taught me how to approach thinking critically/analytically. To ask questions. One reminded us of the who/what/when/where/why to get us started in that direction. Later by a few decades, I had a speech class, with a conservative professor (indeed a rarity!) who would allow us a few notes at the podium but would also grade us on maintaining eye contact and the more eye contact we had with the audience, the better the grade. We also had Q&A sessions afterwards. Loved what these experiences have done for me!
Invaluable, are they not?
Indeed, yes!
I'm being a devil's advocate here, but that doesn't really answer the question.
1. Giving speeches isn't critical thinking. If it were then politicians would be widely acknowledged as the sharpest minds in society, never prone to fallacious or incautious thought.
2. You were asked to analyze an article from any magazine, and the magazine was chosen by you. So you were probably selecting magazines and articles that already agreed with your biases without even being aware of it, making the feeling of being objective easy. Even if you managed to avoid this obvious trap, by what objective criteria did the professor evaluate your analysis? They don't necessarily know anything about the topic so that sounds very hard.
Over time, I've come to believe that the idea universities teach objective thinking is some sort of very clever trap. There's absolutely no detail on what they mean when they say this, I've seen no evidence of degree holders being more critical thinkers (if anything it's the opposite), and blatantly low quality thought is rampant in universities especially in the humanities that make the boldest claims in this regard.
My guess is that people go along with this because a humanities course is the first time people get asked to write something about their own thoughts as an adult. They're told that bias exists and to watch out for it. Then whatever is submitted, they're told that this is learning "critical thinking skills" which sounds so great nobody wants to object especially because it's usually the only generalizable skill the course claims to teach at all!
If they were really teaching critical thinking, the first thing students would ask is "what justifies this claim that you're teaching us critical thinking?"
</devils-advocate>
So critical thinker, now analyze why I'm wrong.
Your response betrays a great deal you don't know - can't know - and that you don't acknowledge that ignorance, I'll respectfully decline on the advice of Mark Twain.
I once was a representative for Jeeps. I had to memorize the specifications and marketing talking points. Then I had to engage people in public. It didn't mean that I believed it all, but I agreed to be paid to convey their points. This is like speech and a press conference without needing to believe nor question it at all, and with no bother of analysis.
I don't really think that taking an article, doing your analysis, and then making yourself capable to speak to it in a press conference is the final word on critical thinking either.
I also went to a fancy critical thinking boasting university. We were all told how we were truly engaging in critical thinking there. Did I?
I think I have had some pride in seeing more, questioning more, but I have consistently discovered my past self not thinking and questioning about things I thought must be true at that time, and I would often discover this in a moment in which it was to my detriment. My best supposition right now is that I can think independently to a certain degree, but I also happen to miss quite a lot. I'm not God, so I figure it is pretty straightforward to have humility and accept my condition, but also to be vigorous and alive and participate in my own maturation to the best of my ability.
When I think of my family members who buy into the Covid crap, I don't really want to spend too long lamenting their lack of critical thinking. I do want to notice where they are inquisitive, curious, or have had experiences of coming to new awareness or standing apart with an independent viewpoint, and then I want to see where they might go with that. I've been wrong often enough that I'd prefer to shift my focus from us/them regarding critical thinking. I think we all have plenty to work with.
"I don't really think that taking an article, doing your analysis, and then making yourself capable to speak to it in a press conference is the final word on critical thinking either."
Absolutely correct – it is not – but it was a place to begin, to acquire the skills that would need to be developed for the rest of one's life. An attorney need not believe his client is not guilty, but he needs to be able to think like his opposite to raise reasonable doubt.
A crucial part of the exercise was to read the article, and begin to parse editorial comment presented as fact, from actual fact, then subject to scutiny both the editorial content, and the reported fact for accuracy, truth (supported by contextual data, or someone else's talking point?); put in writing, and write a paper that presents the analysis, conclusions, and reasoning behind them in a readable manner.
Yes. One professor stated on the first day of class to say nothing without several supporting quotes and context must be considered, etc. The difference as I see it from them till today is that then, we were required to study it, research it, ask questions, take a position on it and defend that position (often being required to take the opposite position and defend it as well!), and so. But today, it seems information is presented, swallowed whole uncritically, and how well it is regurgitated determined what your final grade is.
I'm wondering about a function of era. I had classes like these - debate classes, speech classes, critical thinking, logic. Many of them in high school. I graduated HS in 1980 - so . . . . I think it's gone downhill, since.
1980 is when I graduated HS, as well - my guidance counselor steered me toward American, and English Literature...
Indeed, I was - I began to realise that ~1-2 years after I'd graduated and was working in the real world.
So many times in the past 3 years, I asked myself, "Am I just being stubborn?"
Then - I did my homework, and yes, I am being stubborn. With good cause.
Stubbornness. Yes. I've been accused of digging in my heels. Also, according to management, of being strident and combative. Somehow made it to retirement before covid. Phew! Never took the asch test but can not lie to conform. Probably would have scolded my fellow test takers. Stridently.
So many red flags with covid policy. Denial of early treatment. Completely new technology for vaccines completed testing in months rather than years or decades. Banning use of existing antivirals with long histories of safety. Money trail from pharma into government oversight agencies. Data late, missing, confounded. Administering a brand new intervention to pregnant women! Quashing discussion, contrary views. All that before the vaccine injury signals began to cry for attention.
My faith in my fellow citizens is fairly well shattered.
Charlatans and fear mongers abounded, especially in 2020/2021.
No one was trying to stem the FULL-ON panic. Anyone with a mainstream platform was actively encouraging the lunacy. Therefore, I did not believe any of them.
The mitigation measures being pushed gave off such a stench of authoritarian CCP I couldn’t reconcile the dissonance being an American.
Therefore, when the “vaccines” arrived, I said, pass.
I was not going to justify the hysterics nor the trampling of our (supposed) rights as Americans by lining up to get injected to maybe get those rights back. They should have NEVER been touched in the first place!
More than a few must have felt similar in not wanting Pfizer’s wears, so then the politicos and media applied the full-court press of “vaccine” passes and mandates. Certain Democratic politicians made the CCP look like Libertarians. (Not that I don’t have a great deal of anger at the Republicans who also went nuts.)
I’m glad you got to your retirement. The stubborn, obnoxious American is why this is a great country; those are also crucial element for a dynamic, prosperous and joyous society.
I think I understand: you’re saying that people doing idiotic things does not prevent them from positively impacting society.
I don’t disagree necessarily (there are people I care about that displayed some very similar idiocy to your hypothetical driver), even though the use of masks everywhere was an unmissable statement that SOMETHING was very wrong.
My ultimate concern, though is a lack of confidence that many people now in positions of authority, and people who will one day take over those positions are power hungry tyrants that think nothing about personal liberty.
The graduating classes of the University of Michigan and, the following week, Princeton each gave Fauci a standing ovation at their commencements. Many of those kids are obviously bound for influential and powerful gigs graduating from such (once?) prestigious schools. To graduate from such institutions lacking such basic character assessment, well not thinking they are going to make great choices in the future.
One does not need any Ivy League education to know Fauci is a supreme narcissist who was instrumental in pushing massively destructive mitigation measures. To think otherwise shows a profound ignorance.
As you say, the amount of “Germans/npcs/sheep” that are helpful to society is weird, but that’s what SO disturbing. I’m not a doctor, so I do occasionally need to see one, but my level of confidence in the entire medical profession is extremely low to say the least, as an example.
The other frustrating part is how those highly educated and credentialed “German’s” so willing turned Nazi at the mention of a virus.
If it were just the landscaper that was freaking out about a virus, I’d cut the grass myself. But when years of proven methods, definitions and basic, really, really recent history gets forgotten or twisted out of any recognizable form by the very class of people steeped in this knowledge, well, that’s a different ball of wax entirely.
That’s what’s been so surprising: how fear and propaganda over rode decades of excellent educations.
Successful societies are based on trust. Trust is built over long periods of time, but pissed down the toilet in seconds. The damage done/propagated/defended by the elites will take decades to fully see but it’s coming and in the mean time I hold nothing but contempt for them. Not for those still driving in there cars alone in a mask—I feel really sorry for those people.