I don’t know about y’all, but if I grew up in a country that never has the news criticizing its leaders, I’d be very skepical and deduce that there is censorshop going on and the offical news could be exaggerated or entirely falsified. Do people in authoritarian countries actually just eat the propaganda? To what extent do they believe the propaganda?
This can be controversial, but my opinion is that religious education normally is the opposite of critical thinking. If you teach the kids to accept beliefs just based on faith, you’re killing critical thinking.
It’s not religion that’s the problem but ideology and lazy thinking in general. How many people in the political parties we oppose just accept the lies being fed to them with no critical thought or investigation?
My point is that religious education trains the kids to believe things without verifying facts, even unbelievable fables. I’m just trying to point a potential source of what we know is a big problem.
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True People saying “im from the government and here to help are the scariest words ever”. Aren’t really any different then people that drill a religious phrase into their kids.
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.
People focus their energies on getting through the day for the most part of their lives. It is very hard for people to muster the time and energy to paying attention to politics, let alone ideologically political propaganda.
The vast majority flat ignore it entirely and remain in an apolitical state. This is a primary function of propaganda: insulating people from political action or thought that might alter the status quo.
Critical thinking is a skill that requires teaching and practice. If children are not given that preparation they won’t have that skill in adulthood. That’s why authoritarian governments care so much about controlling and/or limiting access to proper education.
I think this USSR quote is a good answer:
We know that they are lying, they know that they are lying, they even know that we know they are lying, we also know that they know we know they are lying too, they of course know that we certainly know they know we know they are lying too as well, but they are still lying. In our country, the lie has become not just moral category, but the pillar industry of this country.
(Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn)
In any authoritarian system where indoctrination starts young you’ll probably have a fifth of the population that’s high on the coolaid or never questioned anything due to ideology or intelligence (or both). The rest know they’re lying, etc. And keep their mouths shut because they don’t want to go to Siberia or El Salvador.
Also applies to modern day Russia. Everyone knows the elections are fake, for example, but they keep their heads down.
Yeah, and just because you know they’re lying, doesn’t mean you know what the truth is, much less so how to prove it to someone else.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_the_Kool-Aid
it was a tool of mass suicide not a drug to get high on lol
That’s not the point of the phrase — the statement refers to the true believers drinking poison unquestioningly, without entertaining the thought that it will kill them.
Check the story! They knew they were going to die. That was the point. He told them. He told them exactly what was up and they consented. Their minds were so twisted by his lies that they couldn’t imagine any other life. That’s what drinking the koolaid means: you subscribe to a belief wholeheartedly, even a crazy one, to the point where youd rather die than question it.
you subscribe to a belief wholeheartedly, even a crazy one, to the point where youd rather die than question it.
That’s what I said too, which is to say that the point is not the killing but the unquestioning nature of it.
It’d be so much better if that authoritarian fifth would drink the flavor-aid in the sense of killing themselves.
I know. What you have hit upon here is my obviously unsuccessful attempt at making these people look more ridiculous than the OG death cult.
You learn that truth is a dangerous luxery you can do without, as power dictates, and can do so for generations.
Seriously, if you are AWARE of propaganda, you are also aware that you have been influenced by it. Propaganda is pervasive in civilizations. It is simply manipulation. TV ads and guys trying to pick up chicks are everyday uses of propaganda.
I go on Reddit and come here and I nod along and I’m like yes, yes, and then I leave and sometimes it feels like coming up from being underwater. We are quite literally surrounded in propaganda. It has never been easier to disseminate opinions, especially when the majority of our communications (mine for sure) come via text on a screen. It is in every single facet of our lives.
And so I talk to my brother and he always tries to get me to think more, he’s a smart guy. He says things like “Who benefits the most” from whatever, opinion I’ve talked to him about, and so frequently it goes back to corporations. I don’t want to get overtly political, but personally the best way I try to think about things is linearly: this thing we are talking about, trace it to its logical end point and origin. And then feel helpless again.
Propaganda, is a craft, it’s a whole world of tricks and manipulations. Not just censorship and positive stories about the leaders. It can get shockingly sophisticated. We usually only take note of the obvious and obtuse propaganda.
People aren’t dumb for believing it, it’s a whole field of figuring out how to convince people about things. Often if the propaganda doesn’t work on you, that’s because it’s not designed for you, or it has worked but the goal of it wasn’t what you thought it was.
Yep. For example during the Soviet occupation here, the Colorado potato beetle got imported here somehow and given it doesn’t have any natural predators, it destroyed potatoes like crazy.
Well, guess what? According to Soviet propaganda it was intentionally done by Americans to destroy our “paradise” and our food.
Everything bad that happened was because the evil imperialists worked against our paradise.
The country being so poor it couldn’t afford enough toilet paper for its citizens? Westerners! All foreign fruit being very scarce and people standing in long lines to get it, while the ones in the back knew they probably aren’t getting any today? Also westerners’ fault. Meat being available only for the few lucky ones who came early, or were friends with the butcher? Yep, this one’s on westerners too.
Propaganda is not the usual over-the-top stories, it’s subtle. Would you today believe if someone told you that Americans have imported the Colorado potato beetle intentionally? And would you, if it was consistent with everything you’ve heard since you were a kid?
“Of course the Americans introduced the Colorado potato beetle! After all, where is Colorado? America! Check mate liberal”
For real though I hate those little fuckers. Every time I try and grow potatoes in a garden I get an infestation and it’s a pain to deal with in a small plot, can’t imagine how much of a nightmare they are on a proper field.
All foreign fruit being very scarce and people standing in long lines to get it, while the ones in the back knew they probably aren’t getting any today? Also westerners’ fault.
Do you know the history of the united fruit company? That one could be correct.
Critical thinking is a skill, not an inborn gift. You may end up better at it than someone else by virtue of some as-yet-unknown genetic or epigenetic factor, but only if you both learn the skills and practice them.
Worse, even with learning and practice everyone fucks up at least a little. Even if the only place they fuck up is thinking that because they have the skill and practice that they can’t fuck up.
We’re all fucking meat bags filled with hormones and chemicals. That shit will override every bit of common sense and critical thinking that’s ever existed. Not every time, but eventually, and more than once in your life.
Propaganda is only propaganda if you aren’t part of the institution generating it. If you’re a random asshole in fascistan, or whatever, chances are that the propaganda is just noise, the same way commercials or waves crashing are. There’s no need to think critically if all you want to do is coast and get by.
So they “believe” it in roughly the same way that people believe if they work hard, they can achieve anything they want. Even if they know better, what’s the alternative? Seeing reality and still being stuck in the same place? Nah, even the ones that have practiced thoroughly aren’t fucking around most of the time. Why would they bother if they apply that critical thinking and realize nobody really gives a fuck as long as they aren’t too hungry, and the worst stuff is happening in some letter town? They wouldn’t. It’s too fucking depressing.
Also, you assume that critical thinking can overcome a lack of information. The “news” is always the news. If you have no other sources of data, critical thinking doesn’t apply until something contradicts that news. If you control what people see and hear, you control the people. There won’t be enough opposition to matter, if you’ve set up your regime right.
Critical thinking has to be taught in order for a person have it. And when you either restrict/limit education (for example, making it so that one needs a lot of money for proper schooling, thus barring lower classes from getting the education they need) or alter the education to become indoctrination. (These methods are most efficient combined!) It’s why authoritarian people and parties want to control and/or destroy education systems so bad.
Being a history nerd, I’ve been convinced that the vast majority of people can be tricked into believing nearly anything. No one is immune to propaganda, it’s just a matter of circumistances and the education you receive.
If you had grew up in a society where everyone told you that, say, pigs are a type of lizard, and your school taught you that pigs are lizards, all biologists were bribed or forced into saying pigs are lizards, and all the books you read and all the movies or shows you watched said pigs are lizards, chances are that you would believe pigs are lizards.
I’d also like to note that the above scenario would work especially well if you had never actually spent time with pigs. For example, it’s a lot easier to convince someone that gay people are evil if they don’t personally know any gay people.
I also think that often people know that, for example, elections are fraudulent, but they are too scared to say anything and thus act like they aren’t.
Back in the 70s, I had one if those subversive high school English teachers - longish hair, no tie, wore bell bottoms, arranged the desks in his classroom in a circle, etc. His name was Mr. Clark.
Mr. Clark had an unusual teaching style that I really responded to. Much more Socratic, making us defend our ideas, but be willing to change our minds if someone had a better one. I liked his teaching so much, i took his classes 3 years in a row, including 2 Shakespeare classes.
It wasn’t until years after college, that i realized he wasnt really teaching us Shakespeare, he was teaching us to think, using Shakespeare as a vehicle. We were practicing Critical Thinking Skills every day for three years, without even realizing it.
It became so ingrained in me to question assertions and allegations without sources, and view everything objectively before drawing a conclusion, that I found it very easy to resist propaganda. When Rush Limbaugh came on the radio in the late 80s, I was shocked that anyone was buying into his obvious bullshit, but my well-honed Critical Thinking Skills saw through his “logic” instantly.
At some point, I tried to look up Mr Clark, so I could thank him for being the most influential teacher in my life, but he had passed away about 5 years before. He literally taught me how to think.
often people know that, for example, elections are fraudulent, but they are too scared to say anything
People might vaguely understand that elections don’t produce good outcomes or have systemic bias. That’s then condensed to „elections are rigged“, regardless of the facts and details.
Most people know little about most things. It’s difficult to even have good fundamentals about most things in our complex world. So people will defer to their personal experience and information seeped into their minds by osmosis/exposure.
Things like an economy or political system are extremely complex already and not fully understood even by experts.
There is deeply emotional resistance to the idea of topics being too complex for the average person to understand. The “experts” promote something that superficially contradicts our lived experience? They must be corrupt liars! Down with the experts!
The economy had, on balance, positive trends in 2024? We felt poorer, so economists should be lynched! /s
Feels scarily like America is moving towards something like China’s Great Leap Forward https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward
The Great Leap Forward stemmed from multiple factors, including "the purge of intellectuals, the surge of less-educated radicals… Mao was dismissive of technical experts and basic economic principles…
Higher officials did not dare to report the economic disaster which was being caused by these policies… Mao did not retreat from his policies; instead, he blamed problems on bad implementation and “rightists” who opposed him…
…dozens of dams constructed in Zhumadian, Henan, during the Great Leap Forward collapsed in 1975 (under the influence of Typhoon Nina)… with estimates of its death toll ranging from tens of thousands to 240,000.
The failure of agricultural policies… suppressed the food supply… The shortage of supply clashed with an explosion in demand, leading to millions of deaths from severe famine.
We felt poorer, so economists should be lynched!
The contrast between people’s experiences in their everyday lives and what politicians or experts say is important.
If the economy is supposedly doing great but I can afford less and less and my life gets worse, that’s a contradiction.
The USA is moving more to something like the gilded age with more wealth disparity, more suffering for the poor, more violence.
The anti-intellectualism and anti-elitism of the cultural revolution was far more extreme. You are right that there are some similar ideas brewing.
When the political and economic system is no longer delivering for the population, it will turn against the (perceived) leaders. Trump and the right spins this very well by directing the anger against „woke“ liberal academics, foreigners, and away from the billionaires.
The „woke“ elites are also in crisis. The Democratic Party is in shambles.
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.
Decision fatigue is a real thing. Ask anyone who sat through three tests in one day; even if you have studied the material, it’s hard to focus after a while. It’s easy to fill our day with minutia that distracts us from the impostant issues.
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.
Then they arent using critical thinking skills, they just think they are. With proper use of critical thinking, the conclusion arises from the evidence, it doesnt confirm “pre conceived notions.”
We have all sorts of evidence for conflicting conclusions. Most of us do not have the time or resources get a lock on which evidence is truly trustworthy.
If you talk to a flat earther, or a dedicated follower of the oppossing political team, you will see they understand faulty sources, chains of logic, and deductive reasoning, they just only apply them in support of their position.
You can teach a person about bias in research or media and they will use that knowledge to discredit positions they don’t agree with.
You can say “that’s not critical thinking” and on one hand I agree, but teaching more thourough critical thinking skills won’t have the result we want: for people to make evidence based decisions about their life and society.
In my experience, Getting people to change their minds requires engaging their emotions. Decisions are made on the basis or shame, fear, anger, and more rarely, love, hope, and empathy.
The evidence needs to be there to support the emotion, but nobody ever changes their behavior on the strength of the evidence alone.
That’s not critical thinking at all. Critical thinking is process that questions assertions and sources, and approaches them objectively. If it is ultimately just confirming your own bias, you haven’t used critical thinking.
But what if i started with something true?
Example I was raised being told the earth was round. After watching some flat earth debates i did learn a lot about old experiments the show the earth is round. All critical thinking could do os just re confirm my starting belief
The Scientific Method includes a step in which you state your Hypothesis - an educated guess, based on information you already know. There is nothing wrong with that, because it means you are already familiar the established science.
The issue comes when the experiment uncovers unexpected data and/or conclusions. The proper scientific response is to adjust, or even reject, the hypothesis based on the new data. Someone with good Critical Thinking Skills would have no problem doing that, because a subjective approach, coming up with a truthful conclusion, supported by the data, is always the objective.
Unfortunately, too many people have a personal desire to make their original hypothesis the truth, either because of their ego, or because they have some sort of personal or economic investment in that hypothesis, etc. These are people who are only using the promise of Critical Thinking to add credibility to their conclusions, when in reality, they were always looking to confirm their own bias.
And sometimes the research DOES confirm your hypothesis. That’s not necessarily confirmation bias, as long as your hypothesis was always based on accepted scientific principles. Scientists often have a pretty good idea of the outcome of an experiment. A person looking for confirmation bias goes into an experiment hoping to prove their hypothesis correct, while a true scientist goes in hoping that something unexpected will happen, because that gives them something new and interesting to study.
This is a no true scottsman on critical thinking.
I’m going to copy my reply to Barney above.
We have all sorts of evidence for conflicting conclusions. Most of us do not have the time or resources get a lock on which evidence is truly trustworthy.
If you talk to a flat earther, or a dedicated follower of the oppossing political team, you will see they understand faulty sources, chains of logic, and deductive reasoning, they just only apply them in support of their position.
You can teach a person about bias in research or media and they will use that knowledge to discredit positions they don’t agree with.
You can say “that’s not critical thinking” and on one hand I agree, but teaching more thourough critical thinking skills won’t have the result we want: for people to make evidence based decisions about their life and society.
In my experience, Getting people to change their minds requires engaging their emotions. Decisions are made on the basis or shame, fear, anger, and more rarely, love, hope, and empathy.
The evidence needs to be there to support the emotion, but nobody ever changes their behavior on the strength of the evidence alone.
nobody ever changes their behavior on the strength of the evidence alone.
Simply not true, at all. People change behavior based on evidence all the time.
Critical Thinking requires a totally objective perspective, and emotion has no place in it.
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.
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 find way too many people talking about “common sense” as if that was even a thing. It frustrates me to no end.
“common sense”
A set of assumptions(usually false) acquired before age 12.
I’m wondering how you are measuring “common sense” that arrives at “usually false.” Are you ignoring obviously common sense things, like “the sky is up” – since that’s just common sense?
If you are in North America and you draw a line straight up, will you reach the sky in Australia?
Well I didn’t say the sky isn’t also down. (Begrudging upvote.)
You know, you are technically correct, which is the best kind of correct.
I respect your technical smartass response to my technical smartass check attempt.
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!!!
eat the same foods as you grew up with
That’s unfair. Food has a subjective component, so naturally most people who enjoyed their childhoods will rate the foods of their youth higher than others might.
I more meant the choice to be an omnivore or vegetarian or vegan or carnivore. Most people don’t question why they do what they do.
Questioning beliefs takes a lot of time and courage. Very few people do it.
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?
Did you choose to eat meat? What’s your logic? Which animals? Would you eat dog?
Did you choose to eat meat?
Yes.
What’s your logic?
There is none, I wholly accept that it is entirely illogical and unethical. I am addicted to the flavor. If I could have the flavors and textures without the killing i would switch in a heartbeat, however.
Which animals?
Any so long as it is delicious. Even human as long as the human wanted it and was not killed for the meat.
Would you eat dog?
Yes. It’s no different than pig in my eyes.
These questions probably don’t work on me because I was raised in a vegan/vegetarian restaurant as a child.
They work perfectly actually. You have a proper grasp of your situation. I do question your moral choice of putting flavor above killing, but you get the concept and have put the thought in.
That was my original point. The VAST majority of people never question their diet. You did. That’s rare.
My own choice to be vegetarian has it’s own moral issues, but my thought is that: if I have to sit in a box 10 hours and a day work to survive in capitalism, I won’t expect less from farm animals.
I do question your moral choice of putting flavor above killing
To be clear, I do not. What I’m doing is morally wrong, in fact, it’s morally terrible, but I do it anyway.
