the lack of critical thinking?

[anotheranon]

I ran across this article on Slashdot as part of a comment on a discussion about pseudoscience: Sesame Street, Epistemology, and Freedom, an essay on the lack of formal training in abstract and critical thinking.

It reminded me of a phone conversation I had with my sister. She lives in a conservative area and gets very frustrated by people around her who uncritically accept what they're told and go about their lives without ever having a creative, original, or "abnormal" thought.

She calls them "muggles" and derides them as stupid and I tried to explain to her (with doubtful effect) that they're not dumb, they just never learned. The article describes how the total of most people's exposure to formal critical thinking skills is in the Sesame Street skit "One Of These Things Is Not Like The Others", and suggests that many people never progress beyond kindergarten-level abstract thought, hobbling their efforts to make decisions and evaluate information in adulthood. It's an interesting possibility, especially reading it so soon after "President of Good and Evil", which suggests that George Bush suffers this very same deficiency of reasoning skills.

Disclaimer: I'm not going to be a snob and suggest that I've got spectacular reasoning skills and am somehow "better" - like many people I fall into the habit of only paying attention to information I agree with or like. I do try, however, to see all sides of an argument or issue; if I did learn anything beyond "OOTTINLTO" it wasn't until well after childhood, when my dad encouraged me to always question whether a source of information was worth my time or valid, and what perspective the source is coming from, but it's not as if he ever sat me down with the evening paper and made me go through each headline weighing it's biases and flaws (though perhaps he should have).

Like my sister, I am frustrated by ineptitude and lack of inquisitiveness, but unlike her I think it's just a lack of training, not something innate.

Comments

[timcharmorbien.livejournal.com]

Very interesting article. I don't think I was ever taught critical thinking, I'm just skeptical by nature, and age has only made me more cynical. :) I share your sister's frustration with people who just believe whatever any vaguely authoritarean figure tells them, though I don't actually think they're stupid; I save my scorn for the folks who insist the world is flat or that evolution is "just a 'theory'", based on just the sort of specious, ill-informed thinking that so many politicians depend on to keep themselves employed. Unfortunately, I don't see this improving any time soon since an education reform platform in this country usually involves making a lot of vague suggestions for new legislation with no actual plan for funding.
But you've seen my rants before :)

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

I share my sister's and your frustration with "mundanes" (to borrow an SCA term) as well, but I think I've learned to live with them a little better than she has - I suspect because I surround myself with clever and insightful people like yourselves :)

Thinking back on my early life I sometimes wonder how I developed critical thinking at all - I was exposed to all manner of pseudoscience and strange beliefs. Wait a sec, maybe that was it...:P