I have seen, to my disgust, that there is a problem with the general concept of teaching what we like to call "critical thinking". People don't actually learn how to think critically about things in general, and improve their understanding as a result - they apply these skills only to positions or ideas they disagree with, and formulate (and read/hear and memorize) enough sophistic garbage to maintain their own status quo while endlessly attacking others' genuinely reasoned positions. This observation, which I was already suspicious might be the case, was brought out in high relief to me this past year. We need to move to some new level of teaching and understanding it, because right now all people do is learn the crude tools and use them to smash things they hate. 2/10/21 3 AM Exhorting relatively under-educated people to "think for themselves" as they grapple with today's complex (scientific and otherwise) issues is like expecting small rural towns to be able to defend themselves equitably against the extraction industries. 2/13/21 4 AM (after "Thank You For Smoking") Being blindly skeptical of the products of the most skeptical endeavor humanity has ever engaged in, while accepting the most bizarre counter positions, is quite a strange approach to "critical thinking". 3/28/21 In response to "Whenever a child learns critical thinking, somewhere a conspiracy theory dies." I have to bring up some thinking I have been doing about this. We need to step up the whole "teaching critical thinking" thing to a new level, since, basically, all most people got out of what we were teaching them is the ability to latch onto conspiracy theories and propaganda aimed at numb fucking apes who have been taught a precise amount of "critical thinking". 7/16/21 
© Huw Powell
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