> So I'm in the awkward middle ground of believing it's counter-productive to try to shelter people from ideas but also believing that lots of people are very easy to manipulate, even so easy to manipulate that it can happen en masse and entirely by accident.
Don't think it is an accident. The ruling class has set this stage by design. There is little to no critical thinking being taught in K-12. Create a malleable population, then push censorship to protect them from themselves.
You can't teach critical thinking. There are techniques you can learn, but critical thinking is fundamentally an attitude. It's the attitude of never taking anything you read or hear at face value.
And while it can be quite important, it's also super exhausting. I think people's tolerance for that kind of work exists along a spectrum (probably with at least some biological component) but that no one can really do it all the time.
You can teach the principles, and example of why it's important to create motivation.
any subject requires a motivated attitude to succeed. Critical thinking also requires an attitude to value the topic IRL - but arguable that ought to be the case for all topics.
> It's the attitude of never taking anything you read or hear at face value.
A class in philosophy (or history) of science will teach you all the ways in which people where wrong before the process was established, and will make you see the value of science. CT is the same thing applied to everything, not just formal physical studies.
> it's also super exhausting
Only because most things are written to manipulate. If publications actually suffered for their reputation b/c of poor articles the whole thing would be easier. Also, if journalists set out to prove their claims, and properly source them - arguably something like Wikipedia is a group effort to do what is hard for the individual (I think it fails, btw, by leaning too much on published material).
“Never taking anything you read or hear at face value” makes it impossible to operate in a functioning society. This is particularly the case in a society where some people are happy to fill your information channels with conflicting information. Even if you do your research and reject some of the bad data, the effort will paralyze you (and others like you) which is almost as good from a malicious perspective.
Or to think about it from an information security perspective, once you adopt a specific defense mechanism, someone will look for ways to exploit it. This one is particularly easy to exploit.
It’s why I was so unconcerned with the school shutdowns early in the pandemic. Even an entire semester lost wouldn’t noticeably impede the nonexistent learning of US students. However, now that’s it’s been two years of on and off online school, that’s well past the point when detrimental effects would show, even in the US education system.
Did we ever have a less malleable population? Was critical thinking ever taught? If this is by design, I'd argue the design was there since the dawn of civilization. (Note: no I'm not offering any solution, just making an observation)
Don't think it is an accident. The ruling class has set this stage by design. There is little to no critical thinking being taught in K-12. Create a malleable population, then push censorship to protect them from themselves.