Critical thinking has been an increasingly rare skill, partially because people are focusing on conspiracy theories instead.
this post was submitted on 03 May 2025
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Many of the United States have removed teaching critical thinking from their curriculum.
No offense, but this post is sort of crazy to me because I've read a bunch of comments explaining how it actually happens, and id categorize all of them as normal results of critical thinking. As in, you could've answered your own question with some critical thinking.
A lot of people don't think. But a lot of people do think critically, and they just think differently from you or me.
If we believe nobody thinks critically, how can we even begin to effect change?
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.
If you believe you're the only one feeling this way you're likely to doubt yourself. If it's dangerous to voice how you feel, you won't hear that others share this skepticism.
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.
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.
Shitlers base is evangelicals. Evangelicals are the biggest religion in the u.s. Evangelicals are the largest single voting bloc in the u.s. Christianity indoctrinates people from birth believe obvious lies. Shitler is an obvious liar.
Religion is the poisonous tree that has bore us this fruit. It is most definitely not a "both sides" (cringe) issue.
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.
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.
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.
I wish I was like that.
I've learnt this the hard way, but ALWAYS (LITERALLY FUCKING ALWAYS) assume you're the smartest in the room. People are dumb as fuck on average.
I encounter a lot of assholes who think that way.
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.
Everyone believes and agrees with propaganda to some extent because world is a lie. All rules are just rough aproximation of reality. All modern rules are man made and most of them are not real. They are just real in this moment of time we live in. The moment we agreed those rules are true. So people just agreed that this propaganda you're seeing is ok for them right now. They can live with that. This doesn't mean they have no critical thinking. This means they are fine with things as they are because it doesn't touch directly major percentage of them.
There is no greater enemy to logic, common sense and critical thinking than religion. Religion punishes skepticism and logic. In many places you can still be killed for blasphemy. When children discover Santa isn't real, this should be an opportunity for them to break free of the gaslighting of their family religion, instead many parents double down on the gaslighting. When people are too brainwashed to accept something as simple as "fairy tale creatures are not real" their brains become mush. What would you say if I told you, yesterday on my way home I crossed a footbridge and I saw a man walking on the water. Not only that, the man was a zombie. I saw him raise another man from the dead. We should probably be getting ready for a zombie apocalypse? You would immediately think i was either insane or making some kind of joke. And if you didn't, I would ask you to give me all your money for my new church.
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.
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