Comment on Does the average person have no critical thinking?
the_q@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
No one, including you, is immune to propaganda.
I mean, honestly, I’m questioning if anything my parents told me is even real, or is it just exaggerated to make themselves seem like great parents in order to diminish my view on their toxicity.
It’s hard to distinguish between what’s a genuine doubt from a conspiracy theory.
That’s the thing with people.
Some have zero skepticism, and believe everything they see.
Others are overly skeptical and distrusts everything, including science.
It’s hard to find the right balance.
I find the right balance (for me) to be actively seeking out conversations that challenge my beliefs and worldview, being open to being wrong, and developing a good bullshit detector. I guess growing up during the Cold War helped instill in me a fair amount of distrust for authority of any kind helped. Even still I believed the propaganda about the US being a beacon of freedom and democracy until I was exposed to the truth of the matter, but still, I sought out counter-narratives and listened to the weight of evidence and was willing to admit to being wrong and changing my views, so… shrug
Yes, but, how does one actually develop “a good bullshit detector”? We all think we have one of those. Especially people who don’t. And thinking that when it’s not true is the hook, line and sinker that gets people deeply into dangerous conspiracies.
The first step is not accepting everything you read at face value. Start investigating the claims you see on the news or social media and you will develop a sense for which ones tend to be bullshit and which ones tend not to be, you will learn to recognize the bullshit ideas not because they’re obviously bullshit at first, but because they’re surrounded by the kind of language that bullshit claims are often smuggled into. It’s just pattern-matching, it’s a skill like everything else and you can practice it and get better. One way to do this is to just find a news article, scroll to a random point in it, highlight a sentence that makes a truth claim about, and go ‘That seems like bullshit, I’ll look for corroborating sources’ and then go do find 3-4 other sources that talk about the same thing and see how they shade tings differently. Aside from learning to match the pattern you also learn which sources are more or less reliable, more or less biased, etc. A good tool for this specifically for news is GroundNews, every article they show includes ratings for how biased the source is, a list of other sources that also report on the same incident and what their biases are, etc. Plus it’s been my experience that looking at things from several angles is kind of like drawing a circle around the truth - the more of the circle you draw the easier it is to find the center. It’s not perfect, but it’s a start.
The second and perhaps most important step is being willing to be wrong, especially in public. Be concerned not about whether or not you will look bad but whether or not you are putting good information out there. Develop the habit of stopping in the middle of your political rant or whatever and going ‘Wait, am I sure about this? I should check.’ In a similar vein, get into the habit of providing sources for your own claims, even if only because that reinforces the habit of checking yourself. I discuss politics a lot online and have often found myself going ‘Oh yeah, well <this> is how the world really works!’, then I go looking for a source to cite and discover that I was wrong. Don’t flee from that uncomfortable feeling, swallow your pride and embrace it. The more you get into the habit of checking yourself the easier it becomes to remember to check others too, and again, the more familiar you become with what truth and bullshit look like from the inside and from the outside. It will also help you develop a bit of humility, which is unrelated but still a good thing to have.
Up until recently, I thought carrots were good for seeing in the dark. It’s something my mother told me over and over as a kid. I never bothered to research it - I liked carrots after all.
How would a carrot help with seeing in the dark? All my carrots emit zero light not even a faint glow.
You need to bite off the end first
devx00@infosec.pub 3 weeks ago
I try and explain this to people all the time but many don’t want to believe it.
There are 2 types of people in this world; those who are influenced by propaganda, and those who don’t know they are influenced by propaganda.
over_clox@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
There’s a third type. People like me see the propaganda everywhere, get a sad laugh out of it every time, and go about my day dodging rain drops and replacing alternators.
IDGAF
Opinionhaver@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
Toupee fallacy. Just because you can recognize some of the propaganda, it doesn’t mean you can recognize all of it. You’re not aware of what flies under the radar while still influencing you.
over_clox@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I don’t have anything influencing me except my roommate and my mom, and that’s usually just helping keep their vehicles running, carrying groceries, taking the trash out, and bathing the dog.
I see the politics and propaganda every day, I just don’t give a fuck. Nothing I can do about it anyways.
devx00@infosec.pub 3 weeks ago
Bold of you to assume you recognize every piece of propaganda for what it truly is. And that you have a choice to just ignore it. It often feels like we are in control of what we give attention to and what we choose to retain as factual knowledge but we’re not.
The best we can do is try to recognize when some piece of information, or source, we believe may not be as valid as it once appeared and try to rectify our beliefs moving forward. It’s a never ending job. But if you want to actually have beliefs based in fact there’s no other option.
over_clox@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I believe in mathematics and schematics. I also believe in the right to repair.
I do not believe in invisible deities and I don’t trust most politicians.
LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Yes. However believing all beliefs are equal because they are equally likely to be false which is what “everyone is influenced by propaganda” implies, is also an incorrect way to think and an intellectually dishonest shirking of responsibility. Kudos to you for not simply repeating the mantra but stating the right response to it.
cmhe@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
If you see propaganda everywhere, the it was successful on you. One purpose of propaganda is to erode the fundamental trust in society and sow distrust about anything and anyone, that way people become politically ineffective and easy to manipulate.
over_clox@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I don’t have any significant distrust in society in general, just a heavy distrust of the greedy oligarchs in positions of power.
Meanwhile, the orange turd posted an AI generated image of himself as the next pope…
youtube.com/watch?v=5AvLxeTvivY
Go ahead and read some comments there, he done offended even the atheists out there!
I’m not a governor, attorney, judge, senator, etc in any position to directly do anything about the crooked powers in charge, but as a citizen, I guess this is the best I can do, share the news.
dontbelasagne@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Most of hollywood is propaganda. It relies on getting revenue from other sources. If you’ve ever bought a star wars action figure or a marvel funko pop, you’ve fallen for the propaganda. Hollywood isn’t producing art for art’s sake. They’re producing commercials for merchandise.