Does the average person have no critical thinking?

Submitted ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨throwawayacc0430@sh.itjust.works⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩

I don’t know about y’all, but if I grew up in a country that never has the news criticizing its leaders, I’d be very skepical and deduce that there is censorshop going on and the offical news could be exaggerated or entirely falsified. Do people in authoritarian countries actually just eat the propaganda? To what extent do they believe the propaganda?

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_LordMcNuggets_@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
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.

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- jsomae@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I encounter a lot of assholes who think that way.
  
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blinx615@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
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.

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steeznson@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Social media is designed to override your critical thinking faculties.

Human beings aren’t evolved to get news/information from such a wide variety of sources at such a fast rate. Your critical thinking faculties just get overrun.

Everyone has experienced this and accidentally shared an article from The Onion or whatever without noticing in the short term that they are responding to some kind of bias being confirmed.

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vane@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
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 major percentage of them.

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SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I’ve recently gotten into BP debating and it teaches you a palette of skills useful in seeing through propaganda. (Seeing nuance in bad things, playing devil’s advocate, narrowing down disputes to very specific points of contention, explaining things with chains of cause and effect, putting facts into perspective, making sure to explicitly define words, …) I wish more people tried it – it would raise the quality of discourse in society so much.

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heyWhatsay@slrpnk.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Critical thinking has been an increasingly rare skill, partially because people are focusing on conspiracy theories instead.

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LoveSausage@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Lol authoritarian is such a non descriptice word. Like propaganda only is there at their bad countries we are so much better and have no propaganda at all… most looks at the west to get tips for the best propaganda. Authoritarian is when stuff gets done.

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- throwawayacc0430@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  
  Authoritarian is when stuff gets done.
  
  Okay, bigot maga defender. How much have your master trump got done?
  
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  - LoveSausage@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Lol , shitlib. But quite a lot actually. Haven’t you seen the news? Not sure of the connection between my criticism of “authoratism” as a blank propaganda concept and the absolute blindness for the western narrative but do go on. What’s your masters got done? Genocides as usuals ? Coups? Concentration camps? Disgusting bigot.
    
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FelixCress@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Yes.

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Droggelbecher@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
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.

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Auli@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I wish I was like that.

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Horsey@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Considering that critical thinking has to be thought to you, I think most people who skipped college may not have a good grasp on it.

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- pulsewidth@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Most school curriculums nowadays have critical thinking interwoven as important parts of the STEM classes, in both primary and high school. Its not exclusive to college graduates, however if you do a philosophy course then you will have learned the highest level of it - and I’m sure many school systems around the world have varying degrees of quality of education.
  
  But agreed it is absolutely something that people are not born with and must (and should) be taught.
  
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  - petrol_sniff_king@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    I would draw a distinct line between the critical thinking of engineering and the critical thinking of the humanities, but yes. Just in the sense that engineering alone is good, but definitely not sufficient.
    
    There is a common archetype of person in stem who thinks that because they’re very good at programming that they’re also very good at everything, and so spends half of their college tenure in a fratboy flophouse reinventing basic philosophy ideas Isaac Asimov thought of 70 years ago as part of their mission to solve society’s problems with bitcoin.
    
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- octobob@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  My fiance has more critical thinking and political analysis of world events and history, reads books just about every day, writes and communicates clearly. Just talking to him for a little bit you’ll get the impression that he’s very intelligent.
  
  He’s a highschool dropout.
  
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  - Horsey@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Yes, but that’s not typical for a high school dropout; he’s exceptional. Highschool dropouts are not super well read, as a demographic, either. I’m was not being hostile towards people who didn’t go to college.
    
    critical thinking<
    
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