How Did Americans Lose Critical Thinking

[gab13by13]

I mean if anyone told me to drink bleach, or to shove an ultraviolet light up my ass, anything else that person told me from then on, I would totally dismiss. I would immediately think that person needed some serious mental health care.

[EYESORE 9001]

1. Not if it's prefaced by some inanity

such as, ‘I read it on the internet’, which in today’s society indicates impeccable bona fides. Our society has become intellectually lazy, preferring to subcontract our thinking to so-called experts - mostly without subjecting the information to even a cursory examination.

[Nimble_Idea]

2. the signs were there for years? I mean, who is driving teslers, or shopping at walmart

or voting for bobble heads in maine year in and year out. let me guess, what's next? I don't understand why are people so racist?

[Gimpyknee]

31. Wait a minute...

I’ve shopped at Walmart on occasion. I’ve always voted straight party ticket for democrats.

[cachukis]

3. Not sure if it has ever been fully practiced.

There have always been 20 percent of the population who has it together. 20 percent without a clue and 60 percent in various stages of "confidence."
Auto mechanics diagnose and we know that some find problems better than others.
Critical thinking takes time. If you can get an answer to a question on your phone, in seconds, do you take the time to think it into your consciousness or does it get tossed as quickly as the pass code number sent by your bank or doctor's office to get access to your account?
Different world.

[gab13by13]

6. My grandson has been involved

in Odyssey of the Mind in 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade. It is an out of school activity that involves problem solving, it is International in its scope.

The 1st year my grandson's team won regionals, won states in Pa., went on to worlds where they finished middle of the pack. In worlds the international teams seemed to do better in the session that involved spontaneous answers to problems.

The 2nd year my grandson's team did not qualify for states.

His 3rd year they finished 2nd at regionals which qualifies him for states which is upcoming.

My daughter took over organizing Odyssey for the school district. She sent 3 teams to worlds last year and one team won it.

The kids do everything themselves. They build apparatus that must perform certain functions and do it within an 8 minute skit.

[cachukis]

10. Of course and you should be very proud.

But when I get in conversations today some are quite deep, but that is the group with whom I hang.
In many discussions I have in the medical community, I have issues, I find that conversations with patients in waiting and processing staff are often low brow. People working don't have time to study the issues.
When I chat with my conservative friends, I still do, the conversations rarely go very far because they aren't interested in the complexities after an action.
I am a retired school teacher who taught critical thinking. I had classes with level 5s, but mostly had level 1s and 2s.
What I found to be in short supply was the ability to make connections from various elements to synthesize and a woeful lack of inferrencing.
My studies showed how difficult it was for people to understand what really takes place in a complex sentence.
If you read hard copy, you can go back and reread to better understand. If you are in a book and something crops up that needs clarity, you can go back to corroborate or refute your impressions.
Virtually every student I had, had seen Finding Nemo several times and admitted they learned something new with each visit.
You were curious as to why people are not thinking critically. I have made my suggestions.

[bif]

11. I coached my daughter's team back in the day

Is it still going?

[SocialDemocrat61]

4. Same way Germans did during WWII

Years of relentless propaganda. Even in late April of 1945, there were some who still thought Hitler would win the war. Their critical thinking skills were so eroded, they couldn’t comprehend the reality going on around them.
Same is true of many Americans who subjected themselves to decades of right wing talk radio, FAUX News etc.

[hadEnuf]

32. THIS

[Bettie]

5. It's been a long time coming

critical thinking will often lead to people questioning things. People in authority don't like that.

Republicans hate that and have forever.

Evangelical churches hate that...probably other religions do as well, my experience was with evangelical, where if you question anything, it's a problem.

People in government get on TV or at Town Halls (well, not anymore for those R's), and tell you lies are truth. National "news" skews the headlines and stories to whatever the owner wants it to be.

Critical thinking is barely allowed anymore. I'm guessing that teaching kids to think critically would cause a teacher to be fired in most school districts.

[gab13by13]

7. That's what I think also.

Our leaders want sheep who will love the Horse and sparrow economics. Feed the horse more oats and the sparrows will have plenty to eat.

Our leaders have made the word union a bad word. Unions built the middle class.

[Sympthsical]

8. Tribalism

If you question your tribe, they might expel you.

So, don't do that. Go along to get along. Even if you have profound misgivings. Even if you have given matters thought and blatantly disagree with what those around you think. Just . . . don't mention it.

Once you see the simple fact of life that most humans behave in this fashion, you always see it.

Actual free thinkers are not very common. They're also not very welcome in many places.

We can complain "Oh education . . ." but that ship sailed ages ago. Even when I was in college 25 years ago, it was teaching what to think, not how to think. When I did my second round of college these past four or so years, again. Just repeat back what you're being told.

There's a right thing to think and a wrong thing to think. If you're not on the correct side, adios.

We are an amazingly intelligent and profoundly stupid species. And for those who think, "Well I am the exception to this . . ." Yeah. Look where you are. Yeah, me too.

[gab13by13]

12. Nice post

When I was a kid I loved to read, I guess because there were no computers or cell phones.

I still love reading today. I walk into the book store and ask what books have been banned because I want to read them.

I have been reading books on Buddhism lately and told my local priest. He said, OK, just don't convert, I thought that to be a wrong answer.

Catholics today can learn a lot from Buddhism.

I read a book maybe 10 years ago, Mind over Medicine, written by a doctor, Lissa Rankin. She was intrigued by the tests that were done for new drugs. The people who were given the placebo were also being cured of their malady, many times at the same %.

She came to the conclusion that by putting positive thoughts into your mind, your thoughts can cause physical actions in your brain to fix your malady, such as her hypothesis that stem cells from bone marrow were directed to an inoperable tumor that replaced the cancer cells.

[Sympthsical]

18. I still read almost every single day

Sometimes textbooks about astronomy and philosophy, sometimes true crime and historical fiction (working through Colleen McCullough's Masters of Rome at the moment, and it is fantastic).

The biggest problem we have at the moment is technology. I earnestly believe the human brain is not designed to handle what it is currently being subjected to. Doom scrolling, where the mind is subjected to nonstop anxiety and dopamine hits in alternating fashion. There's no rest and reset function. People all around me are constantly freaked out by this or that thing, and they just don't know how to turn it off.

And it affects how we consume information. We accept what is being told uncritically. We don't interrogate the text. The only time that kind of thing manifests is when . . . tribalism is involved. Think about the news we consume here on DU. If it comes from an "acceptable source" it is digested uncritically. Only when it comes from a source from "outside the tribe" do people start questioning it - if not outright dismissing the information out of hand.

We have curated our own brains.

It's not great. I don't know the way out of this one, if there even is one. Turning everything off and just reading a damn book is a tonic for me. I've pulled way back from the internet in the past three months, and I feel so much better. I can feel myself thinking more cleanly, more critically, more objectively. I'm not reacting all the time to everything every single day.

If the entire internet went out for, say, a week, I don't think that would be a bad thing for this country.

[LessAspin]

9. Fox 🦊 News

Rush Limbaugh and that ilk..

📺 Why think critically when Fox 🦊 snooze can do that for me

Is there nothing Fox can't Spin

Fox News host Will Cain says Americans should be "proud" of leaders' open discussions, even after accidental leak of Yemen strike plans to a journalist.

[bif]

13. Nailed it

20 years of brainwashing has taken its toll on the country. We're now largely a nation of idiots who can't think for themselves.

[Kaleva]

15. Americans didn't have critical thinking skills before Fox

[Kaleva]

14. Is there evidence that Americans ever had it?

People with critical thinking skills wouldn't take the OPs premise at face value without asking for supporting evidence

Accepting the OP s claim as fact shows a lack of critical thinking skills.

[EdmondDantes_]

40. It's amazing how critical thinking is always related to

Believing the same as the person complaining about the lack of critical thinking.

[Johnny2X2X]

16. I was just thinking about this last night

How everyone is an expert on everything now. I was watching some show and the showmaker interjected some screed on the French economy in the 1920s with the usual right wing talking point about how they "printed money, derp." And I thought to myself, I don't know crap about the French economy after WWI, but I bet it's a lot more complex than this Right Wing writer thinks.

Everyone thinks they're an expert on literally everything now. Vaccines, medicine, the economy, terrorism, sexuality. Everyone has not just an opinion on every issue, but they're already sure about their opinion and think they're the ones with the real information about any given subject. It's maddening. So this is where we are, we have prejudged most everything now and aren't open to new perspectivesw. It's eating our country from the inside, and it's not unique to the United States.

[Scrivener7]

17. I think a look at one religion goes a long way toward answering your question:

Utah is the capitol of affinity fraud, fraud perpetrated on friends and relations. It is also overrun by MLM's, even though there is plenty of evidence that no one makes money on MLM's.

It is also almost completely Mormon. Something makes Mormons uniquely prone to believing nonsense way past the point where it is hurting them.

And Mormonism is one of the most high-demand of the religions that might be considered mainstream.

This information can be extrapolated to look at other republican-dominated religions that require the adoption of a specific identity.

Many American Evangelicals, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses and members of other high-demand religions sit on a bench twice a week while a guy with bizarre fake hair demands they believe a host of illogical things that have been proven false. Then he tells them how to behave, who to hate and why their hatred is God's will.

This is an initiation process that results in the congregants tossing aside their own intelligence and simply absorbing what the guy with bizarre hair feeds into their heads.

And then, to cater to the resulting zombified congregants, certain media outlets mimic and amplify the messages of the guys with bizarre hair.

And then it spreads. It's a spiral of believers > media catering to believers > more people becoming believers > more media catering > etc.

And that's how we got here.

[hatrack]

20. Yep. If you believe that shit, you'll believe pretty much anything . . . .

A nation of marks, with a few wolves scattered about.

[Scrivener7]

23. And there is a built in indoctrination mechanism in these increasingly popular high-demand congregations.

I could see how some people go in perfectly intelligent and sane, but come out just saying, "Fuck it. It seems off, but everyone else here in my megachurch/parish/ward seems sure about it so it must be right."

[GreenWave]

42. And it starts with brainwashing children.

Scare them with eternal fire, a primordial fear. Offer them candy at another point in the year.(Easter) And Christmas gifts are for "good"' kids (Bad ones live in poverty, you see.).

And do not allow comparative religions to be taught by anthropologists. etc. who may question how one decides intelligently which religion, if any, to follow.
I used to watch the atheist channel on ROKU. The plug in with all the channels, not the app. It was amazing to see how many commandments there are in just one religion. (Far more than 10)

[William769]

19. Social Media. nt.

[hatrack]

22. A way to shorten everyone's attention spans, and to make concentration harder . . .

Yeah, that was time and money well spent!

[JCMach1]

21. We never had it...

[Midnight Writer]

24. During the pandemic, I watched people die because they refused treatment because of MAGA disinformation.

They would absolutely not listen to doctors, to family, to loved ones.

They believed so strongly in their Orange Messiah that they gave up their lives rather than dispute his obvious nonsense.

[DaBronx]

27. Same

Had a friend from college die because he never got the vaccine. Awful.

[cadoman]

25. by using non-critical thinking--they get to believe in the reality they want vs. the reality that is

Social media allows them to pick narratives the narratives they want and ignore the fact-checks that would normally correct those mistakes...

We regain critical thinking when believing falsities is somehow punished rather than rewarded..

[Sneederbunk]

26. The majority of Americans never had it.

[dedl67]

28. Amusing ourselves to death

Read Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death". That will go a long way to explaining it.

[Basso8vb]

29. Republicans started to gut education funding in the 70s.

That's how we got here.

[The Wizard]

30. Two culprits undermining the country:

The great dumbing down started by Spiro Agnew and George Wallace that marginalized education, and Pox News brain washing / propaganda that fosters conspiracy theories.
Conspiracy theories are designed to make the ignorant feel as if they have valuable knowledge.

[Martin68]

33. There's always been a strong anti-intellectual bias among a certain segment of the American population, along with a

tendency to unquestioningly accept the premise of conspiracy theories that fit in with your own paranoid tendencies.

[Oopsie Daisy]

34. I don't see it as a "loss of critical thinking." The reality is that people have always been drawn to populist promises*

I don't see it as a "loss of critical thinking." The reality is that people have always been drawn to populist promises that offer quick and effortless solutions. It's not a recent decline; rather, for some individuals, critical thinking skills may have never truly existed. These individuals often reside in a realm of fantasy, embracing extreme and fringe ideologies.

Populist promises have a powerful allure, appealing more to emotions than to rationality. They capitalize on sentiments of fear, anger, and hope, effectively motivating those in search of change or reassurance.

Leaders who adopt populist stances tend to oversimplify complex issues, presenting them in stark black-and-white terms and offering simplistic solutions to multifaceted problems. This approach resonates with individuals who may find the complexities of politics and policy overwhelming.

Central to populism is the "us vs. them" narrative, where charismatic figures position themselves as champions of the common people against a perceived corrupt elite or external adversary.

These leaders or candidates (or their spokes persons) often promise radical transformations, tapping into the collective yearning for a brighter future or a return to a bygone era considered more prosperous.

However, the appeal of populist promises often falters under scrutiny due to a lack of detailed plans or feasibility studies. While they may sound appealing on the surface, they frequently lack substantive strategies for implementation, often limited to highlighting issues in need of improvement without concrete plans.

Similarly, quackery miracle cures and antivaccine sentiments prey on emotions and distrust rather than rationality. These phenomena thrive in environments where critical thinking has historically been lacking, providing fertile ground for populists and charlatans to gain traction among those unaccustomed to questioning or critically evaluating information.

[TygrBright]

35. Simple. The GOP has been dismantling public education since the 1960s. n/t

[Happy Hoosier]

36. Right Wing Media...

... and an environment where they convince themselves that only RWM is telling the "truth."

[erronis]

37. Carl Sagan talked quite a bit about critical thinking and its lack thereof.

From "The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World

What Mack really means when he talks about beings from other
dimensions is that, despite his patients' occasional descriptions of
their experiences as dreams and hallucinations, he hasn't the
foggiest notion of what they are. But, tellingly, when he tries to
describe them, he reaches for physics and mathematics. He wants
it both ways - the language and credibility of science, but without
being bound by its method and rules. He seems not to realize that
the credibility is a consequence of the method.

The main challenge posed by Mack's cases is the old one of
how to teach critical thinking more broadly and more deeply in
a society - conceivably even including Harvard professors of
psychiatry - awash in gullibility. The idea that critical thinking
is the latest western fad is silly. If you're buying a used car in
Singapore or Bangkok, or a used chariot in ancient Susa or
Rome, the same precautions will be useful as in Cambridge,
Massachusetts.

These are all cases of proved or presumptive baloney. A
deception arises, sometimes innocently but collaboratively, some-
times with cynical premeditation. Usually the victim is caught up
in a powerful emotion - wonder, fear, greed, grief. Credulous
acceptance of baloney can cost you money; that's what P.T.
Barnum meant when he said, 'There's a sucker born every
minute'. But it can be much more dangerous than that, and when
governments and societies lose the capacity for critical thinking,
the results can be catastrophic, however sympathetic we may be to
those who have bought the baloney.

[Kid Berwyn]

38. Television, "smart" phones, and substance abuse.

Led to the creation of this guy:

[Jrsygrl96]

39. Education

In colleges, they used to teach education students critical thinking skills as one of the most important pieces of education. Back in July, 2010, Newsweek published an article, "Creativity in America." In the article, there was a 'test' where they gave children and adults a shape (curved v) and told them to finish the drawing. The drawings were scored on how detailed and creative the drawings were. Over 20 years I have watched schools take out art and music, or diminish them, not realizing that both change the brain. Band kids usually have the highest grades. Math and Reading are front and center in schools, yet students can't read. 🤷🏼‍♀️
The article goes on to say China has moved away from the "drill and kill" (ie "Fundations) method of education and are now are educationally superior to the US. Republicans want an uneducated, low information population. And they're getting it!

[Blue Full Moon]

41. Reagan changed the education system.

Then W's Leave all children behind.
Not to mention homeschooling. Because the right wing didn't want their children to have critical thinking skills, no science or history.
The onslaught of Faux News and their ilk.
Dick Sutphen's The Battle for Your Mind. He explains how brainwashing techniques work. Trump rallies fit the bill.
The Russians found out if you bombard population with fear messages they will be brainwashed in a few weeks.

[Martin Eden]

43. MAGA believes both: J6 was a day of tourism & love; it was a false flag op by antifa & FBI

Orwellian doublethink permeates the Magasphere.

[no_hypocrisy]

44. If most of them are like my sister . . .

Thinking is hard work. Really hard work.

And you believe you’re as clever (if not more clever) as those whose stances confuse the hell out of you.

[maveric]

45. NCLB was the beginning of the dumb-down.