Remember in the pre-internet days when you had to go to the library to lookup facts? Or your own (outdated) set of encyclopaedias?
I guess we just didn't know any better at the time, and lived with ambiguity! Hard to imagine now.
@jasonetheridge Oh people still don't know better. They just choose to not check up the actual facts and go to conspiracy sites instead.
@trinsec Maybe we weren't so badly off! But I really, really enjoy being able to look up facts in near real time, though. I find myself not wanting to go back.
I thought teaching kids critical thinking at school might help inoculate them to conspiracy garbage. Maybe it would? I guess it hasn't really been tried yet.
@trinsec Definitely! And there's the fact that critical thinking may make kids more skeptical of advertising. Might mess with them becoming good consumers... I don't think there's a nefarious plot, but I could imagine it'd be easier for all concerned if the kids weren't too skeptical.
@jasonetheridge That would be a good step, that people actually learn to think. So far most educational systems are set up so that they are ready for the job market asap. I think we need to transcend a little bit beyond that.