> How would we know [media literacy isn’t enough]? It's not really taught. As you pointed out later, it's not just "media literacy," it's "thinking for yourself," "critical thinking," "skepticism," "reasoning."
While I also think it is true that we do a terrible job in general of educating people to think critically, it is not simply a failure of education—or at least, not in the traditional sense of “if you just force knowledge into someone, they will understand it”. I feel like there is real merit to the idea that media literacy may not be enough to save us from the firehose of the internet. Human brains are reckless and love to engage in motivated reasoning, filtering, and other cognitive distortions to protect us from information that threatens our core values.
I’ve known engineers with impeccable critical thinking and reasoning skills—but only when they were programming. On other matters, where any sort of emotional or value judgment was involved, they would uncritically accept false information which meshed with their belief of how the world is. For example, someone once told me that they didn’t think that vaccination actually caused the decline in measles rates because the MMR vaccine wasn’t developed until after infections started going down. OK, great, valid reasoning, except their next thought should’ve been that maybe there was a different measles vaccine that came first (because there was). They didn’t go there, though, because they have a deeply held belief that vaccines are bad/scary, and their brain conveniently suppressed the critical thinking process that might’ve lead them to need to reevaluate their position.
You might argue that this person doesn’t have “true” critical thinking skills, and maybe that’s true, but I also know that I tell myself stories and avoid seeking out contradictory evidence in order to protect some of my most deeply held beliefs—even though truth and honesty are what I value above all else. Some cows are just too sacred.
> Journalism has failed because it was bought out by corporate interests who have a vested interest in a particular narrative.
I feel like this is a reductive answer to a very complex problem. I think you’re spot on that the market is not incentivising high quality reporting, but there are many factors at play beyond “journalists got bought out” and “educational standards are bad”. There are so many diverse interests who don’t want people to think critically, including a lot of ordinary people! It’s hard to think critically all of the time. The world is unfathomably complex. You and I may be hanging on, just barely, thanks to genetic and/or socioeconomic lotteries giving us slightly better hands in life. Most people don’t have those advantages and are highly motivated to pound reality into an uncomplicated place where there are only two distinct genders, or all cops are bastards, or it’s all the mainstream media’s fault, or we can save the planet from global warming by just planting a trillion trees, or whatever. There’s no one single source of this quagmire, and no One Simple Trick that will solve it.
I appreciate your well reasoned response and I totally agree with almost all of it.
> media literacy may not be enough
I would grant that there is an intelligence distribution in the population and the capacity to acquire critical thinking skills is clamped by something that is largely genetic (and somewhat random), not to mention education or experience. Further, people who are on the lower end of the intelligence spectrum need some way of reasoning about the world even without that capacity. They then must rely on more intelligent people to analyze and synthesize a cohesive perspective that will work for them and their level of interpretation. In other words, I agree that objectively it's not enough for everyone. But still, we certainly ought to educate as many people as possible and certainly the capacity of society to manage a consistent cohesive perspective for those people would increase as well.
> Human brains are reckless
This and your following point about engineers compartmentalizing their thinking ability is hard to refute. However I would say two things on the matter.
1. It's a matter of degrees and having a system which optimizes human development (e.g. parenting, family) to leverage as many developmental windows as possible (on an individual basis) would minimize reckless thinking.
2. At scale, a functioning and diverse media with a healthy amount of honest journalism also minimizes the likelihood that reckless thinking would persist for very long.
> this is a reductive answer
True. It's difficult to know what level of interpretation is appropriate in any context. I agree that there are complex issues and forces in play, however I would argue that after a certain point it is necessary to trim the fat and synthesize a cohesive, if not simplistic, perspective. Western civilization is known for it's ability to do that and maintain much of the original value of a thought. I'm not an oncologist, but there is a vested public interest for oncologists to "spread awareness" and educate people about cancer. We typically don't challenge the oncologist when they make an analogy, don't describe cancer with exactly the correct technical terminology, or unpack every individual aspect of cancer in their explanation.
Your point about ordinary people having an incentive to minimize critical thinking is very true and insightful. None of this occurs in a vacuum, and to some extent there is a degree of personal responsibility to be sure. Personally I am less inclined to lay this problem at the feet of an individual, who in my estimation, was sabotaged for generations by corrupted media and educational institutions. However, I will definitely acknowledge the pendulum of moral responsibility swings in both directions.
> There’s no one single source of this quagmire, and no One Simple Trick that will solve it.
This is true in analysis but not in synthesis.
Abuse and predation, in particular against children (primarily perpetrated by parents) is the single biggest and impactful source of this quagmire. The One Simple Trick: peaceful parenting.
> uncomplicated place where there are only two distinct genders, or all cops are bastards, or it’s all the mainstream media’s fault, or we can save the planet from global warming by just planting a trillion trees, or whatever
Or where everyone is created equal and there are no important differences between races and sexes. Where their political opponents are all evil and stupid. Where different government systems (representative democracy? Monarchy? Whatever the CCP is?) are obviously horrible. Where weird new ideas are destined to fail or have already been tried and found to fail (like reusable rockets, Musk was far from the first person to think it might be a good idea).
While I also think it is true that we do a terrible job in general of educating people to think critically, it is not simply a failure of education—or at least, not in the traditional sense of “if you just force knowledge into someone, they will understand it”. I feel like there is real merit to the idea that media literacy may not be enough to save us from the firehose of the internet. Human brains are reckless and love to engage in motivated reasoning, filtering, and other cognitive distortions to protect us from information that threatens our core values.
I’ve known engineers with impeccable critical thinking and reasoning skills—but only when they were programming. On other matters, where any sort of emotional or value judgment was involved, they would uncritically accept false information which meshed with their belief of how the world is. For example, someone once told me that they didn’t think that vaccination actually caused the decline in measles rates because the MMR vaccine wasn’t developed until after infections started going down. OK, great, valid reasoning, except their next thought should’ve been that maybe there was a different measles vaccine that came first (because there was). They didn’t go there, though, because they have a deeply held belief that vaccines are bad/scary, and their brain conveniently suppressed the critical thinking process that might’ve lead them to need to reevaluate their position.
You might argue that this person doesn’t have “true” critical thinking skills, and maybe that’s true, but I also know that I tell myself stories and avoid seeking out contradictory evidence in order to protect some of my most deeply held beliefs—even though truth and honesty are what I value above all else. Some cows are just too sacred.
> Journalism has failed because it was bought out by corporate interests who have a vested interest in a particular narrative.
I feel like this is a reductive answer to a very complex problem. I think you’re spot on that the market is not incentivising high quality reporting, but there are many factors at play beyond “journalists got bought out” and “educational standards are bad”. There are so many diverse interests who don’t want people to think critically, including a lot of ordinary people! It’s hard to think critically all of the time. The world is unfathomably complex. You and I may be hanging on, just barely, thanks to genetic and/or socioeconomic lotteries giving us slightly better hands in life. Most people don’t have those advantages and are highly motivated to pound reality into an uncomplicated place where there are only two distinct genders, or all cops are bastards, or it’s all the mainstream media’s fault, or we can save the planet from global warming by just planting a trillion trees, or whatever. There’s no one single source of this quagmire, and no One Simple Trick that will solve it.