The following is false:
‘The only thing we can do is to improve our critical thinking & media literacy, & learn what we must be on guard against … we can learn tools to defend ourselves in this era of rapid falsehood. We need to marshal our ability to think critically‘ https://mobile.twitter.com/drg1985/status/1209049776773378048
Critical thinking, media literacy, etc. are very poor tools for defending against viral falsehoods.
It’s also awful & condescending to believe that viral believers lack critical thinking or are stupid.
I am with #DanahBoyd's much less sanguine analysis in https://medium.com/@zephoria/a-few-responses-to-criticism-of-my-sxsw-edu-keynote-on-media-literacy-7eb2843fae22
"media literacy and critical thinking will be deployed as an assertion of authority over epistemology."
"I believe in empathy and building resilience… I relish people recognizing unconscious bias and grappling with the limits of their own mind. But I’m not at all convinced that asking people to strengthen their individual cognitive capacities will do a lot to address a complex systemic issue."
Media literacy is *interesting* and *worth teaching* for intellectual reasons, along with abstract algebra and Faulkner. But it's not going to cause people to re-evaluate their sacred cows.
I've been privileged? to see radicalization in three places:
- trump people vs the rest
- ISIS recruiting & innoculation
- Hong Kong, pro- vs anti-police/Beijing
All six of these factions insist they're using critical thinking and meta-analysis, that they're seeing the other side's (invalid) arguments.
I'm a programmer. Most of my waking thinking moments are spent ironing out in excruciating detail how to actually do something that was easy to say in words. I combat "Shit's Easy Syndrome" every day (https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2009/04/have-you-ever-legalized-marijuana.html).
None of these factions can construct a real convincing argument against its opponent. Viral beliefs, like real viruses, evolve under intense pressure—their inventors poured all their energy, creativity, and intellect in making these beliefs immune to easy argumentation.
This notion, that you or I can evaluate the medical claims, is toxic. #DanKahan brilliantly illustrates this https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2794799&download=yes:
"You learn next week that you have an endocrinological deficit that can be effectively treated but only if you submit to a regimen of daily medications. You certainly will do enough research to satisfy yourself—to satisfy any reasonable person in your situation—that this recommendation is sound before you undertake such treatment. But what will you do?" (cont.)
"Will you carefully read and evaluate all the studies that inform your physician’s recommendation? If those studies refer, as they inevitably will, to previous ones the methods of which aren’t reproduced in those papers, will you read those, too? … will you enroll in a professional training program to acquire the necessary knowledge and skills? … will you redo the experiments—*all* of them…"
"Of course not. Because by the time you did those things, you’d be dead."
