The deliberate dismantling of critical thinking has moved beyond a simple refusal to teach scientfic thinking straight into presenting pseudoscientific “discovery” and argumentation as the TRUE critical thinking. The most popular framing of being that it is defiance of conformity, be it scientific-consensus, secular authority, “elite” rules and anti-public education…
Teaching young evangelicals to memorize “Logical” talking points to “argue” against evolution springs to mind, but secular examples abound too. The Knights Templar article on bbs and the the Dan Brownian / History Channel model of epistemology (the most ancient, most mysterious text is obviously the most truthful, and if you have to decipher clues, that’s research!) is a delibrate abuse of the trappings of expertise.
Add to all that the legitimate history of problems with authority. My mom, a left-leaning NPR liberal cum new-age weirdo apent my childhood railing against the authority of experts. Partly due to a legitimate early-mid 20th century marriage of science, colonialism, authoritarianism and corporatism that was framed in an arrogant refusal to show their work.
But the reaction and the take-aways were muddied and oversimplified, and cynical authoritarians warped this movement into “their experts are always bad and wrong” blunt object rather than a renewed commitment to painstaking, healthy, robust and transparent epistemology.
I do think a lot of good learning has happened on the science side, and even government and law have found ways to be more accountable and transparent, but the cuts suffered have already been infected and exploited by cynical assholes. Hopefull the bofy can resist in the end. we’re smelling pretty fucking gangrenous right now.
