Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/06/02/useful-a-cheatsheet-for-criti.html
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Who benefits from this?
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I printed that out and put it in the break room.
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Who benefits from this?
I do.
I used to have to split the ill-gotten gains with my co-evil-genius (Long John Silver) but John’s been gone for a while now and at last I feel pretty safe in screwing him out of his share. (Y’all really don’t want to screw Long John out of anything that’s his’n, or that might be his’n, or that he might think be his’n, while there’s the least little chance you might run into 'im on the street or the Spanish Main or wherever.)
PIECES OF EIGHT! AAWWWWWRK! PIECES OF EIGHT!
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I’m printing it out to use in my therapy groups. These are solid decision making tools that should be taught in our schools systems but I doubt that it is.
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I agree that it’s important to get this message across when people are young. There’s been a lot of time, effort, and money put into undermining public education in the U.S… It paid off for those who thought it would make people easier to lead. The unintended consequences have been expensive, though. Now that so many adults cannot be bothered to read, count (or be counted by voting), and participate in the community/world around them, a list like this is lost on them. If the message could be converted into a hit single or viral video, it might reach those folks for a while - until they are distracted by something more entertaining and less meaningful.
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I’m sure many folks here could use this. Thanks for posting.
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That list can be useful, but I think it’s missing the most important point - what is the evidence? Is it impartial? Is it assessed by actual experts in the specialty field.
Otherwise way too many people who think they’re being sophisticated believe the most ridiculous conspiracy theories, because they are asking all of those questions but filling in answers told them by, say, Alex Jones or Fox.
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Seriously, the first question in my mind when someone claims a fact I’m unfamiliar with is: What’s the source?
Is the source a scientific study? I know how to read those. I should read the study to see if the data bears it out.
Epistemology man. That’s important. The ways to reliably know anything are very few and have stringent requirements. Information is only valuable if it’s useful.
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It won’t always be relevant to the material I teach in my classes, but I’m distributing this to my students so my fellow faculty can benefit also.
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I’m going to create my own Chatbot that does nothing but generate these questions for me to answer.
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Decent idea, but too busy for the people who need this sort of help who will say TL:DR. Needs to be no more than 3 or 4 entries per W. This list could have benefited from more critical thinking.
Who is this harmful to?
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Yeah, this is great if you’re already a critical thinker and and have the capacity to answer the questions honestly - not so much if you’ve already fallen into a well of irrationality and paranoia. In fact, much conspiracism hinges on answering these very questions in ways that play into people’s biases.
For example, who benefits from asserting that climate change is real? Globalists imposing carbon taxes. Who have you also heard discuss this? Librul elites. Etc.
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George Soros.
Some of these questions are really loaded. If each box was cut down to the three of four best instead of shooting for eight it would be better.
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The fundamental problem with the list is that it is not ordered in such a way that you can disregard information quickly. One way to do that is to follow a variation in the way that stoics approach information.
Is this within my scope of responsibility?
Is this within my scope of interest?
Is this within my ability to act?
Is this within my scope of influence?
For the most part, this will eliminate the need to answer the other questions.
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