Why radicals can't recognize when they're wrong

People are able to shape all information to fit their viewpoint. When data comes in they directly contradicts their view they can hand wave it away.

Davidson disregarded his mates. They weren’t “real Alaska sailors” so he blew them off.

It’s all about how you handle information that directly confronts your worldview. Do you assume you are right and disregard everything that say’s otherwise? Or do you take new information and think: “Maybe I am wrong.”

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are you trying to tell me you actually believe they aren’t?

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I tend to lean more toward a They Live prophecy. Looks like someone should call The Piper!

How far fetched is it to assume that metacognitive sensitivity goes down with age? As you perform permutations of the same task over and over again, the likelihood of being wrong goes down along with the reward for learning. Sort of like the common explanation of neuroplasticity going down with age…

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Some of the stuff I’m coming across seems to be on the common sense level.

First order tasks vs second order tasks, doing the tasks is first order, judging how well you did is second order.

At first the fact that the Deep Water Horizon won a safety award on the same day it blew up seems like a paradox but making sure the crew is wearing PPE is a first order task, keeping the entire operation safe is a higher level task. Seems simple now but this confused me at first.

Sure I’m Sure: Prefrontal Oscillations Support Metacognitive Monitoring of Decision Making

Significance Statement

Monitoring and control of our decision process (metacognition) is a crucial aspect of adaptive decision making. Crucially, meta-cognitive skills enable us to adjust ongoing behavior and determine future decision making when immediate feedback is not
> available.. In the present study, we constructed a “diagnosis task” that allowed us to assess in what way first-order task performance and metacognition are related to each other. Results demonstrate thatt he contribution of sensory evidence (size, color, and motion direction) differs between first- and second-order decision making. Further, our results indicate that metacognitive performance specifically is orchestrated by means of prefrontal theta oscillations. Together, our findings suggest a hierarchical model of metacognition.

Ship handling is a first order task, seamanship is second order.

Looks like it has been studied and you’re right. My prediction before finding the article was that it would be bell-shaped: with teenagers and the aged being lower than those inbetween. It looks like they didn’t actually study anyone older than about 40, though.

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Read “Dereliction of Duty-Lyndon Johnsone, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies that Led to Vietnam” by H.R. McMaster. (Originally published bu HarperCollins but now in paperback by Harper Perennial)

Read “The Best and the Brightest”.

As a broad generization, a technical education does not prepare one for critical thinking. Texts are generally to be followed and used for reference. Liberal arts education teaches a different lesson. For example, reading a history of the Napoleonic wars written by a French author is likely to be quite different from the same events related by an English author. Reading politcs is very much an exercise in who is writing what and what are their motives.

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Someone with a technical vocabulary is difficult to hoodwink. People who know how to read graphs are less taken in by a slick presentation. much harder to manipulate someone with a working knowledge of statistics. Reading thermodynamics gives students great BS detectors. Someone is always going to be spinning history, just because we settle on one version or another doesn’t lend validity and sureness to our arguments: show me the numbers, and the numbers behind the numbers or I will not be convinced of an arts education’s value in preparing critical thinkers.

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You just (very eloquently) made my point. Note I said “liberal arts” not “arts”. I’d agree that learning to play a violin doesn’t necessarily lead to critical thinking skills but liberal arts includes history, politics, psychology and philosophy. Not all arguments can be made with numbers and the desire to reduce complex social issues to numbers is a weakness rather than a strength. By all means, let’s understand statistics but recognize that is only part of the picture.

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Of course a person should have numerical literacy and so forth but even critical thinking skills without wisdom are insufficient.

I think very highly of skilled engineers but you have to be careful they don’t go Frederick Taylor on you.

Like Bill Gates did:

Bill Gates spent hundreds of millions of dollars to improve teaching. New report says it was a bust.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation pumped nearly $215 million into the project while the partnering school organizations supplied their own money, for a total cost of $575 million. The aim was to create teacher evaluation systems that depended on student standardized test scores and observations by “peer evaluators.” These systems, it was conjectured, could identify the teachers who were most effective in improving student academic performance.

To measure is to know but you got to measure the right things. It’s a
big old goofy world as John Prine says.

You both make valid points. Critical thinking itself is a skill that can be taught.

My observation is that people who choose and stick with the study of science, economics, philosophy, medicine, or law tend to be smart people with a good work ethic in the first place. These are also rigorous disciplines that teach good methodical critical thinking skills.

Liberal arts have great value, but they are often taught in a much less rigorous way. Too often, but not always, this attracts more average people with less work ethic.

Critical thinking is much enhanced by associating with and being challenged by other smart people with a good critical thinking skills and a good work ethic. This is true at school, at work, and throughout life. Critical thinking skills tend to atrophy if they are not being exercised.

No. You just claimed that I argued something which I did not in fact argue. Clearly I wasn’t talking about fine arts, or I wouldn’t have used the example of reading history. But your straw man does point up your bias. Why would you exclude fine arts from your little ivory tower of higher perspectives? If an fine artist doesn’t have some kind of interesting point to make, some sort of authentic perspective (likely not a predigested opinion that they have read somewhere) why do we honour them for hundreds of years after they die?

My answer would be: because we value their perspective and identify with it at a level that’s deeper than newspaper article.

Sure. But let’s not ignore that part of the picture. Without any numbers your argument is a poorly supported opinion.

Speaking of people who study politics: From the Journal of World Politics WHO BECOMES A TERRORIST? Poverty, Education, and the Origins of Political Violence , the author looked at police reports of violent and nonviolent political agitators in Bengal to get data about their background. He found that educated people of all kinds are more likely to be politically involved than the uneducated. Of the educated and politically involved subset of the population, those who became violent were not as wealthy as those who remained peaceful.

The original study (as reported here) sees a link between engineering degrees and jihadism, and importantly for our conversation, an anticorrelation between science degrees and jihadism. They also note that leftist terrorism is dominated by liberal arts degrees. Regardless of what you think about the relative critical thinking ability of a technical versus liberal arts education, its not supported by these data.

And why are engineers under-represented in Saudi extremist groups? You’d think they’d be right at the top of the bell curve, wouldn’t you? Its more complicated than we are making it out to be.

In fairness, you did say “arts”. In US usage I do not think that would normally be interpreted as liberal arts.

Yup. You say “arts school” and I’m thinking nose rings and eyeliner. “Liberal arts” I’m thinking French cries and whaamburgers with a keg of whineken.

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Nobody here has made any claims about engineers and extremist groups. The article I posted (and I shouldn’t have because it side-tracked the discussion) was intended to rebut the claim that members of extremist groups were unintelligent.

A friend of mine often makes Maritime hiring choices based upon musical ability.

I once observed that his green new hand was a good worker, but he had absolutely no experience. Experienced guys were available. I asked: how come you hired that kid? He responded: he plays the fiddle. I responded: what does that have to do with anything? He responded: I like the fiddle. He went on to explain his theory that people with musical talent and the discipline and work ethic to develop it were better employees. (By the way, that kid went on to become a good captain.)

Now when I’m hiring, I often ask about musical ability. Who says an old dog can’t learn new tricks.

I also ask about sports played, what do the parents do, travel experiences, etc. I think guys who excel at team sports make good employees. The genetics and nurture that the parents provide is a factor. I like kids who have had some exposure to reality.

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Musical ability is also strongly correlated with mathematical ability and programming/system design skills.

Arguably one of greatest cryptologists who ever lived, Lambros Callimahos, was a world class flute player.

Cheers,

Earl

Another thing I look for is kids who are bilingual.

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