Critical Reasoning in the USA, Teaching Thereof

In My Humble Opinion
61

Six.

In first grade the elementary school I was in had doors directly from the playground into each classroom, rather than the more conventional setup where you go through hallways to get to your class.

As first graders we were queued up outside our door to be let in, the kindergarteners likewise in the line next to ours. Some kids in our line started taunting, “Kindergarten babies, join in the navies”. Whatever the fuck that may mean. To the nanny nanny boo boo song, of course.

I thought “We were in kindergarten last year, so we were where they are now. And they’ll be where we are next year. So it is wrong to treat them like we’re better than them”.

That is being confronted with a premise (an unstated one, but a premise nonetheless), analyzing it, then rejecting it for a specific reason.

Or… 4.

In nursery school I heard what sounded to me like my little 2-year-old sister crying. (Two year olds weren’t generally allowed to be in nursery school yet but she was potty trained and could even put on her own clothes, except for tying her shoes, so they let her attend). I wanted to go to see if she was okay, but the teacher intercepted me and said I wasn’t allowed to, and that if my sister needed anything, the teacher who was with her would deal with it.

I thought about it and decided the reason I was supposed to obey the teacher was that grownups were wise and right about things, but she was wrong, I was supposed to take care of my little sister. And since she was wrong, this place was bad, so I was going home. So I slipped outside, climbed the fence, and walked the eight blocks or so home to married student housing, crossing a busy 4-lane highway at the traffic light in the process.

I analyzed a situation and the reasons supporting something and decided they were invalid for a specific reason.

62

Uh, no.

The truth is that what one should realize is that one side is relying in a shrinking poodle of contrarian scientists against the vast majority that agree on what is going on.

Last Week Tonight Presents: A statistically representative climate change debate:

Incidentally, I have to notice that most of the time many contrarian sources now refuse to point at the scientists that they are using for their contrarianism, point being that most are aware of how inadequate, shitty or old those sources are.

63

That’s a great visual image, thank you :slight_smile:

64

Perfect example of how a biased person responds. I never questioned climate change in my post. I questioned why a lot of related issues are not being discussed. The video you posted is another classic example. If you do a search on scientists debating climate change this is what you get. You have to dig very deep to find a real debate because the internet is badly biased. Not long ago I looked at the highlights of a 15 page report by scientists. Just reading the highlights gave an entirely different view than one would get if they were to read all 15 pages that were loaded with disclaimers. When you are asking the entire human species to radicaly change the way they live and you don’t feel they are owed an in depth explanation they you are not a critical thinker.

65

I just saw this tweet:

“My hubby has an old friend from his college days who is diabetic and lost BOTH legs above the knees and SIX fingers in one operation last summer. They’re blaming it on diabetes, but I’d bet money it’s from blood clots from the vaccine. I’m sure his doctor forced him to take it and he’s in a very blue part of a very blue state.”

There is no critical reasoning course that can be taught to counter this sort of flaming stupidity. You could compel this person to sit through lectures on diabetes and vascular disease and she’d still insist that the vaccine dunnit.

She might have been recoverable in childhood though.

66

Not really, because most of the related issues were already shown to come from the same biased sources.

Particularly, there is gross bias when a contrarian source declares that less Volcano activity leads to less CO2 in the atmosphere, implying hard that volcanoes are a significant reason for what it is being observed. That old chestnut was debunked a long time ago.

Volcanic eruptions are often discussed in relation to climate change because they release CO2 (and other gases) into our atmosphere. However, human contributions to the carbon cycle are more than 100 times those from all the volcanoes in the world - combined.

In comparison, while volcanic eruptions do cause an increase in atmospheric CO2, human activities emit a Mount St. Helens-sized eruption of CO2 every 2.5 hours and a Mount Pinatubo-sized eruption of CO2 twice daily.

The largest possible eruptions come from super volcanoes like Yellowstone or Mount Toba (which erupt very rarely, about every 100,000 to 200,000 years or more), but the total annual CO2 emissions from human activities is like one or more Yellowstone-sized super eruptions going off every year.

Essentially, CO2 emissions from human activities dwarf those of volcanoes.

67

Yeah, sorry, I meant “puddle”.

68

So another related question comes up: where is the line between critical thinking and just asking questions? In the real world they can blend in together.

There are lots of weeds and details and complexities to climate change models. There are many statements about probable outcomes.

I am however highly confident that the answers as to what the models state with what confidence will happen at particular sets of circumstances for particular outcomes both globally and regionally are available with reasonable effort to find them and read/study enough.

I am also confident that more who ask are JAQing than actually curious about specific details. It is not critical thinking.

And 100% confident that for my purposes those details are more granular than my purposes or 99.999% of the public require.

69

I agree with this 100%. 10 million years ago this might not have been true. Volcanoes are no longer a major source of co2. So without volcanoes keeping up the levels they started slowly dropping. Humans came along and started burning fossil fuels, and in some ways have taken the place of volcanoes. The carbon cycle is not 100% efficient and a lot of carbob is also lost through mineralization. How much carbon we need to put back in the atmosphere I don’t know but I am absolutely sure that burning some level of carbon based fuels is good for everything on earth. Some scientists have kicked around the question of optimum levels of co2 and are coming up with numbers like 1500 PPM.
In this particular conversation about critical thinking the details of global warming good or bad are not important, what I think is important though is how it is being presented to the population. This is a dire emergency! We don’t have time to answer questions! We must act now! This is what we are being told.

70

I think there is no right or wrong when it comes to defining a contested word or phrase, but my posts here were based on an understanding of critical thinking making it almost inconceivable a young child could engage in it.

This link describes my understanding of crtical thinking:

Are You a Critical Thinker?

Critical thinkers:

• Are aware that their thinking is flawed and prone to errors. 
• Think about how they think. 
• Are curious and inquisitive. 
• Separate their identity from their beliefs. 
• Welcome criticism from others. 
• Use evidence to arrive at conclusions and maintain a healthy level of skepticism. 
• Avoid black-and-white thinking and are comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty. 
• Are humble.

Young children can exhibit impressive reasoning, but not all the above, or even most.

The above bullet item list reminded me that even though young children, or math students below the graduate student level, are unlikely to be using full critical thinking, they still can learn and benefit from some of the skills.

71

Uh, no again, this is not how it is presented. And what you showed there is how contrarians do present the “debate”, in any case, this is about critical thinking, can you point then to the scientists that claim that the optimum levels of co2 are numbers like “1500 PPM”?

This is because, to realize how unreasonable some of your sources are, having more than 1000 PPM CO2 is not good for human health, for starters.

72

”Ideal” CO 2 levels is a value laden question. Certainly preferred is nearer pre industrial levels and not rapidly approaching tipping point levels that are existential threats. And adaptation to rapid changes in climate that are already in progress must also be done. Accepting those conclusions is not an example of insufficient critical thinking. It is accepting the very broad expert scientific consensus.

Wanting to learn more is admirable. There are many resources available to those who want all the details and who have the time. And some who have the time to field what may seem like dumb questions to them.

73

So someone who is honestly intellectually curious could start with a quick Google search to find something like this.

They’d then at least determine if it was a likely trustworthy site. mit.edu … okay.

They might then check a few other sites or follow any citations to more original source material.

They might look for other differing conclusions and judge if they are also from reliable sources. But if multiple reliable sources all stated similar answers as MIT? Would it be a sign of critical thinking skill to assume they are all wrong?

74

Well being curious I tried to search for who would claim that, and found a source!

Specifically optimizing some plants’ growth may top off at 1500 PPM CO2 and very warm. Important for greenhouse operators trying to maximize yields to know. That may be optimal … in a commercial greenhouse.

Maybe that’s where it comes from?

Not hard to find and evaluate this stuff with very little effort if one actually is curious.

75

Can we not do the climate debate thing here? Please?

76

FWIW the discussion so far does illustrate some point’s pertinent to the OP.

77

Of course, then the issue is still that human health is not maintained at those “Optimal” levels of CO2.

But going to the critical reasoning part:

It does happen a lot, what Naomy Oreskes pointed about the manufacturers of doubt, like when the tobacco industry launched a few experts that pointed at real science about some item from smoking that could be good, but forgetting to mention the very important and deadly effects of smoking.

IIRC there was a curious result from a study pointing to smoking as probably limiting colon cancer. Now, the point would be here that one should use critical reasoning that tells you that very few scientists do claim that smoking is good for you. And that almost all scentists do report that smoking is bad for you. So what about the contrarians that deserve to be listened to? Not until the whole of the evidence is mentioned by those contrarians. They need to show to the people that they understand why it is that most researchers don’t agree with the few.

Particularly when most scientists point out that ‘declaring smoking as healthy’ is bananas when smoking increases the danger of other cancers, hearth failure, emphysema, etc.

78

Re: the climate debate—there are a few threads there. DSeid’s point about JAQing vs asking critical questions is a really good one. I think it involves some critical thinking in order to recognize that there is an argument being made, that it might be flawed, and to poke around looking for flaws. I guess the difference is that JAQing feels ad hominem, or at least ad latus (latus = side): poking holes with an intent to discredit rather than to come up with a better argument.

On the other hand, I agree that, a lot of the time, it’s really difficult to get the specific questions answered. Sometimes I think that’s because people are afraid that the masses won’t accept something that isn’t simple.

I asked one myself about which method was ultimately greener (or less un-green, anyway): transporting oil via pipeline or via surface transport. I was never able to get an answer, though my “side” was clearly anti-pipeline. But I could never get a good answer as to why, and consequently I don’t know how I feel about pipelines, though I know I’d prefer moving away from oil and gas. This is partly because it’s such a complex question, and involves factoring in the risk of accident, the sunk costs of existing infrastructure, and the economic aspects of new construction.

79

Six year old:

• Are aware that their thinking is flawed and prone to errors.
Yeah, definitely. The adults were constantly harping on what we did NOT know and were NOT adequately prepared to deal with, as the reason they were in charge.

• Think about how they think.
Yeah, I did.

• Are curious and inquisitive.
Hell yeah

• Separate their identity from their beliefs.
Not so much. I was fervently identified with my beliefs.

• Welcome criticism from others.
No. Possibly consider criticism from others but easily made vulnerable and defensive.

• Use evidence to arrive at conclusions and maintain a healthy level of skepticism.
Not great at that.

• Avoid black-and-white thinking and are comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty.
Can formulate viewpoints that diverge from existing black-and-white choices, yes. Be aware that one is forcing others into either black or white, that’s trickier and less likely.

• Are humble.
Fuck no. Nowhere close.

80

I had never heard of this but it could possibly be that nicotine might raise serotonin levels. I believe that I had read somewhere that higher serotonin levels reduced colon cancer. Nicotine might have some value as a drug.