r/Gifted • u/PlntHoe77 • 5d ago

Discussion Does anyone else have to consistently remind themselves that critical thinking isn’t common?

I’m not even trying to be condescending But a lot of the times I catch myself getting irritated over ignorant comments or threads, or how someone can post something on social media that’s bigoted or straight up misinformation and it’ll get thousands of likes.

I used to argue with people on the internet (I don’t anymore) But has anyone else have this experience? I have to consistently remind myself that a lot of people are unfortunately simple minded and don’t think over things multiple times or in depth. I’m having a hard time understanding.

I just saw a twitter thread where people were saying that evil people don’t get karma because it’s not real/you never see them suffer.. And someone used slavery as an example because black people had to experience intergenerational (lasting) trauma while white people “never got anything” I don’t wanna bring politics here, but god.. Ignorance/lack of empathy is not bliss at all. If you’re obsessed with hurting and putting down an entire group of people for 400 years that must be stressful. It’s just kind of frustrating the type of things people think in the mainstream.

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u/CapnFang 4d ago

It makes sense from an evolutionary point of view. We used to live in tribes of hunter/gatherers. When they gathered in the morning before going out for a hunt, the leader would make the decision where they were going to hunt, and everyone else would just follow along. Could you imagine if everybody was a critical thinker? Every morning would start with an argument, because everyone would try to be the leader. There would be no "followers". They'd never actually leave for the hunt because the argument would never be settled, and everyone would starve to death.

So evolution favored tribes where approximately 1 person out of 20 had good critical thinking skills, and the rest were sheep. This served us well when we lived in small tribes of hunter-gatherers, but it's a disaster in the modern world.