r/IntellectualDarkWeb • u/Hatrct • 1d ago
This is the reason for the world's problems
The reason there are problems in the world is because evolution has not caught up to modern living arrangements, which are quite recent in terms of human history. Therefore, people still automatically abide by the amygdala-driven fight/flight response. While this response is necessary and beneficial and needs to be quick with the threats humans faced for the majority of humanity, such as an attack from wild animal, this quick amygdala driven response is not beneficial in terms of solving modern day problems, which require complex and long term rational thinking. It instead leads to people getting triggered quickly and having unnecessary conflict and polarization, which is what happened throughout "civilized" human history, and is quite evident today.
Now, our PFC is capable of rational thinking, but the issue is that 80-98% of people have a personality type that is not conducive to actually using it in most domains. Therefore, around 80-98% of people abide by emotional reasoning and cognitive biases instead of rational reasoning. That is why we have problems.
The reason I said 80-98% of people are not critical thinkers is because they can't handle cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is when we hold 2 or more contradictory thoughts. 80-98% of people either randomly choose one thought, or they pick the thought that aligns more closely to their emotionally-derived subjectively-determined pre-existing notion, and will double down and then attack anybody who tries to tell them the mere possibility that they may not be 100% right. That is why we have so much polarization. That is why we have problems. Very few people have a personality type that is conducive to critical thinking. These people encounter the same environmental constraints to critical thinking, yet they are able to push past and adopt critical thinking regardless, because their personality type fosters intellectual curiosity to the point that it offsets the pain caused from cognitive dissonance.
Yet the unfortunate thing is that none of the above I wrote can practically change anything, because the 80-98% will not listen. You can show them 1+1=2 but they will insist it is 3. They simply can't handle any cognitive dissonance in such a context. I will explain further using the analogy of therapy. If you look at the research, you will see that without the therapeutic relationship, regardless of therapeutic modality, there won't be improvement. The therapist can say all the right things in the first session, but 80-98% of people will attack them for saying it or disagree. First the therapeutic relationship is required, before the person will even consider anything the therapist mentions. Due to time and other practical constraints, the few critical thinkers in this world will not be able to form a long term 1 on 1 relationship (a la therapy) with many other people. So they are limited to mass media, such as writing books, or reddit posts, or making youtube videos, etc.. And this is why they will never get their message across to a sufficient audience, because theses mediums do not allow for the long term personalized emotional connection, so 80-98% of people will either ignore them or attack them for what they say.
It is even worse in terms of text-based platforms such as reddit because you are lacking facial expressions and tone and are limited to text, so people are even more likely to automatically discount what you say/attack you for it, This is why the world cannot be changed. That is why the best selling books and highest viewed youtube creators tend to be charlatans who say nothing of value. They reduce temporary fear in people and make them feel good in the moment: classic example of what is called avoidance in the therapeutic context. Again, only after the therapeutic relationship is formed will someone believe you that they are just harming themselves with avoidance and that it is better to accept the truth/reality in the long run. This is why I have given up on humanity. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. You can lead a human to logic but they will get angry at you attempting to do so.
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u/Neverhadachance3 1d ago
I see where you’re coming from, but it reads as a bit nihilistic and emotive — especially in how it frames most of humanity as beyond reason or growth. While it’s true that people often react emotionally or struggle with cognitive dissonance, that doesn’t mean they’re incapable of critical thinking. More often, it means they haven’t had the tools, context, or support to develop it.
Dismissing 80–98% of people as hopelessly irrational overlooks the many examples of progress driven by collective learning — from scientific breakthroughs to social movements and major cultural shifts. If people were truly that closed off, how would any of that have been possible?
Could it be that the key isn’t pure logic alone, but how it’s communicated — with empathy, clarity, and patience? And if that’s the case, how might we better engage others rather than write them off entirely?
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u/Hatrct 1d ago edited 1d ago
More often, it means they haven’t had the tools, context, or support to develop it.
They are beyond saving. When you give them the tools they attack you with them.
Dismissing 80–98% of people as hopelessly irrational overlooks the many examples of progress driven by collective learning — from scientific breakthroughs to social movements and major cultural shifts. If people were truly that closed off, how would any of that have been possible?
You don't need critical thinking for scientific breakthroughs. Our anti-critical thinking education system already does a good job at creating mechanistic rote-memorizers who can excel in their narrow fields. That is how scientific progress is made. But in terms of general knowledge and societal issues, they have zero critical thinking.
Also, no social movement was a result of critical thinking: it was the result of the ruling class being too oppressive and causing too much blow back. And in the vast majority of cases, one bad ruling class was replaced with another bad ruling class, due to the masses lacking critical thinking and instead causing a revolution/change/social movement based on emotional reasoning as opposed to critical thinking.
Could it be that the key isn’t pure logic alone, but how it’s communicated — with empathy, clarity, and patience? And if that’s the case, how might we better engage others rather than write them off entirely?
Those can help (they reduce the degree of emotional reasoning, which is a barrier to critical thinking- but at the same time they are insufficient in terms of actually increasing critical thinking meaningfully). I address that more here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/DeepThoughts/comments/1jql6dj/meditation_is_only_one_part_of_it_critical/
Also, to even show empathy you also need some critical thinking. The reason most people don't show empathy is also due to lack of critical thinking.
You can be nice to irrational people and they will just attack you less, but they will still have zero buy in for your ideas. They might lie to you and smile in your face just to be nice back, but they won't actually listen/understand to any of your points, and will continue being irrational. I call this the TED talk effect. Virtually nobody actually learns anything from a TED talk, they just attend and clap and then forget everything.
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u/Neverhadachance3 1d ago
This isn’t critical analysis — it’s nihilism wrapped in intellectual language. Writing off most of humanity as hopelessly irrational isn’t a solution, it’s a surrender. If empathy, education, and communication are all useless, what exactly are you advocating for — silence, isolation, or just superiority through cynicism?
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u/Spaghettisnakes 1d ago
Surely your post would benefit from describing what exactly the world's problems are and how humans are biologically/evolutionarily maladjusted to dealing with them. This idea that all the world's problems exist because most people aren't rational critical thinkers is kind of a nothing burger when presented without any conviction regarding which positions are the supposedly rational ones. Most people who have opinions about world events generally assume that their opinions are suitably well-reasoned, and so will happily nod along with what you're saying even if they belong to the 80-98% of the population statistic that you pulled out of nowhere.
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u/Hatrct 1d ago
Here you go:
https://www.reddit.com/user/Hatrct/comments/1h4ax60/free_crash_course_on_human_nature_and_the_roots/
Read the VERY BRIEF OVERVIEW/INTRODUCTION: paragraph.
People do not think of or accept things like that, because they lack critical thinking. That is why we have problems. The paragraph mentions 3 themes, which many of the world's problem's stem from.
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u/TenchuReddit 1d ago
I’m sorry, but that article did not prove that 80-98% of humans are hopelessly irrational. After reading the very useless introduction, I skimmed through the entire post only to find nothing relevant.
(By the way, I got a good laugh out of the article’s recommendation that people follow up on their own using ChatGPT.)
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u/Spaghettisnakes 1d ago
If I'm following you correctly:
you believe that a lack of critical thinking is causing people to reject the idea that human nature, "free will vs. determinism", "positive vs. negative freedom", and also neoliberalism are the root causes of expanding economic disparity, the prevalence of certain health problems, wars, and radicalism.
I don't disagree with your essay necessarily, though it's lacking any real substance or sources that justify or clarify your positions. Using chatGPT to write does not inspire confidence that you are one of these critical thinkers you described in the OP. Further, describing everyone who doesn't agree with you as simply lacking critical thinking skills, and making no further effort to develop or describe their positions and what the underlying fallacies ultimately are, is not a productive line of effort. Then again, in the OP you said you'd given up on humanity, so I guess you're maybe not writing this to be productive in the first place.
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u/Hatrct 1d ago
Both. People's lack of critical thinking means that they never once (bizarrely) even questions concepts such as those 3 themes at a deeper level, never once connected it to how they are related to modern day problems. And when you bring it up for discussion, they attack you and double down. For example I wrote that entire link in a very rational and balanced manner, but if you show it to people, 80-98% will fall into 2 camps: A) WHAT? OF COURSE FREE WILL EXISTS! I WERKED HAWRD FOR MUH MUNHEY! I DESEEEERVE IT! ITS ALL THE LAAAAAAAAAAAAAZY PEOPLE LIVING OFF GUVUMUNT HAND OUTS THAT ARE THE PRAWBLEM! or B) DOWN WITH capitalism environment 100% determinant genetics is a social construct the government needs to REDUCE motivation for work and give hand outs! Virtually nobody will have a balanced take, just 100% according to their pre-existing subjective beliefs using raw and hardcore emotions, then attacking anybody who doe not 100% agree with them.
I don't disagree with your essay necessarily, though it's lacking any real substance or sources that justify or clarify your positions.
You missed the entire point of it. The education system is creating mechanistic rote memorization. Citing sources has been drilled into people's head to the point of preventing them to think or use common sense. There is a black cat out there. WHERE IS YOUR SOARCE!?!?!?!?! The kind of of stuff I wrote in my link, there are tons of sources backing it up: part of the whole thing is to look up sources yourself. That is how critical thinking is formed. I literally wrote: do not automatically believe 100% of what I write, check it out yourself if you doubt it. The main point was to increase critical thinking, not have people rote memorize 100% of what I wrote.
Using chatGPT to write does not inspire confidence that you are one of these critical thinkers you described in the OP.
I already wrote a book myself about the contents in that link. But I did trial runs my making posts on reddit: I got rabidly downvoted. The world is not ready for these concepts. So it is not rational to release it as a book. So I deliberately used chatGPT because it writes in an exaggerated nice/overly balanced way, which people are more likely to read, because if you write it as a rational normal human and go straight to 1+1=2, they will be even more like to attack you/reject you for writing it.
. Further, describing everyone who doesn't agree with you as simply lacking critical thinking skills, and making no further effort to develop or describe their positions and what the underlying fallacies ultimately are, is not a productive line of effort.
I know this. That is why I did not do this in the link. Because that was intended to be spread to the masses. But even then barely nobody cared to read it. So I said f it, and I wrote my true observations, unfiltered, in comments such as this. I know how to increase my audience: but it would means that I would have to water down my message to the point of it losing all meaning, so it would be pointless. That is why I used chatGPT to strike a balance: but as factually seen, even using a balanced tone was not enough: there is simply zero intellectual curiosity out there. People don't even care to read it. They cannot be fixed. So I just say what I truly believe now on reddit comments. It won't make a difference anyways. This will A) absolve me of any moral responsibility: I tried, I genuinely did, so my conscience is clear, so now that I tried and people rejected it, that is on them, the moral responsibility is on them, not me, so now I get to say whatever I want however I want to B) I don't expect anything, but as a social animal I still need social interaction, that is why I have cycles where I still post this stuff on reddit, even though I know there will be no meaningful audience for it, and to entertain myself (and since talking like a normal human doesn't work on people) I also tactically mix a bit of trolling and insults for entertainment purposes/to make this unfortunately necessary interaction more tolerable.
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u/Spaghettisnakes 1d ago
Citing sources has been drilled into people's head to the point of preventing them to think or use common sense.
I think this is a mischaracterization of how citing sources works. The point is to provide evidence that substantiates your claims, not to avoid thinking or using common sense. Synthesizing different sources into a new coherent and evidenced line of thought is in-fact one of the hallmarks of critical thinking skills. In your essay you don't even provide the weakest kinds of evidence, anecdotes. Nobody argues that black cats don't exist because most people have at one point or another encountered a black cat and there was no ambiguity on whether the cat was black. When you get into more controversial subjects however, you can often assume that there is some amount of evidence for both sides even if the quality of the evidence dramatically differs.
I understood the point of your essay, and my criticism is applicable even if you were writing it with the expectation that people would perform their own research as well.
People don't even care to read it. They cannot be fixed.
I think it's interesting that you're certain the problem is with the people who don't agree with you and not the way that you've presented your arguments. If an argument fails to convince 80-98% of people, perhaps the fault lies with you and not the people receiving the argument. If I'm to consider my own immediate reaction to your essay, I almost decided not to bother reading it because it was long, written with chatGPT, and had nothing resembling a hook until your 4th paragraph.
I am curious about this book you've written, though I'm admittedly somewhat doubtful about its power to enlighten anyone.
I also tactically mix a bit of trolling and insults for entertainment purposes/to make this unfortunately necessary interaction more tolerable.
I mean this kindly, but you sound like a miserable person. I hope you're doing okay and that you have people in real life that you enjoy spending time with.
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u/Hatrct 1d ago
I think this is a mischaracterization of how citing sources works.
It is not a mischaracterization. I know how citing sources works. I got straight As in school my entire life and I have graduate level education, I know how to + have cited sources. But this is a different kind of project. Books have minimal sources. Even academic debates don't involve many sources.
Here are 2 academics debating, use of sources is minimal:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eF9BtrX0YEE
I think it's interesting that you're certain the problem is with the people who don't agree with you and not the way that you've presented your arguments.
I think it is interesting how you are using general language out of context. Look up Relational Framing Theory to see your flaw. In the absence of a context-specific argument, you are using the non-contextual connotations of "agree with you" to put me down. This was never about "agreeing" with me. It was about critical thinking. In fact, again, I literally wrote in my link that people should not blindly follow what I said and should further investigate it themselves. So no, the problem is that that people are not "agreeing" with me: it is that people A) have zero intellectual curiosity to think about these topics themselves B) A) completely reject when any critical thinker tries to talk to them about such concepts.
I think it's interesting that you're certain the problem is with the people who don't agree with you and not the way that you've presented your arguments
100% of the function of what 80-98% people agree with a mix of A) tone B) how closely it matches their pre-existing subjective beliefs. 0% has to do with the logical subject matter/the strength of the argument. So I am mindful of tone being important, that is why I used chatGPT, I already told you this. Yet people are irrational because 0% of the function of whether they agree with you or even decide to listen to what you say is the strength or logical validity of your arguments. Therefore, that make them irrational, and it makes it futile to engage. I know how to gain an audience. It is not difficult, you just act fake humble and reduce people's fear and insecurities and make them feel good in the moment at their long term expense (this is what charlatan politicians do for example, that is why people actively support them when they actually work against their interests: a prime example of irrationality). But when 0% of the function is the argument/substance, there is no point. What is the point in having an audience of yes men who don't actually grasp what you say, or when you had to water down your argument to the point that it parrots their incorrect subjectively-formed initial beliefs? There is obvious proof for this: the people who have an audience are charlatans: politicians and youtubers who lie to people. Yet the voices of reason barely have an audience. How many worship anti-middle class politicians who make their own lives difficult? Virtually everyone. How many even know who Chomsky is? Very very few people. I rest my case.
CONTINUED: ...
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u/Hatrct 1d ago edited 1d ago
...CONTINUATION:
If an argument fails to convince 80-98% of people, perhaps the fault lies with you and not the people receiving the argument.
You are committing the logical error of reversing cause and effect. You are operating based on an assumption: that 80-98% people are rational. That is the only way I would be wrong. But it is the other way around. Numbers do not automatically make a position right: the only thing that makes an argument correct is its logical validity. If 98% of people say 1+1=3, it does not make it 3, it is still 2. The person who calls out the 98% for this is not automatically wrong. And throughout history we have seen that the masses are almost always incorrect. They killed Socrates for daring to ask questions. They went after Galileo for saying the earth revolves around the sun. Not too long ago the medical community attacked a doctor who said hand washing improves hygiene. Women who did not conform to the superstitions of the time were straw man labeled as witches and the vast majority believed this and burned them at the stake. And even today, people continue to worship and willingly put in power anti-middle class politicians who blatantly lie to them while working for the establishment against the middle class. Again, look up the life work of Kahneman and Tversky: the vast majority of people operate by cognitive biases. They wrote tons of books and articles, if you just google it you will find tons of stuff.
If I'm to consider my own immediate reaction to your essay, I almost decided not to bother reading it because it was long, written with chatGPT, and had nothing resembling a hook until your 4th paragraph.
A "hook". Thanks for proving my point. That is not consistent with rational thinking. That is why charlatans who spew clickbait nonsense get all the views and voices of reason drown out. That is why we have problems. Thank you for providing a relevant example to back up my points.
You can find more about cognitive biases and such here (it is a subsection of my main book/project that I provided the main link for):
I mean this kindly, but you sound like a miserable person. I hope you're doing okay and that you have people in real life that you enjoy spending time with.
I have people in real life to enjoy time with, but they too have no intellectual curiosity. So I get bored, the stimulation is not sufficient. I thought the internet with its larger pool of people would help me find at least 1 personal with semi-decent intellectual curiosity to discuss this stuff with, but again, when only around 2% of the general population have an iota of critical thinking, it is statistically and practically quite difficult to find. So the only way I can even semi-stimulate this need is by trolling: when you troll, you at least get their attention. Then they get baited easily, and that forces them to engage. This way I am at least getting them to read what I wrote, even though they won't agree with it/will just insult me for writing these things instead of thanking me for enlightening them/giving them a solution to their problems. On balance I think this is better than nothing. Maybe subconsciously some of the things I write will enter their mind and they will one day use it. I believe given the massive constraints, I am doing the most rational/balanced tactic possible in this context.
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u/Neverhadachance3 16h ago
You’re not revealing deep insight — you’re spinning cynicism into intellectual theatre. Using AI to endlessly reinforce a bleak worldview doesn’t make it more valid, just more unnecessarily verbose.
At some point, dressing up your despair, and very clear insecurity and fear into complex phrasing becomes a form of avoidance, the thing you are criticising others for. This isn’t critical thinking, it’s resignation with ai manning the thesaurus.
“Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about real problems.” – Epictetus
Chill out man. For real. You don’t sound well.
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u/Accomplished-Leg2971 1d ago
100% of people interact with the world through a human brain. 0% can possibly conceive of anything else.
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u/Iamnotheattack 1d ago
you need to learn how to be more concise in your writing. before being taken seriously, respectfully
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u/manchmaldrauf 1d ago
Haven't you done this already? Good point about the living arrangements and culture upending evolution, but personality should rarely limit ones ability to think critically. It's just intelligence and learning the tools, unless you have some extreme personality, which up to 98% of people couldn't have (because then it wouldn't be extreme). Stop trying to make the social sciences relevant, man.
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u/Xtenda-blade 1d ago
i think it is far less complicated, our economic system and turning war into a business is the major cause of our problems ., Money is at the centre of all of our major problems.. this Darwinian model is leading us to destruction , we can find a better way
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u/MrAcidFace 1d ago
This smacks of intellectual superiority and your hubris won't let you see that, that is the reason people are pushing against your theory. "I'm smart, and if everyone would just think like me, the world would be a better place" is what you are saying, your ego has rationalised your position and your intelligence has allowed you to find and provide data to support it, but if you were truly critical of your thoughts you'd realise that people come in many different flavours, come from many different cultures and have different wants and needs, so much so that no one solution could fix even half the world's problems.
Now, I actually agree with you that most people aren't critical thinkers and rely on emotional reasoning, and have even entertained the notion that if everyone was smarter things would be better, but it wouldn't for 2 reasons that come from the same place, ego.
Serving one's own self interests, it is very easy to rationalise away negative effects if you personally will benefit.
Being correct is important to people, and since this isn't maths, we don't have definitive correct answers, meaning it is possible to rationalise more than one position as being the correct one, leading to more conflict.
Ego, greed and jealousy, are the things I think impact us the most negatively, but being base level emotions it's impossible to change them in any meaningful way in the population. Smart rational critical thinkers have these emotions as well, and have used them to rationalise themselves and others into doing some of the worst things in human history.
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u/Hatrct 23h ago
This smacks of intellectual superiority and your hubris won't let you see that, that is the reason people are pushing against your theory. "I'm smart, and if everyone would just think like me, the world would be a better place" is what you are saying, your ego has rationalised your position and your intelligence has allowed you to find and provide data to support it, but if you were truly critical of your thoughts you'd realise that people come in many different flavours, come from many different cultures and have different wants and needs, so much so that no one solution could fix even half the world's problems.
It is bizarre how oblivious you are. You and others who downvoted me are the ones deciding to turn this into a moral superiority thing, because they are insecure. Any time someone says something intellectual, they feel personally attacked because they weren't the ones who thought of it. Then they project and claim that other person is trying to act morally superior. Here is a thing: imagine that I actually was trying to be morally superior: what does it show about you that you would prefer to burn yourself and the world by not taking my advice, just because you are that emotionally triggered and decided to make this all about you and your insecurities? Didn't you just prove my point, that you/the masses abide by emotional reasoning?
Now, I actually agree with you that most people aren't critical thinkers and rely on emotional reasoning, and have even entertained the notion that if everyone was smarter things would be better, but it wouldn't for 2 reasons that come from the same place, ego.
So you agree with me. So why are you trying to overall attack my argument and reduce visibility for my project? On balance does your strategy make sense? On balance does your strategy benefit yourself and the world? You prefer the charlatan politicians to get even more of an audience and the likes of me more, just because of your incorrect assumptions about moral superiority? If you were given 1 million bucks with a cold stare, would you reject it due to the cold stare? Is this logical? Is 3.2 not > than 1.8?
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u/Duduli 1d ago
There's a new school of thought in research on critical thinking that promotes the view that critical thinking isn't a skill that you can develop by taking a class in it. Instead, almost all of the interindividual variation in so-called critical thinking skills can be explained by interindividual variation in actual knowledge of the world. This includes everything, from high-brow stuff such as theoretical physics and macroeconomics, to the low-brow stuff such as knowing the states and capitals of the world, or who is the most famous player of sport X (fill the blank), or what are the most frequent side effects of aspirin. When you think of it, it does make a lot of sense: the more you know about the world, the better you are at detecting bullshit.
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u/doesnt_use_reddit 1d ago
So the world didn't have problems before our modern living situations? Before we became agrarian?
Then why would we have made any change? Why did we strive to learn how to plant food? There were still plenty of problems with the world, and they looked a lot like death.
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u/Hatrct 1d ago
You should change your reddit name to "doesnt_use_[somethingelse]. I will let you guess what the somethingelse is, but the paradox is that if you could figure out this simple riddle, you would not have written what you wrote to begin with. My suggestion is to read what I wrote in my OP one more time carefully.
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u/doesnt_use_reddit 1d ago
Based on the tone of your response, I think it's safe to say the brackets would be surrounding something insulting, probably the word brain.
Insulting someone rather than addressing them is a telltale sign of small mindedness tho, so no I don't think I'll waste any more time on anything you write.
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u/Hatrct 1d ago edited 1d ago
I would argue that you insulted me and disrespected me by not taking the time to actually read what I wrote, and immediately starting to attack it based on your own errors in terms of reading comprehension. But I still spent the time to respond to you. Also, why would you be so triggered based on what a random anonymous stranger wrote on the internet? Doesn't that indicate that you use too much emotional reasoning?
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u/downheartedbaby 1d ago
I don’t think rationality is the answer here. If you interact with someone who, for example, is on one extreme end of the political spectrum (doesn’t matter which), they will be very good at rationalizing as to why they are the one that is right. Even the most intelligent people struggle to recognize their bias and to create a good faith argument for why others think the opposite of how they do. Unfortunately, even people who study these concepts for a living continue to struggle to recognize their bias.
Going back to your example about therapy, I think what you are making a case for is the need for more connection with others who think differently than us. And I don’t just mean exposure. We need to have more genuine interactions and connections that allow us to see the humanity of others. When we care about people, we are more willing to create that good faith argument for why the other thinks the way they do.
Something I really enjoy watching are debates and discussions between intellectual thinkers that have differing opinions but are good friends. They listen to each other and they argue in good faith because they want to preserve the friendship over their beliefs. It’s really cool.
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u/patbagger 1d ago
I'll sum this up quickly, our problems are caused by government intervention in every aspect of our lives, if government wasn't protecting the stupid or supporting the lazy, they would become critical thinkers and be forced to do for themselves, but all to often they are elected to positions of power in the government and are directly responsible for making thing's worse.
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u/OBVIOUS_BAN_EVASION_ 1d ago
if government wasn't protecting the stupid or supporting the lazy, they would become critical thinkers and be forced to do for themselves
This assumption doesn't seem supported in reality at all. Based on what we've seen historically, some portion would do this and then the rest would die or live in squalor. Not exactly a great outcome for anyone able to empathize with other human beings.
I'll sum this up quickly, our problems are caused by government intervention in every aspect of our lives
This is really no better than a guess.
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u/LibertineLibra 1d ago
Your assertion, though lengthy and repetitive, lacks crucial details required to determine whether it should be seriously considered or not. Specifically, you are throwing around the term "critical thinking" as the focus for your entire claim.
This particular concept (critical thinking) is fairly broad in both definition and especially in application. Being that you already are demonstrating a tendency to think in an alternative manner concerning social reality than most, it is doubly important you spell out exactly what you consider "critical thinking skills". You should also share where you found the data showing that 80+% of the population does not use this skill, and/or may not be capable of it (once you've defined what it is you are talking about when you mention critical thinking).
If you would provide us that, it would be appreciated (by me at least).