I think this is only true because people think its true. There's plenty of PhD holding scientists that still participate in tribal politics. There's also plenty that are smart in their field and nothing more. This was logic that was used in the past and every time we've educated people the elite haven't lost their positions of power. But everyone's lives have increased in quality, I mean we don't use the streets of London as a sewer.
The knowledge itself matters. The ability to see when is the statement subtly exaggerating what facts say, so that one can use it in manipulative "logical" claim matters great deal. The ability to understand nuance matters a lot too. So does the ability to deal with bad actors in discussion, to understand motivations of whoever wrote this or that document matters.
But in fairness to the average person, scammers have to play big numbers games to find suckers and pick weaker targets like elderly because the average person isn't that incapable of critical thinking.
As you might imagine, students mostly learn this for the exams and forget everything when they leave schools. The poor political and economical situation in the country reflects the ineffectiveness of this approach.
And hey, schools in yugoslavia also taught marxism as a subject I kid you not (it was an established science back then!). Yet the whole generation in the 90s soon abandoned it for the next shiny thing. Most probably expected to become capitalists themselves, forgetting that even in capitalism someone has to actually do the work and only cca 200 families would actually own the businesses.
(Logika curriculum in croatian) https://mzo.gov.hr/UserDocsImages/dokumenti/Publikacije/Pred...
Preferably for their own side first because I am really sick of predicting what the next 4 years will be like, being called shill, having that prediction borne out and then being told that it was actually impossible for anything else to happen from the start.
The last bit is especially common in the most important but soft sciences like psychology, sociology, economy, history or anthropology...
Or worse, it may be in principle verifiable but only at high expense, or the results of the analysis are incomplete or buried.
This is why we have things like the CDC offer guidelines, taking into account the changes and growth in our knowledge base. Knowledge is collected and verified over time and eventually becomes distilled in easy to understand ways to the public.
Homelessness is a deeper problem that requires cultural change. It's not simply an economic problem.
For example, when I lived in Taiwan in the early 90s there was nary a homeless person. That's not because Taiwan's government had a better social net, nor was it because Taiwan . It was simply because in Taiwan's culture it was unheard of for anyone to let anyone else in their family go homeless. That in America people could have a homeless sibling or child or parent was almost unfathomable.
I'm not suggesting America adopt Taiwan's culture. But I am saying American culture's hyper-individualistic sink-or-swim culture has consequences. It's only in the context of such a culture that the neoliberal Democratic party appears "left", when in fact it is quite center if not center-right.
There are several obvious ways of doing this, from "just build more homeless shelters" to a UBI to less restrictive zoning so that people aren't priced out of housing etc. But these all cost money or political capital, so we see where the priorities are.
> It's only in the context of such a culture that the neoliberal Democratic party appears "left", when in fact it is quite center if not center-right.
This is old talking point that might have been true in 1994:
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/interactives/political-...
Unless you're talking about what they do instead of what they say they're going to do. Then you might still be correct.
Yes. That’s my point about culture.
There’s a reason racism and sexism still dominate despite a constitution that has said “all men are created equal” for nearly 250 years and then clarifying amendments 150 and 100 years ago. It’s the culture. Both problems could have been vanquished long ago if they were truly priorities in people’s hearts. But there are not. American culture, both liberal and conservative subcultures, always put self-interest ahead of common good when the chips are down.
Your link speaks of liberal vs conservative. Talk to any true leftist: Liberal != Left. See “neoliberalism”. See the nomination of Biden by the Dems. See Diane Feinstein continuing to be California’s senior senator. Etc. See the amount of wealth inequality just within the liberal subset of the population. New York has the most segregated school system of any big city despite being liberal, and then look at the backlash by liberals over attempts to desegregate both in NYC and SF. I could go and on.
So for example, a primary reason why there is such high homelessness in San Francisco is high housing costs. But it's in the housing developer's self-interest to knock down some housing valued at $4000/month and build 50 units of the same size on the same lot, even if the aggregate effect of doing so at scale is to cause the value of each unit to fall to $2000/month, because 50*$2000 is still a lot more than $4000. Which in turn reduces housing costs and homelessness. What's stopping this isn't individuals acting in their own self-interest, it's the local government being captured by local landlords who don't want rents to fall.
The reason racism and sexism still dominate is that they're a wedge used by elites to keep poor black folks and poor white folks on opposite sides of the isle instead of voting together against the corruption that victimizes them both, and sow general discord in the population by dividing any group that contains both men and women, which is just about all of them.
They convince black people that their enemy is the redneck and vice versa so that the two groups don't get together and start asking why it's so hard to start a small business. The true solution to racial and economic inequality is upward mobility, but notice that nobody is even talking about that anymore. As if the solution to race is taking down statues and similarly worthless symbolic voids.
But none of this is culture or individualism. It's purposeful manipulation.
I think that this is [citation needed] category.
Actually in both ways, my kids were not taught multiplication as 7 years old. At that age, they were still doing additions in school.
This is a rich take coming from anyone living in the US. It's a two party system - the failure of the party partially aligned with your views does not and has never made voting for the party expressly against your views the correct outcome.
This is you telling people to think critically while failing to think critically (because it suits the politics you want to advocate for).
Instead of this, you can stop acting myopic towards elections and punish your party (vote the other one, 3rd party, or even write-in Bernie Sanders/Ron Paul) and force the political powers to answer accordingly if they want your vote for the next time.
Question: in a first past the post electoral system, what happens if the vote between two parties in a three party election is split 35% and 20%? Does either party take power? Do any of their candidates take power?
NO.
The other party wins - with 45% of the vote. EVERY TIME.
Third parties in the US literally cannot win, unless some mysterious outcome hands them an immediate largest share of the vote. Which isn't going to happen in one electoral cycle, which means the ascendancy of such a party has to involve decades of losses for whichever party they accidentally poach more voters from each cycle.
In NYC and SF? Sure. Or Greens, Independents, Socialists, anyone but Democrats.
I'd be giving the same advice to anyone from Alabama about voting not Republican.
Politics isn't about good and evil, it's about who gets what. If people who keep failing to give you what you want keep getting your vote they will keep doing what they were doing.
The reason why we haven't done the same for critical thinking is that the people in charge won't be if we had a citizenry which could think logically.
Case in point: NYC and SF have the worst homelessness problem of any city despite being in the hands of the party that keeps saying they are for the poor. That you now have dozens of reasons lined up in your head why it's not their fault despite having the power to solve it for decades and should be let off the hook is the lack of critical thinking in American education at work.