Instead of censoring. Just teach the populace critical thinking to question the validity of all propagated information. Have public debates on what is correct about what the enemy is saying and what is wrong. Also teach the populace to have the same scrutiny about their own governments lies, like WMDs and such.

> Just teach the populace critical thinking

Let’s JUST invent practical nuclear fusion and sentient AI while we’re at it. Both would be probably significantly easier to achieve..

Nobody has ever tried. For obvious reasons.

How are you supposed to manufacture consent if it works?

That’s patently false. There are many schools and teaching methods that teach critical thinking. Attending higher education usually does the trick IF the student is actually motivated in the slightest.

Massive part of YouTube is about teaching critical thinking for those who can’t attend for many reasons.

Still doesn’t work because of the many roadblocks and mostly laziness in general.

This won't do. If we were to go 400 years into the past to Western Europe, you would see that about 15 percent of the population knew how to read. And I suspect that if you asked someone who did know how to read, say a member of the clergy, 'What percentage of the population do you think is even capable of reading?' They might say, 'Well, with a great education system, maybe 20 or 30 percent.' But if you fast forward to today, we know that that prediction would have been wildly pessimistic, that pretty close to 100 percent of the population is capable of reading.

Literacy is a rather straight and easy to measure concept.

Critical thinking is somewhat more subjective and harder to evaluate (i.e. I wouldn’t give a passing mark for your comment).

> For obvious reasons.

For starters me and you (let alone other people) probably have a very different of what “critical thinking” even means besides the very basic stuff.

It’s like “world peace”…

I'm not gonna put a dissertation in a HN comment. I wouldn't have to if more people practiced steelmanning.

Even if you did. It’s very likely that I or someone else wouldn’t a agree with your reasoning and argument. In fact the more time you spent developing your reasoning and arguments the more stuff there would be for us to disagree on.

Which is the problem. You can’t just impose your understanding of “critical thinking” (based on your personal context, experience, ethical/moral/social views, prejudices and biases) on everyone and expect it to solve anything. In fact if you did it would likely lead to something truly terrible..

This is because you assume I mean something else than teaching the population to be critical of all propagated information. I'm not claiming to have privy too truth.

No. I assume exactly that. There is no objective and unbiased definition of “critical thinking” (unless you think it can be “taught” to someone in less than 60 minutes) let alone of specific teaching methods