Slashdot Mirror
How To Teach a Healthy Dose of Skepticism?
c0d3h4x0r writes "It's no accident that 'whatcouldpossiblygowrong' is one of the most common tags applied by this community to stories about proposed ideas or laws. The ability to spot and predict faults is a big part of what makes a great engineer. It starts with having a healthy skepticism about the world, which leads to actual critical thinking. Many books and courses teach critical thinking skills, but what is the best way to encourage and teach someone to maintain a healthy dose of skepticism? Is it even a teachable skill, or is it just an innate part of the geek personality?"
But it won't be taught.
The very simple reason is that people who think are harder to govern than people who don't. What is wanted is people who can do their job, preferably well, but don't have any interests outside of it.
The reason why we get laws proposed that have glaring flaws is that those flaws are often what is wanted. The great majority of people does either not care or swallows the snakeoil and the promise of safety, simply because they were never taught to contemplate "what could possibly go wrong".
It's pretty much how Homer put it. We elect politicians so we don't have to think. Unfortunately, he's not alone with this point of view.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Reminds me of a quote: Judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from poor judgment.
In my experience there are two forms of skepticism-- true skepticism, which is healthy and sadly lacking in most people, and what I call "pseudo-skepticism" which is in great abundance. Pseudo-skepticism goes right along with pseudo-science and as is often used as a foundation for a belief system. Example: the 9/11 conspiracy theorists are rabidly skeptical of anything presented by the government or mainstream media (which is good, to a degree), but are completely accepting of the most crackpot theories imaginable. (The more crazy the idea, the better IMHO). They do this while covering their ears and singing LA-LA-LA anytime any one tries to debunk their theories with science or counter-evidence. Both sides of the global warming debate contain pseudo-skeptics as well, and unfortunately, they are the ones making the most noise.
A true skeptic is skeptical of both points of view, and does the critical thinking necessary to form his/her own opinion. This is harder to teach since it comes from experience, which is harder to come by in this sheltered world of ours.
It's not about teaching skepticism and critical thinking. It's about not squashing those natural talents by teaching kids about the empty power of magical thinking, house-of-cards hollow self esteem disconnected from actual achievement, and the endless wallowing in platitudes about "having faith" and "just believe, and you can do anything!" etc. The cultural institutions that rely on such stuff are always at odds with critical thinking. Kids are natural scientists - they understand the need to test causality, and are always curious. It's a shame that so many people completely misunderstand the nature of ethics, and seem to think that mysticism (the enemy of critical thinking) is required in order to derive a sound moral framework.
Parents are too quick to pass the baton to religion, new-age hokum, or just feel-good Oprah-ness in order to make their kids feel good about the world. They just want things to be easy, and don't have the personal fortitude to usher their kids through the slightly challenging phase of learning to apply their natural reasoning skills to topics that are somewhat less immediately tangible than what happens when you touch something hot. Issues like "what happens when one state taxes high tech entrepeneurs more than the the state next door" or "what happens when you let a gene pool get too shallow" or "what happens when you use GOTO statements in your code because it lets you get to lunch earlier that day" aren't any different than "what happens when you dump a hot oatmeal bowl in your lap," but require a little more discipline to digest.
The platform for rational thought is already there. You have to kill it, though, or slowly suffocate it throughout child development, in order to make it something that it feels like work to wake it back up later. Just keep it alive in the first place, and we wouldn't have such a mixed bag cultural messes to deal with. We wouldn't be seeing the strange, sad dance of a politician twisting and turning while explaining why he's suddenly between churches while running for president... since he wouldn't have been glued to a crazy church in the first place. Think how much less noise and distraction we'd have without all that nonsense.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
In general, teach your children to think. Give them tools they can use later in life.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
One useful byproduct of a long series of failures is that it produces a well-developed sense of cynicism and sarcasm, which are essential skills required for posting snarky (yet insightful - insightful, dammit!) remarks on Slashdot.
In my experience skepticism is the one quality that most agitates employers, sad to say.
I think there's even a way to delineate along that line. There are skeptics, cynics, and pessimists. The lines between skeptics and cynics are a bit fuzzy, and between cynics and pessimists as well. Yet it's easy to tell the difference between a skeptic and a pessimist.
In brief, people can think "This may not work", "This probably won't work", or "This will never work" before they have any evidence.
The skeptic will go with the evidence more readily. The cynic will be biased towards the negative, but can be convinced by the evidence. The pessimist will be surprised at success even when success should have been expected.
Of course, there are optimists to the other side of skeptics on that list. They'll favor success until the evidence proves them wrong, but will favor success the next time.
Then there are "true believers" on either end who either will be convinced of failure or convinced of success even after the outcome is clear to everyone else. They'll twist the evidence and the logic to their conclusion before they allow their conclusion to change with the evidence and logic.
One thing that needs to be taught is that being skeptical is not the same as an argument. It's fine to have a hunch that an idea is bad, wrong, or won't work, but it's only a starting point. Too many people believe that their work ends at being skeptical. Such "skeptics" are among the most closed minded people in society.
Proverbs 21:19
My advice is to lie. A lot. Yes, I'm serious.
The only way to teach others to be skeptical is to give reasons for skepticism. With middle school students (experience teaching algebra/pre-algebra), I would start off easy:
Me: What's the square root of ?
Students: *Silence*
Me: Thought so. The answer is "flower".
Students: *laughter*
Me: What? Something wrong?
Student: Ya, "flower" is not a number.
Me: And?
Student: A square root needs to be a number.
Me: Does it?
Student: YA! Duhhh!
Me: Prove it. Show me how multiplying two flowers doesn't make .
It's humorous, but I threw silly things like that in all the time. Answers the students knew couldn't be right. That gave them the courage to call me out when they thought I was wrong. I then required more of them:
Me: is the correct answer to Students: How do you know?
Me: I just know. I'm the teacher.
Students: Ya, but you lie sometimes.
Me: I do. So what do you do when you think I'm lying?
Student: We show you why we think you're lying. Me: So show me.
Student: *walks up to the board and does the math*
In this situation, it doesn't matter whether or not the student is right in her/his distrust, but that s/he was willing to check my work.
This is a tactic I use to teach and ingrain skepticism in every class I've ever taught.
The fact that someone has put together instructions on how to fail tells us that people nowadays are more apt to think than to do. In general, I agree that thinking things through is good, but for trivial things, people should just act. What this has to do with skepticism, I don't know, but analysis paralysis just bugs me (I do it a lot) and is a big reason why big orgs can't get anything done.
"Fools you are who say you like to learn from your mistakes. I prefer to learn from the mistakes of others, and avoid the cost of my own".
-Otto von Bismarck
=Smidge=
In the absence of any proof of a god and with 100% certainty that intelligent life developed once, it is only guessing that among the billions of galaxies it could have happened at least one more time. If I have to set a bet, I know where I'd put my money.
Bert
Since you brought up religion ... I saw a quote in todays' paper asking about whether people believe in bad luck on Friday the 13th (Today is Friday the 13th, btw). One wman said "Oh no, I have God watching over me, I don't have to worry. I don't believe in superstitions."
My irony meter pegged. Of course, critical thinking and logic are anathema to anyone who believes in god.
Kevin Smith on Prince
I have had some success teaching my kids skepticism just by virtue of my parenting strategy. I don't ever really expect them to accept "Because I said so" I think that really hinders a person to be taught from a young age that if someone of authority says it, than it must be true.
Instead I approach every disagreement as an opportunity for a proof. "Why do I have to eat my broccli?" "Well I guess you don't, but it is pretty hard to find iron that is more easily digestable. You need iron levels in your blood to be high enough so it can process oxygen more efficiently or you will find yourself lacking energy, being tired, and even potentially becoming pale and sick. There are other ways to get the vitamins you need, but to me Broccli is worth it because it is actually pretty good, and convenient because it is right her on the table."
Sure he may still not eat the broccli, but at least I tried to appeal to his logical side and gave him a reasonable and easy to understand stance. Always honoring his questions, and answering with real logic and real science means that whenever someone CAN'T answer with something real, he will imediatly have red flags.
While "Because I said so" would probably make a lot of kids get their nutrition today, my approach will hopefully inspire him to THINK about his nutrition, and question risk/reward and give hom practice evaluating trade-offs.
Why amusing? It's a perfectly logical, rational conclusion based on the available evidence. No one has ever provided any evidence or test to show that there is a supreme, omnipotent being watching over us. Nor has anyone ever provided any evidence to indicate how such a being could come into existence in the first place. The best anyone has ever offered is simply, "God/Vishnu/Chutulu/whatever has always existed." That is no evidence.
On the other hand, we have absolute, concrete evidence for what it takes for life to form. Granted, we have only a single data point, our planet, but using that as our reference, we can now search the cosmos for other bodies which exhibit similar conditions and explore them for signs of life, intelligent or otherwise. We can of course also listen for signs of intelligent life through radio waves or other sources. In other words, we are looking for evidence of other beings because we know that at least in one case, our planet, such beings exist and if intelligent life exists on this ball of rock, then there is a probability that life exists somewhere else under similar conditions.
This is where skepticism comes into play. If someone says "X product can do Y job better, and more cheaply, than a name brand product", they have to prove it. Until such time, people should remain skeptical of unsubstantiated claims. Why do you think the folks who produce supplements are so adamant about not having to prove the claims they make? They know that if subjected to scientific testing, their products would be shown not to do what the manufacturer claims.
The same thing occurs with Sagan's (and others) stances on religion and why ID is not a scientific principle. Those concepts do not stand up to scientific rigor. If you want to believe that there is a God (or Gods), then by all means, go ahead. But don't equate a belief in something for which there is zero evidence to support said belief with an idea for which evidence already exists.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Given 1: I believe in God.
Given 2: I am an excellent computer engineer, with dual degrees in computer engineering and computer science.
Given 3: Earning dual degrees in computer engineering and computer science and working as a computer engineer require strong critical thinking and logical skills. They also require having taken classes in logic and critical thinking.
Step 1: Earning computer science and computer engineering degrees and working in the computer engineering field require logical and critical thinking skills (Given 3), and I work in this field and have those degrees (Given 2). Therefore, it follows that I have logical and critical thinking skills.
Step 2: I have logical and critical thinking skills (Step 1), and I believe in God (Given 1). Therefore, there exist some people who believe in God and have critical thinking and logical skills.
Conclusion: I have disproved your statement that "critical thinking and logic are anathema to anyone who believes in god" by counterexample. QED.
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
The fact is that it's perfectly correct to use the Earth as your reference point, so saying that the Earth is still and the Sun moves around it is perfectly correct. Obviously, it's a lot more practical (when dealing with the solar system) to use Sol as the reference point, but "less practical" doesn't mean "wrong".
What is wrong is to say that the other planets orbit the Earth (unless your definition of "orbit" covers some very weird relative trajectories). And that was the fundamental flaw in the geocentric theory (not the relationship between the Earth and Sun, which is compatible in both models). I'm always amazed by how many people (teachers included) fail to understand that.