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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?"
The best way is personal experience. Have a strongly held belief effectively challenged and have an epic fail. Then don't do what most of humanity does and use cognitive dissonance defenses to justify why you are still incredibly smart despite the fact you were in this regard a complete tool.
Generalize from your own experience and realize we are all flaming idiots but by using tools such as logic and the scientific method we can start to approach a modicum of cleverness. Then from that point on trust only 10% of what you hear and 50% of what you see, break a bunch of stuff while learning how not to break stuff as badly, and apply your skills to future problems.
Oh, and I would recommend reading 'Why People Believe Weird Things' by Michael Shermer. He describes this in great detail and even describes one of his own epic failures (he was abducted by aliens - kinda hard to own up to for a skeptic.)
Skepticism is just an offshoot of experience and the wisdom that (hopefully) comes with experience. After witnessing and experiencing a few spectacular failures in this life, the natural and healthy outcome is to develop a skeptical streak.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
Subscribe to the "The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe" podcast.
Sean Ellis
Follow OfQuack's antics on Twitter.
...invite your pupil over to kick your football...
...then, at the last possible second, pull it away!
That'll teach em not to be so trusting!
Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
"Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac
I didn't let my kid watch television until he was old enough to talk to.
Then I sat down with him, told him the rules for watching it, and emphasized one point:
"This is fun to watch, but remember - people lie."
At every level of life, when he was exposed to school, encountered any institution, or group, I would ask him, "How do you know this is true?"
I introduced him to the concepts of logic while playing games, and we made our own puzzles based on these concepts.
He is grown now, and has one awesome built-in BS detector.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
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.
But you have to find someone who wants to live in a rational, logical world first. That's a lot harder than you might think, and probably explains why computer-saavy people tend to be more skeptical because logic is such a dominating facet of computing. "Normal" people, on the other hand, like their fairy tales and myths and "magic remedies" and so forth and tend to not appreciate it when you point out that what they're doing either doesn't work or has some other, more mundane, explanation...especially if that mundane explanation means they can't charge money for tours or Jesus-shaped bread.
Back to the question though, I find a healthy dose of skepticism from reading the various newsletters out there to be quite useful.
The James Randi Education Foundation (JREF) at http://www.randi.org/ has a weekly column they put out that is usually a good read discussing various "woo-woo" ideas and why, rationally, they fail as well as links to other such things. It's a decent enough starting point I suppose.
Interesting book by Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish statistics professor. It has a lot of ancidotes about environmental policies and looking at the real impact of them. I don't agree with everything the author has to say, but it I thought it did a good job teaching critical thinking and encouraging people not to accept statistics at face value.
In the UK we have this newspaper called the Daily Mail. Some people call it the Daily Hate Mail, because that's basically how it sells - it makes the reader angry. Every story is blatantly biased, designed to make your blood boil. There is always someone doing something stupid, someone to blame for every problem in the world. It's really obvious that it's actually a load of rubbish, but people seem to just have a natural tendency to like that sort of thing.
Herman Gering admitted that the Nazi party used basically the same trick. The argument that you are being attacked, that other people are the cause of all your problems seems to be very compelling, perhaps because evolution makes the world competitive by nature and because if it's someone else's fault, it's not yours.
A lot of men in particular seem to have a hard time admitting they are wrong too. Even if you point out how stupid their beliefs are, people have a hard time accepting it. So, when ideas come along that are even quite blatantly stupid people tend to latch on to them if they support their existing point of view.
I think the only way to counter it is to teach philosophy and rational thinking from an early age. People seem to literally not know how to think, how to form a logical argument or dissect one in a rational manner.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
True skeptics aren't taught, they are usually forged through their own mistakes and misjudgments. In education it would behoove us to encourage mistake making as a learning tool instead of the current academic paradigm of grades and rankings.
Of course I am a graduate of The Evergreen State College which has no grade system so apply salt liberally.
(/local/home/curiosity)-#who -u|grep thecat|cut -c 44-49|xargs kill -9
I don't think geeks are much more skeptical than other groups of people. Everyone thinks groupthink and bias don't apply to them, but the reality is a lot more subtle. A good book I've found for learning about innate human biases is How We Know What Isn't So by Thomas Gilovich. It's filled with examples of how pattern detection and reasoning are skewed by the same heuristics that make our brains so effective in the first place.
Visit the
The best book I ever read on this subject is here.
This book gives you a deep fundamental understanding of science and the scientific method. The chapters focus on debunking a variety of outrageous pseudoscience. Ideas from UFOs to conspiracy theories to the Lost City of Atlantis are swept away by convincing arguments. Once you read enough of this, the higher meaning presents itself. Don't let the nonsense comfort you falsely. Be skeptical and trust in science. It is the most reliable methodology for getting to the truth.
Few books really changed my outlook in life. This is one of them. Read the reviews at Amazon. You will see I'm not alone. For me, in this crazy world, science really has become a candle in the dark.
I've often thought about running a science class in schools with deliberately miscalibrated rulers. Or maybe an undergrad lab, where a selection of the instruments are 'off'. See how long it takes the kids to figure it out. (My colleague just lost a weeks work because he didn't bother to test his fancy fibre-optic temperature probes by sticking them in a glass of water with a thermometer. He'll remember that lesson!)
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.
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.
This was posted at the BadAstronomy.com blog a couple of days ago.
[Sceptic] Brian Dunning has put together a video on how to think critically. Itâ(TM)s called Here Be Dragons, and itâ(TM)s a pretty good primer into how to think. Itâ(TM)s about 40 minutes long, and free to use (with some caveats; see the site). I think this would do well in a classroom. Any teachers out there? I know itâ(TM)s too late for most school sessions, but you can download the movie (and a high-res version too) and keep it handy for the next year. http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2008/06/11/here-be-dragons/
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.
I am no perfect teacher, nor am I claiming to be an expert. I do teach middle schoolers (ages 10-13 at my school) and I try to show and teach them on a daily basis to question the world around them. Why do things happen? What really is cause and effect? What are the other options? What happens if we do this? (A great question not just for science) As a social studies teacher I get the "Why are we in Iraq?" question all the time. It gets difficult at times not to jump on a soapbox, so instead, in my best Socratic questioning, I ask the kids to look at the situation. Is this good? Is this bad? How do we stop terrorism? If it's broke, how can we fix it? If we're wrong (hard to say with a straight face!)what can we learn so as not to do this again? How should we solve problems?
:)
While I will admit I try to encourage skepticism about things like warrantless wiretaps, Gitmo, PATRIOT ACT (from a Constitutional viewpoint, as yesterday shows us, these programs are open to more than one interpretation) I hope that getting the kids to look at our (US) government policies leads them to ask themselves if they agree, if they "work", if they disagree, what else we could do, etc. Devil's advocate is a useful tool for me and I hope by presenting different views and getting them to think it over for themselves they can form their own opinions. I realize at age 10 this is near impossible as abstract thinking skills just aren't there yet, but the 7th graders can handle quite a bit of these topics and I only hope they are walking away with the ability to question their world in a meaningful way.
So to teach skepticism I actively look back at U.S. history (and world history) and get them to question why we did what we did. What were the outcomes? What were the motivations? Why did this happen? Could things have been different? If I wanted them to parrot God Bless America and engage in hero worship of their leaders, I guess I could teach things much differently, and in effect REMOVE all skepticism... but that's not teaching, that's conditioning. While I admit all teaching really is conditioning, I hope they condition themselves more than spit back my opinions, which I try to mask with varying degrees of success. Does it work? Guess we'll have to wait and see
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It's not hard. One classic approach for use in schools is to take some political issue which was a big deal in its day but is forgotten now. Obtain material written about the subject from many points of view, some sensible, some totally bogus, and with various degrees of stridency. Have students read through all the material and then write a brief evaluation of the various positions, listing the arguments, which ones they think are good, which ones seem bogus, and explain how they made that decision.
The Free Silver issue is a good example. Once upon a time, the "free and unlimited coinage of silver" was a big issue. This was an early attempt at an "economic stimulus package" in a hard-money system. There's a famous speech by William Jennings Bryan ("I will not allow this nation to be crucified upon a cross of gold"), there were political cartoons, and there's plenty of material available. This is for high school level students.
In earlier grades, teach skepticism of advertising. Teach how to read an ad. What are they trying to sell you? What are they telling you? What aren't they telling you? Use old TV commercials from the Internet Archive as teaching tools. Teacher handbook: "Ogilvy on Advertising".
I was a little amazed by the premise that there's not enough skepticism because I have learned to try to tune out the doubters and skeptics. Far too many people think they are clever if they can find a hypothetical problem with an idea. It's as if they think that being critical is the same as being discerning.
I think it's the whole bikeshed thing; they won't approve until they change the color.
But the point is well taken that people drink the Kool-Aid far too often without even considering what they're swallowing. Often, it's a reflection of their personal bias. They are willing to believe what their church/political party/government says because it conforms to their previously internalized beliefs. And belief usually translates to identity; people become what they believe. So when their leader tells them, for example, that global warming is not real, they believe what they're told despite evidence to the contrary. To not believe is a threat.
But this goes well beyond the obvious examples of politics and religion. Scientists are the worst examples of group-think. They are taught something and repeat it and hold it to be fact even when confronted with good alternative explanations.
As child, I could see that the continents of North and South America could plausibly fit up to Africa, yet my science teacher dismissed the idea that they were once joined. As we all now know, they were, in fact, once joined.
Personally, I think that shaming and embarrassing mistaken beliefs should come back into fashion. When people feel embarrassed about silly beliefs, they will start to question what they're told.
Best regards.
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.
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.