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Post by rmarks1 on Apr 29, 2018 16:02:08 GMT -5
This is the result of "publish or perish."
Bob
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Post by faskew on Apr 30, 2018 7:41:25 GMT -5
>And while the best way to see if a finding is valid is to try to reproduce it, the scientific community doesn’t do that remotely enough.
Like almost all our other problems, it's all about the money. It's easier to get a grant for new research by publishing false data that it is to actually discover something new. And it's easier to get a grant for something new than it is to get a grant to verify someone else's work. 8-<
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Post by Deleted on May 1, 2018 11:46:31 GMT -5
That's the result of the belief that our current knowledge is certain and objective.
People no longer care once new research has been "proven" "true".
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Post by raybar on May 1, 2018 14:00:05 GMT -5
I don't know anyone, at least not anyone who's views I respect, who thinks our current knowledge is certain. We all understand that current theories are "to the best of our knowledge at the moment," and are subject to change or abandonment if they should be shown to be wrong.
Objectivity and certainty are two different things. I can base my views on objective evidence while still admitting that that those views are tentative and subject to revision.
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Post by faskew on May 2, 2018 7:34:33 GMT -5
Much of the problem in the US is that the general public is seriously ignorant of how science actually works. This is not helped by our news media that likes to display attention-grabbing headlines full of certainty rather than dealing with the subtle uncertainties of new discoveries. People assume that if a discovery is announced, it must be absolutely and forever true. 8-<
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Post by rmarks1 on May 2, 2018 20:42:44 GMT -5
Much of the problem in the US is that the general public is seriously ignorant of how science actually works. This is not helped by our news media that likes to display attention-grabbing headlines full of certainty rather than dealing with the subtle uncertainties of new discoveries. People assume that if a discovery is announced, it must be absolutely and forever true. 8-< Even worse is an "educational" system that doesn't teach people how to think. Schools here work on what I call the Vomit system. The teacher feeds "facts" to the students, and they are graded by how well they vomit them back. Bob
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Post by faskew on May 3, 2018 7:56:22 GMT -5
Indeed. I had many classes over the years where all the teacher did during the class was to accent certain information from the textbook, things that would be on tests. You could read the textbook and sleep through the class or not read the textbook and just note what was going to be on a test. In either case, there was no thinking or problem solving involved - just memory. 8-<
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Post by raybar on May 3, 2018 14:29:12 GMT -5
It's a long time since I was in school, but I do not remember any classes like that from high school or college.
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Post by faskew on May 3, 2018 18:06:49 GMT -5
Most of mine were like that. I even had one college prof who would come to class and read from the textbook for 50 minutes. No discussion, nothing but him droning on and on. 8-<
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Post by Deleted on May 3, 2018 18:44:09 GMT -5
How do you teach people "how to think"?
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Post by rmarks1 on May 3, 2018 22:42:56 GMT -5
How do you teach people "how to think"? Easy enough. Ask them questions. Get them to read books and articles that take different sides of issues. Keep asking them for evidence that supports their claims. Get them to post on FACTS. Bob
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Post by faskew on May 4, 2018 7:23:53 GMT -5
Classes on critical thinking usually follow similar paths. Students can learn the process, which is similar to the scientific method. You present a question, look at any evidence that supports or refutes an answer, compare the quality and value of the evidence, and come to a tentative conclusion. Tentative because, if new evidence is found, the conclusion may need to be changed. Basic stuff that most people don't seem to know.
There's an emotional factor involved, too. It "feels" good to believe things without questioning them, especially if it makes you part of a larger group that also believes the same things. It "feels" bad to discover that one of your cherished beliefs isn't true. So people prefer to go with what feels good and resist questioning those beliefs.
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Post by Deleted on May 4, 2018 8:13:28 GMT -5
But then you're just offering another subject for rote learning. If the way to teach critical thinking is by just going through preconceived motions of a methodical catalogue, then that's not meaningfully different from the way they are being taught mathematics, or literature, is it? It's just another subject to rote memorize, in order to regurgitate on demand.
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Post by Deleted on May 4, 2018 8:16:11 GMT -5
How do you teach people "how to think"? Easy enough. Ask them questions. Get them to read books and articles that take different sides of issues. Keep asking them for evidence that supports their claims. Get them to post on FACTS. Bob That sounds like a great way to raise a generation of conspiracy theorists. Although that's probably not very different from where we are now.
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Post by rmarks1 on May 4, 2018 12:55:51 GMT -5
But then you're just offering another subject for rote learning. If the way to teach critical thinking is by just going through preconceived motions of a methodical catalogue, then that's not meaningfully different from the way they are being taught mathematics, or literature, is it? It's just another subject to rote memorize, in order to regurgitate on demand. If someone asks you why you think a certain way, or they ask you for evidence to support your views, there is no special text that you can refer to. You have to dig and find justification for what you have claimed. That is certainly not rote learning. Bob
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Post by rmarks1 on May 4, 2018 12:59:03 GMT -5
Easy enough. Ask them questions. Get them to read books and articles that take different sides of issues. Keep asking them for evidence that supports their claims. Get them to post on FACTS. Bob That sounds like a great way to raise a generation of conspiracy theorists. Although that's probably not very different from where we are now. Conspiracy theorists are generally wrong. They have no solid justification for their views. This is easily demonstrated when you ask for evidence. One requirement for teaching people how to think is that they have to examine contrary views and demonstrate why their views are better. Most people don't bother to do this. Bob
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Post by faskew on May 4, 2018 14:35:53 GMT -5
The difference between critical teaching and rote teaching is that critical thinking doesn't provide the answers, only the questions. It's up to the students to come up with answers and the evidence behind them. Rote is simply - here are the answers, memorize them.
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Post by Deleted on May 5, 2018 11:42:08 GMT -5
That sounds like a great way to raise a generation of conspiracy theorists. Although that's probably not very different from where we are now. Conspiracy theorists are generally wrong. They have no solid justification for their views. This is easily demonstrated when you ask for evidence. One requirement for teaching people how to think is that they have to examine contrary views and demonstrate why their views are better. Most people don't bother to do this. Bob There is plenty of "evidence" on the internet for any conspiracy theory you choose. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion provide "evidence" to antisemitic conspiracy theorists. Youtube videos provide "evidence" to anti-9/11 conspiracy theorists. Nutty flat earther websites provide "evidence" to nutty flat earthers. You cannot teach people to look only for "true" evidence when they have no conception what "true" evidence is. You are putting the cart before the horse there. We are talking about middle school and high school students here after all! How are these people going to recognize whether evidence is "true" or "false"? You'll have to teach them that first.
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Post by Deleted on May 5, 2018 11:43:32 GMT -5
The difference between critical teaching and rote teaching is that critical thinking doesn't provide the answers, only the questions. It's up to the students to come up with answers and the evidence behind them. Rote is simply - here are the answers, memorize them. Rote learning is a method of teaching/learning irrespective of its content. You can make people rote memorize questions instead of answers, and it's still rote memorization. If it's up to the students to come up with answers, then once again, they have no way of distinguishing between plausible and implausible answers except their own subjective prejudices and whatever they've been taught at home. That's not critical thinking, necessarily, and more likely they will just fall back on preconceived notions. I think you were correct when you pointed out that critical thinking requires methods of thinking, but you've got to teach these methods. The question is, is the way you would teach these methods meaningfully different from the way you would teach anything else? I personally don't think so, but I'm interested in answers that challenge that preconception.
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Post by Deleted on May 5, 2018 11:51:33 GMT -5
I've learned that in teaching, one of the most difficult things for a teacher is to abandon the notion of universal and self-evident knowledge. There will always be students that won't know something you consider "universal" or "self evident", something that "everybody knows" will not be known by a good number of the people you teach.
If you want to be sure that "everybody knows" something already, you've got to teach them.
So if you wanted to teach "how to think", you'd have with the most basic and most fundamental elements and build from there.
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Post by faskew on May 5, 2018 12:22:23 GMT -5
>and more likely they will just fall back on preconceived notions.
But in a proper critical thinking class ALL answers will be subject to debate and scrutiny. You're not teaching answers, you're teaching how to evaluate answers.
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Post by Deleted on May 5, 2018 12:35:39 GMT -5
>and more likely they will just fall back on preconceived notions. But in a proper critical thinking class ALL answers will be subject to debate and scrutiny. You're not teaching answers, you're teaching how to evaluate answers. But if you're teaching how to evaluate answers, you have to actually teach people how to evaluate answers: How to categorize and judge the merit of an answer; what makes and answer right or wrong, plausible or implausible, informed or uninformed; how to glean the meaning out of unclear or complicated answers, etc. It's easy to assume that they will be capable of it without ever being taught, because none of us have been methodically taught how to evaluate an answer - we've simply absorbed different methods over decades of watching and engaging in debates of our own and come up with a way to do so (usually wrongly). And we've also done that decades after leaving school, with all the knowledge gained from a traditional education. And none of us, by the way, knows how people think, or how to teach others how to think.
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Post by rmarks1 on May 5, 2018 23:28:11 GMT -5
Conspiracy theorists are generally wrong. They have no solid justification for their views. This is easily demonstrated when you ask for evidence. One requirement for teaching people how to think is that they have to examine contrary views and demonstrate why their views are better. Most people don't bother to do this. Bob There is plenty of "evidence" on the internet for any conspiracy theory you choose. Not really."Reports" from unverifiable sources are not evidence. That's the first lesson. Tall tales are not evidence. I generally started with the question: How do you know that is true? Bob
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Post by rmarks1 on May 5, 2018 23:29:31 GMT -5
I've learned that in teaching, one of the most difficult things for a teacher is to abandon the notion of universal and self-evident knowledge. There will always be students that won't know something you consider "universal" or "self evident", something that "everybody knows" will not be known by a good number of the people you teach. If you want to be sure that "everybody knows" something already, you've got to teach them. So if you wanted to teach "how to think", you'd have with the most basic and most fundamental elements and build from there. This I agree with. Bob
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Post by rmarks1 on May 5, 2018 23:33:47 GMT -5
>and more likely they will just fall back on preconceived notions. But in a proper critical thinking class ALL answers will be subject to debate and scrutiny. You're not teaching answers, you're teaching how to evaluate answers. But if you're teaching how to evaluate answers, you have to actually teach people how to evaluate answers: How to categorize and judge the merit of an answer; what makes and answer right or wrong, plausible or implausible, informed or uninformed; how to glean the meaning out of unclear or complicated answers, etc. Yes. Agreed. It's easy to assume that they will be capable of it without ever being taught, because none of us have been methodically taught how to evaluate an answer - we've simply absorbed different methods over decades of watching and engaging in debates of our own and come up with a way to do so (usually wrongly). And we've also done that decades after leaving school, with all the knowledge gained from a traditional education.[/quote] We can thank traditional education for that. Really? Bob
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Post by Deleted on May 6, 2018 2:14:08 GMT -5
Well?
How do you know your claims are true?
How do you distinguish between "tall tales" and "evidence"?
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Post by faskew on May 6, 2018 8:11:00 GMT -5
> And none of us, by the way, knows how people think, or how to teach others how to think. ---Actually, we know quite a bit about how people think. But in such a class what we would be teaching is how to solve problems, not so much how to think. Again, it’s similar to the scientific method.
Discuss and present the question Discuss what evidence would verify the claim Discuss what evidence would nullify the claim Set the students the task of researching for evidence After a certain amount of time has passed, gather all the evidence Discuss the evidence. Compare the process to s criminal trial – what evidence is solid enough to convince a neutral jury and why. Come to a tentative conclusion. Explain that if new evidence is found, the conclusion may need to be changed (again, like a criminal trial).
As with all serious questions, there will always be contradictory findings. The core learning for students will be how to deal with and compare such.
How do we know what's true? Collect the best evidence we can find, using observation and experimentation where possible. (If nothing can be proved true, then absolutely nothing matters or exists. No need to eat food. If you can't prove that humans will die without food, then there's no need to eat.)
So here's what happens - we discover some things that are true (need for food) and build on those to discover other things that are also true. There's always an "edge" of knowledge, where things are not clear, but as evidence accumulates, there will be a preponderance leading to a specific conclusion. That conclusion is tentatively true. Sometimes we're wrong, but we're wrong for the right reasons. In most cases, we're not wrong, just incomplete. Newton wasn't proved wrong when Einstein's theories were discovered, just incomplete. Einstein's theories weren't proved wrong by quantum mechanics, just incomplete. And so on. New evidence most often adds details to old evidence, but almost never completely invalidates the old.
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Post by rmarks1 on May 6, 2018 13:13:56 GMT -5
Well? How do you know your claims are true? How do you distinguish between "tall tales" and "evidence"? Easy. Try to define "true" and "distinguish." Bob
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Post by Deleted on May 9, 2018 23:03:36 GMT -5
That's all well and good for issues that are fairly obvious, Fred.
But in many more complex cases you need to teach people how to distinguish established knowledge from plausible speculation from kooky nonsense.
You need to ground skepticism in authoritative knowledge, in other words.
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Post by faskew on May 10, 2018 8:06:15 GMT -5
That goes back to using the scientific method. What do we know about the world? We base knowledge on things we can count and measure. Let's look at an example. Trump claimed that he had the largest inauguration crowd ever, but it was easy to look at photos of previous crowds and see that wasn't true. Does a certain medicine cure a certain disease? We set up a double-blind test and see. And so on.
Some claims can't be resolved because of lack of evidence, and there will almost always be conflicting evidence. But, again like a criminal trail, you evaluate evidence from both sides and go with that which is the best. Always keeping in mind that every conclusion is tentative.
The main thing about teaching skepticism is teaching people how to collect and evaluate evidence. Established knowledge may be wrong at time, but, like Carl Sagan used to say, the more extraordinary the claim, the more extraordinary the evidence required to prove it. 8->
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