Hello everyone and welcome to my channel.
My name is Raphael and I live in Greece. I’m
24 years old and I have a bachelors in Psychology
from the University of Athens. I’d say that’s
enough self-disclosure for the next couple
of years, so let’s move on to the matter
at hand.
The main purpose of this channel is to promote
critical thinking and combat misinformation,
in an easily accessible, entertaining way,
while remaining as impartial as possible.
I'll be talking about what each of us can
do to better evaluate opinions, events, other
people and their actions and what issues to
be aware of when making judgements. I will
also be talking about effective communication
approaches, scientific matters and how they
relate to various topics. I also plan on making
video responses to specific dubious information
and comment on promising developments in social
science.
I decided to start this channel after I had
too much contact with false evidence and the
promotion of harmful ideas. So, I thought
I’d take the time to try and promote some
basic and healthy propensity for skepticism,
a very basic understanding of science, logic
and a couple of hints that would aid people
in evaluating information and the outlets
of that information.
I would like to start off by demonstrating
one of the key concepts I will mention in
the future: modesty of opinion. By that I
mean expressing your opinions and interpretations,
in general, with some degree of reservation
and acknowledgment of the potential to be
making lesser or greater errors. In other
words, don’t try to present yourself and
your output as the only, ultimate truth. I
do not have all the answers and what I say
could and will contain errors or be open to
different interpretations. I’d say there
are some occasions in which firm and absolute
standing by a point is warranted, but modesty
of opinion is a good rule of thumb.
With our long intro out of the way, let us
begin. I have the whole layout of the video
in the description, so I’ll be presenting
a few points on screen each time and going
through them in detail before moving on. I
also included a PDF file which gathers all
the main points, for anyone who might be interested.
We’ll begin our video series by outlining
some obstacles to critical thinking, namely:
Semi education, the internet bubbles, illusory
knowledge, the free flow of ideas, logical
fallacies and cognitive biases. This overview
is meant as a very simple introduction to
these concepts, aiming just to get people
interested. In the future I'll be going over
different ideas and subjects in detail.
Let’s take a brief look into the past, during
which common people had quite a hard time
evaluating information and thinking critically.
A few reasons for this could be that there
was
• A lack in formal education
• A lack of access to self-educational material
• A lack of ability to cross check information
• And that critical voices couldn’t easily
reach many people (for example a criticism
about a new self-help book would not easily
reach many people before the internet).
• During the 20th century, in Europe we
had about 190 armed conflicts a lot of internal
and external migration, higher rates of poverty
and illiteracy, fewer infrastructure etc.
Being a hobbyist intellectual under these
circumstances was not high on the average
person’s list.
So why am I mentioning the past? It’s because
I want to contrast it with what I think is
a problem during our age, which I'll call
being "semi-educated". What I mean by this
is that many people are educated to the point
of being able to question things, but not
educated enough to do it properly. We have
a saying in Greece, which drives the message
home quite nicely: “Half knowledge is worse
than no knowledge at all”. I would rather
try to change a very ignorant and clueless
person’s mind about the benefits and safety
of vaccinations, for example, than try to
convince a middle-class person with a smartphone
and incomplete knowledge of the matter. That’s
because the latter cannot grasp the basics
of science, just like the former, but they
already have formed some strong opinions,
they can go online and do their questionable
research and socialize on Facebook, which
will act as a shield against my efforts to
convince them. And it has actually been observed
that vaccination skeptics, for example, tend
to come from middle and upper socioeconomic
backgrounds, as do flat earth advocates and
other groups. Of course, some skepticism and
criticism against the pharmaceutical industries
and various medical practices is definitely
warranted. But where vaccination skeptics
go wrong is how they apply this criticism,
to what exactly they apply it and for what
exact reasons. Their incomplete understanding
of science enables them to critique medical
science, but not to do it very effectively.
Protesting about the missing drug trials that
go unreported and contribute to publication
bias, about medical advertising towards the
public being allowed in the USA or about the
non-essential procedures being prescribed
would be far nobler goals. I mean absolutely
no disrespect towards any member of these
groups and I can sympathize with their views
and concerns. I'm simply expressing my opinion,
which is that those people have gotten some
things wrong and are perfectly capable of
educating themselves properly and making really
valid criticisms, should they so decide.
It is very important that we separate and
distinguish proper reasoning, scientific understanding
and scientific-mindedness from sophistry and
rational facades. A person generating complex
arguments at great speed, stating statistics
and other facts with great authority, quoting
highly regarded figures and seemingly cornering
their opponent is NOT necessarily being reasonable
and intellectually honest. I will demonstrate
this point in detail in a future video, using
specific instances of famous speakers doing
exactly this.
I’d say that semi education is one aspect
of what hinders proper critical thinking.
Having the ability to use evidence improperly
to justify your ideas, but not having the
ability to use evidence properly, because
the latter is harder to do. It requires some
skills, some training, some dedication, some
difficult thinking. I put the blame for this
almost exclusively on the formal educational
system. It is a failure to educate kids and
teens about how science works, why it is the
best alternative we have, how proper reasoning
is done, how to fight against our own biases,
what we can learn from past mistakes and what
behaviors promote healthy minds and societies.
In essence, few of us learn how to learn.
However, I also think there might be a tiny
amount of personal responsibility lingering
in there somewhere, concerning adults who
have the sum of human knowledge at their fingertips,
but choose to watch Stephan Molyneux videos
instead, for example (text: I’ll get to
this gentleman in my next video).
Now, let’s talk about the Internet (trance).
The internet has been an unbelievably powerful
force in transforming societies on a global
level. Concerning its harmful impact on human
communication and critical skills, I’d like
to note three things.
Firstly, it’s the existence of filter bubbles.
If you aren’t familiar with the concept,
I strongly suggest you take a look at the
excellent IdeaPod article in the description.
What filter bubbles express is the fact that
your activity across the internet and many
of its sites directly shapes your experience
with this medium and over time exposes you
to very specific material. For example, if
I were to watch a handful of PragerU videos
on YouTube, which is a conservative propaganda
channel, the algorithm would later recommend
more such and relative videos to me. My own
Google search results for various terms are
not the same as another person’s results
for the same terms, because Google adjusts
what it shows me based on my past activity,
demographics, interests, purchases and other
info it has on me. The same happens with Facebook,
Instagram, Twitter and other sites. This can
end up exposing each of us to very one-sided,
likeable content and greatly distorting our
view and sense of group identity. Do we want
to only receive information that we like,
that is inevitably biased to some degree and
commentaries that are one sided and demonize
opposing voices, instead of promoting healthy
dialogue?
What is special about internet bubbles (as
opposed to, say TV or press ones) is that
they creep up on you. If I were to only pick
up my favorite newspaper every day, then at
least I would know that I’m picking up my
favorite newspaper. But when I roam the internet
and the social media, it is not at all apparent
to me that I’m probably enclosing myself
inside a bubble of content that only appeals
to my preferences and aims to keep me hooked
up for as long as possible, in order to generate
ad revenue. The second thing that sets the
internet bubbles apart, is the fact that on
the internet we have the ability to easily
and continuously interact with other, like-minded
people. And this can lead to a loop of exposure
to content that I like, positive interaction
with and reaffirming of my beliefs by members
of my ingroup, which leads to more exposure
to prior content etc. Before long, changing
some of our ideas or ways of thinking also
entails being shunned by our teammates and
acknowledging some merit to “the opposing
team”. Can you see the problem here? We
can find ourselves potentially holding on
to stuff merely because our Reddit and YouTube
pals do so, not because that stuff is useful
or true. One crucial remedy to this is to
ACTIVELY seek out differing and disconfirming
content online and engage with it. This way
we can prevent the bubble from forming and
make sure that we come to contact with varying
information sources. I believe we should try
to find online discerning voices of a certain
quality and engage with them, like them, follow
them and subscribe to them, in order to disrupt
the bubble. We don't have to really agree
with them, we simply do that so we don't stop
hearing about them at all.
Secondly, the internet can inflate our sense
of how well we understand various topics and
our ability to find answers. I will call this
illusory knowledge. In one study people who
were given the ability to Google search their
answers to an initial set of questions, greatly
overestimated their understanding of the material
and capability to answer subsequent questions,
in comparison to the group who couldn’t
Google search. While the study doesn’t warrant
generalizations by itself, I believe this
to be a problem, in the sense that many people
are far too sure of themselves, partly because
of the internet, so they don’t bother questioning
their ideas, accepting criticism, having open
dialogue and really examining their beliefs.
In addition, the internet gives everyone the
ability to find evidence supporting any position
whatsoever. You can even find scientific articles
on scientific journals supporting the most
outrageous claims (this does not invalidate
science, by the way and I will explain why
in a future video). The quality of those articles
and journals and their representativeness
of the scientific consensus, however, is a
matter that very few people will be concerned
with and even fewer will be able to evaluate.
What they will care about is that they have
a link to a study showing what they would
like it to show. And this is a shame, because
you do not need a university degree to understand
some basics of science.
