Thinking isn\u2019t what it seems. It\u2019ll trick you! People think they\u2019re thinking whenever they assess a situation. But assessment is not really thinking about whatever, it\u2019s merely getting oriented. Feels like thinking. Maybe it is a first step. But rarely do they re-consider any impressions or assumptions. They\u2019re easily tricked.<\/p>\n
The first trick is the most pervasive and persuasive: It\u2019s the mind generating the illusion that you\u2019re not being ticked! Things are indeed as they seem. It\u2019s as if a con man is saying, \u201cYou\u2019re smart, clever, and indeed too clever to trick. I wouldn\u2019t dream of tricking you, you\u2019re so smart. So I\u2019ll be honest. Can\u2019t trick an honest man.\u201d Yeah.<\/p>\n
The first trick in magic is that you show that there\u2019s nothing up your sleeve. (Of course not, it\u2019s somewhere else!) Really, manipulation depends on your assuming a frank, open manner: There are no tricks. Our desire to be social whispers to us, \u201cIt would be churlish in the face of openness to be suspicious! Sort of ungrateful.\u201d And the inner sucker whispers, \u201cIt\u2019s all very simple and above-board.\u201d And the con-man says, \u201cI\u2019m smiling. Would a nice guy like me trick you?\u201d The trick is that we are programmed to not be suspicious, to say \u201cnooo,\u201d but of course we are tricked by nice guys and gals! If they were obviously mean we\u2019d get suspicious. <\/p>\n
What I mean here is that the culture overdoes the \u201cbuild on trust\u201d motto: Instead, we should be a bit more wary:Trust but verify. People who want to sell you stuff are everywhere. Against this is the fact that critical thinking is frowned upon, labeled as suspiciousness<\/p>\n
So the first trick is the cultural convention or custom to act as if you\u2019re not being tricked, and to believe that you\u2019re not being sold a bill of goods. One way to do this is to get the teachers or sales people on board, to have them sincere, well-meaning. It doesn\u2019t appear to us that they\u2019re gullible, because everyone is gullible, it seems. It\u2019s nice, it seems. Being non-gullible is grumpy, it seems.<\/p>\n
The second trick is to pretend that words are clear: If one is noble then one cannot be capable of wickedness. On the other hand, there\u2019s a saying, \u201cThe Devil can quote scripture.\u201d How is that saying possible? Illusion is powerful! It seems that if one says the right words, then he\u2019s on the good side. It\u2019s considered unfriendly to be suspicious. All this obscures the truth that people can indeed be good in some ways and bad in some ways and genuinely think they\u2019re all good. It just doesn\u2019t seem that way. However, the point here is that seeming is not the same as reality.<\/p>\n
Also, words can be twisted to make villains seem like saints and vice versa, and we see it all the time in politics and history. Religion too. This is taught in semantics, but I suspect they don\u2019t teach much about this and most people don\u2019t notice this missing from the curriculum.<\/p>\n
The third thing to teach is that illusion is pervasive in culture, things aren\u2019t what they seem, statements aren\u2019t clear-cut. Indeed, the phenomena around \u201cseeming\u201d and illusion should be taught in middle school. It\u2019s time to develop a willingness to be disillusioned about a variety of political and perhaps even religious themes. Indeed, I suspect this is part of maturation. Gullibility needs to be shed, like a beetle\u2019s immature skin.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, television and many advertising and packaging products that depend on your purchasing what you may not really need really work to numb your brain and make you a semi-zombie, a blandly accepting consuming customer. Don\u2019t kid yourself. This is political and commercial.<\/p>\n
The fourth thing to teach is that you can kind-of learn something and then think you know it and then sort-of forget it because it seems as if what\u2019s being presented to you pretends not to be propaganda. It gives the illusion of being simply \u201cnice.\u201d In other words, you can think you know how to think critically and yet be easily fooled. It\u2019s a variation of \u201cnothing in my hands.\u201d It\u2019s a variation of \u201cI appreciate that you are discriminating customers.\u201d But unless you apply these rules a lot, they\u2019ll get you and get you again.<\/p>\n
Many in history who committed atrocities believed themselves to be good and the enemy or those they were torturing and killing to be sub-human. These oppressors were in their own minds the \u201cgood guys\u201d cleaning out people whom they thought were \u201creally bad\u201d even though in the eyes of history they were arguably innocent! That is, the judgment of history often blames folks who at the time thought they were doing good. Weird, huh?<\/p>\n
Consumer shopping and guides and reports are laced with these ways \u201cthey\u201d fool you. But at this point semiotics and semantics\u2014how they fool you with pictures and words\u2014are still part of college studies, and most college students are not required to take even this. A variation that should be taught before algebra is how to lie with statistics. How charts and numbers can distort any argument!<\/p>\n
That speaks to the fifth thing: Numbers don\u2019t lie. Ah, but they do! They do a lot! And who\u2019s going to teach you this? There are whole books about how to lie with statistics and numbers, graphs and scales.
Well, I could go on and on…. and on. I\u2019ve come to realize that hardly anyone has learned about logical fallacies, propaganda analysis, semantics, how to lie with statistics, and the like. Lordy! What am I doing on this planet? (Answer: To talk up learning about this stuff at the beginning of high school instead of learning facts about things that are becoming irrelevant!) In summary, I think most early adolescents need to be learning how to be a true \u201ccritical thinker,\u201d beginning in Junior High School! Also, I suspect that few of their teachers know this stuff, too! In summary, teaching about illusion and logical fallacies should be a basic subject in school!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Thinking isn\u2019t what it seems. It\u2019ll trick you! People think they\u2019re thinking whenever they assess a situation. But assessment is not really thinking about whatever, it\u2019s merely getting oriented. Feels like thinking. Maybe it is a first step. But rarely do they re-consider any impressions or assumptions. They\u2019re easily tricked. The first trick is the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,18,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-follies","category-history","category-literacy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2003"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2003"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2003\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2004,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2003\/revisions\/2004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}