Tag Archives: critical thinking

The ego and the way

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Intelligence is blind to ignorance. While it is true that the smarter you get, the more likely you are to realize how little you know; It is also true that the smarter you get, the less likely you are to listen to opinions and ideas which you do not agree with. You easily dismiss opposing views, you do not challenge the ideas as much as you challenge the intelligence of those that share them.

Imagine an upside down bell curve. On the X-axis is level of intelligence, on the Y-axis is knowledge of your intelligence.

I think both extremely intelligent and unintelligent people are aware of where they are on the scale, but most people are in the middle. They are somewhat intelligent, and yet blissfully unaware of where they are on the scale. They don’t know what they don’t know, and so they think they are more intelligent than they are. Their knowledge of their intelligence does not match their actual intelligence. I think here, where most people live on the scale, their egos get in the way. Not too many people think, “I am dumber than most people think,” while many would consider, “I’m smarter than people give me credit for.”

And so most people in the world think they are smarter than they are. For that reason, their political, scientific, economic, technical, social, and cultural perspectives are ‘correct’. For the same egotistical reasons, the views of others that oppose them are perceived as less intelligent. I fear that sometimes I too may be guilty here.

And so we live in a world we’re people are egotistically unaware of their lack of intelligence. Crazy conspiracies fool them. Legitimate conspiracies are dismissed. Intelligent sounding pseudoscience convinces them while counterintuitive facts and evidence get easily dismissed. They are smart enough to think they are smart, while scoring high enough on the Dunning-Kruger scale to be easily fooled. Smart enough to do their own research, but not intelligent enough to evaluate that research with intellectual rigour.

And so egos grow with intelligence, and in turn intelligence wanes when the ego interferes with the wisdom that should come with intelligence. Meanwhile, the best and the brightest, the ones who are truly both intelligent and wise, they know just how little they still know. They give up trying to convince the ones who let ego cloud intelligence.

They find themselves lonely, uninterested in bickering over opinions that dismiss and alter facts to win petty arguments. They are labeled as the crazy ones. Their wisdom ignored; they are helpless to bypass the egos and support intelligent growth. Because for most of the world the ego gets in the way.

An AI advertisement

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I scrolled past this add a few times before paying any attention to it. But then it gave off an uncanny valley feeling that made me look a little closer. I think it was the very staged first question that bothered me most, and yesterday I finally took the time to watch it through a critical lens. It’s an ad for a Tai Chi app, but I cropped the video to hide the brand because I don’t want to amplify it, I want to critique it.

Here is the ad:

And here are a list of telltale things that suggest it is AI.

1. Look at the opening image. The woman is talking at a 90° angle to the stage, and there is no one at the podium below her.

2. The ‘expert’ is a perfectly chiseled man who is never named. No recognition of him as an expert in the field… because he’s fictitious.

3. Obviously fake audience members. The first image shows a blurred bearded man who doesn’t seem real to me. The second image has a man wearing a partial microphone like the expert.

4. The painfully fake script.

“Isn’t a gym better?”

“Gym doesn’t work after 40.”

This isn’t necessarily evidence of AI, it could just be bad writing, but it comes off feeling very wrong and unnatural. It’s like there was an intent in the text to make the expert sound like English is his second language but his voice doesn’t carry that same suggestion.

5. Comments are turned off. There is no benefit in having viewers outing the ad as fake. It’s better to allow the ad to fool more people without being called out.

The reality is that I could pick this ad out as fake, but that’s only because it was done poorly. We are going to see a lot more ads done this way and they are going to be good enough to fool us completely. It’s just a matter of time, and that time is approaching very quickly.

Beliefs trump intelligence

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Is it a feature or a bug? I don’t know, but what I observe is that human beings allow their beliefs to trump their intelligence.

I saw it first hand with my dad. In many respects he was the most intelligent person I ever met. He designed a process to chemically leach platinum out of recycled electronics and catalytic converters; He designed a nuclear powered airplane; He created a perfect solution of diesel fuel and water that he ran in diesel motors… And he was also a doomsday-er convinced that the end of the world as we know it was going to happen in his lifetime. It didn’t. But that belief consumed so much of his time and energy.

And so it is with religious faith. Intellectually bright people will believe their scriptures are the actual words of their God.

And so it is with conspiracy theorists, who are often smart people, yet they let their beliefs cloud over any counter arguments or logical insights that don’t match their beliefs about the conspiracies they harbour.

And so it is with political extremists, who can only see the benefits but not the consequences of their polarized views.

And so, it would seem, it is with all of us. We hold strong beliefs about the world we live in and we blindly allow our beliefs to influence our thinking, bias our views, and undermine our own intelligence.

Is it a feature that helps us find community and bond with like minded people, or is it a bug in our intellect that sabotages our ability to think logically and objectively? Again, I don’t know. What I have come to realize though, is that our beliefs seem to have some hierarchical level of control over our thoughts and actions that upstages and even eclipses our intelligence.

Polished isn’t necessarily true

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There are some very articulate people who sound coherent and convincing, but what they are saying lacks honesty and ultimately truth. Fluency and a good delivery don’t necessarily produce valid points, and don’t necessarily deliver worthwhile ideas.

Now, in the first sentence above, replace the word ‘people’ with ‘Artificial Intelligence’.

Let’s not confuse good delivery of information with accuracy.

What it means to be literate?

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Can you read? Can you do basic math? Is that enough?

The critical thinking required to make sense of the world today is ever increasing. We have a world leader using magical math to make a trade deficit calculation into a reciprocal tariff calculation, and claiming that this is, “Kind reciprocal, not full reciprocal.”

What? Help me make it make sense?

Meanwhile, I saw a video that someone created using AI. He uploaded a pdf article for two AI‘s to discuss, one of the AI’s was a version of himself, with his voice, and the other was a female at a desk. The only thing that suggested to me that the conversation was between two AI’s was some awkward hand gestures. Take those movements away, or make them a bit more natural/realistic and I would have no idea that I was watching an AI conversation.

Meanwhile, in Egypt, there are some wild claims about structures under the great pyramids, and while the evidence is unclear, I’ve seen many videos explaining these not-yet-proven structures. These claims include that they are a network of power sources connected to other structures around the world, and another theory claiming that aliens created them.

And speaking of aliens, wasn’t it just a few short months ago that we ‘discovered’ aliens living in our oceans? What ever happened to that story?

It’s becoming almost impossible to be informationally literate today. By the time you have time to seriously fact check something the story is already old, and there are new crazy claims that require your skeptical attention. What’s the source of this information? Where did they get their data from? What’s the bias of the news source? How is this data being manipulated? Who paid for the study? Is this a real quote? Is this video real, or CGI, or AI?

Who is fact checking the fact checkers? Meanwhile, here in Canada, a fact checker hired by one of our news stations was let go because trolls that don’t like their favourite political party being fact checked brought so much negative attention to her that the news station let her go.

What? Help me make it make sense?

The reality is that reading and writing and doing basic math is not enough to be functionally and informationally literate today. The critical thinking required to simply consume the information being thrown at us is overly demanding. I think the way forward for the short term is to find trusted sources and rely on them… and yet that’s the very thing that has seemed to get us into trouble. How many people get their news from just one or two biased sources? I’m literally now suggesting to find an echo chamber to sit in… hopefully you can find one that echoes facts, common sense, and some semblance of the truth.

Is this real?

There is a commonality between hearing the question, “Is this spam?” regarding an email, and hearing the question, “Is this real” regarding a video that might be staged, enhanced with AI, or even intentionally spreading lies.

In an age of unlimited information a new kind of skepticism is needed. What’s the source? Does the source have a slant, a bias, or an agenda? Is this actually from the source it claims? (Just yesterday a fake article that was sent to me had a Toronto Star subscription banner access the top of the web page, to make it seem like it was from this newspaper, but the URL was totally different.)

You would think that in a curated social media world you would be able to discern fact from fiction, real from fake. But more than ever we need to be sceptical about what we see and hear. In a world of abundant information our need to question what we believe to be true is more important than ever before. I find myself Googling quotes to see if they match other sources, and questioning headlines that seem even subtly surprising. Is this true? Is the article real? Or is it an elaborate ploy to pitch a product or simply to garnish shares and likes? Is the title of the article misleading? Do I click on that link to learn more?

Is it real? I never used to ask this question. A news headline used to mean that I was getting curated information from a reliable journalist who attempted to be impartial. Now even mainstream media seems increasingly biased and agenda driven. Knowing the source means understanding the bias more than the reliability of the information. And so my BS detector is always on… and even then I find myself being fooled until I see a product placement or a clear agenda being pushed. Media consumption now requires a good dose of scrutiny and skepticism… and with AI being more and more convincing, the level of scrutiny will need to increase.

Access to abundant information doesn’t make us smarter. Instead, the constant stream of data requires discernment and thoughtful consideration. Reliability is no long assumed, and the question, ‘is this real?’, is a necessary part of information consumption. Skepticism has become the most important part of media literacy, and curating trusted sources of good information has became a skill not easily duplicated or taught.

It’s easier to accept information than it is to question it… especially when that information fits my model of the world. And the internet (and our ‘trusted’ social media platforms) are filled with information that fits my world view. In fact, that biased world view I have is further fed to me by an algorithm that learns what I like. This only makes it harder to determine what is real and what isn’t.

The task of education today

This quote was shared with us in our Principals meeting yesterday:

“This is the task of education today: to confront the almost unimaginable design challenge of building an education system that provides for the re-creation of civilization during a world system transition. This challenge brings us face to face with the importance of education for humanity and the basic questions that structure education as a human endeavor.” ~Zachary Stein

One of our Assistant Superintendent’s added, “We are trying to build a utopian society in triage conditions.”

There is no doubt that it is much harder to be an educator today than it was when I started my career over 25 years ago. And as we navigate ‘building an education system that provides for the re-creation of civilization during a world system transition,’ we are bound to struggle a bit. How do we mark assignments that are written or co-written by AI? What skills are going to be needed for the top jobs of 2030? How different will that be for 2040?

Ultimately we want to support the education of students who will become kind, contributing citizens. But how do we do this in a world where Truth seems arbitrary to the sources you get it from, and politicians, religion, and corporations are all pushing conflicting information and agendas? I think this goes beyond just working on competencies like critical thinking. It requires mental gymnastics that most adults struggle with.

Meanwhile, the majority of school schedules still put students into blocks of time based on the subjects they are learning. “Let’s think critically, and do challenging problems, but only in this one narrow field of study.” We aren’t meeting the design challenges we face today if that’s what we continue to do.

More than ever students, future citizens, need to understand complex issues from multiple perspectives. They need to understand nuance, and navigate when to defend an idea, when to compromise, and when to avoid engagement altogether. They need to be prepared to say “I don’t know,” and then do the hard work of finding out, when the accuracy of information is incomplete or even suspect. They need to be prepared to say, “I was wrong,” and “I am sorry,” and also be prepared to stick to their convictions and defend ideas that aren’t always the accepted norm.

That’s not the future I prepared students for 25 years ago. It is indeed an ‘almost unimaginable design challenge‘, and as we navigate new challenges we have to recognize that mistakes will be made… but not changing is far scarier than trying.

It’s about the nuances

Today I ran into a teacher that was a favourite of my two daughters. He brought up a current geopolitical issue that I won’t discuss here, because there is too much nuance and I’m not prepared to write a dissertation of my thoughts… and anything else will only cause me grief. In fact, even a dissertation would cause me grief because I’d be bound to garnish disagreement and even anger. Why? Because no matter what position I hold, no matter how nuanced or not, it will upset people.

We’ve reached an impasse in public conversation when nuance is not part of the conversation. Everything is black & white, and any shade of grey is ‘othered’ to the opposing view. This is unhealthy. Very unhealthy.

It took my conversation today, where we agreed yet were equally reserved, to realize that a more public conversation can’t happen for me. I’m not knowledgeable enough. I haven’t done the hard work to have a strong and well defended view of a sensitive issue. I ask questions that could and would piss off people on either side of the issue.

I’ve said before,

“We want to live, thrive, and love in a pluralistic society. We just need to recognize that in such a society we must be tolerant and accepting of opposing views, unaccepting of hateful and hurtful acts, and smart enough to understand the difference.”

I don’t believe that distinction is being made right now. I don’t see an openness to nuance. I don’t see a way forward where we are moving in the right direction. An upcoming election in the US coupled with AI generated fake news, and the bi-polar positions on the left and right, are going to lead to a shitstorm. It’s going to get ugly, it might get violent, and it will not get better until it gets worse.

We need to find a way to bring back nuanced debate and conversation… where different opinions are met with interest not scorn, with acceptance not ridicule. Discourse can be had without anger, and nuanced opinions will lead to solutions where now we only find conflict.

Website domains matter

I think in an era of fake news and deepfakes, we are going to see a resurgence and refocus on web page branding. When you can’t even trust a video, much less a news article, the source of your information will become even more important.

I was on Twitter recently, after the tragic earthquake in Turkey and Syria, when I came across a video of what was claimed to be a nuclear reactor explosion in Turkey. The hashtags suggested that it was a video from the recent crisis, but with a little digging I discovered that it was an explosion many years ago and nowhere near Turkey as was suggested. The video had tens of thousands of views, likes, and retweets. I didn’t take the video at face value, but many others did. I reported the tweet, but doubt that it was removed before it was shared many more times.

Although I wasn’t fooled this time, I have been fooled before and I will be fooled again. That said, part of my ‘bullshit detector’ is paying attention to the source. Recently I saw a hard-to-believe article online by a major news station… except that the page was designed to look like the major news station but had a completely different web address. The article was fake. What drew my attention to it being fake was that it seemed more like an advertisement than a news article. Otherwise I probably would have been fooled. As soon as I was suspicious, the first thing I did was ask myself if this really was the news organization I thought it was? I went into my browser history and looked for the website this morning to take a screenshot of the article, and I found this:

The website is down… which is good, but again I wonder how many people it fooled? It was a website surprisingly high up in a google search just a few days ago, and so I clicked thinking it would be legitimate.

When looking for information from controversial people or topics, it’s going to get harder and harder to know if the source of the information is reliable. One sure fire way to be certain is to look at the website. In some cases even if the source is legitimate, you might still have to question the accuracy of the source, and use a tool like MEDIA BIAS/FACT Check to see what kind of bias the site tends to hold. But you will build a repertoire of reliable sites and go to them first.

More and more the web domain will be the ultimate litmus test that will help you determine if a claim or a quote (delivered in written, audio, or even video format) is legitimate. Because fake news and deepfakes will become more convincing, more authentic looking, and more prevalent… and that trend has already started.

Problemize the learning

Yesterday I heard Warren Woytuck from The Critical Thinking Consortium present at the ACE Conference. Here is one of his slides about problematizing a question:

Note how by adding value descriptors, by specifying the intention of the question, the question changes to one where students need to compare and contrast, to qualify, make judgements, and/or explain their answers. And more than that, students need to ask more questions to come to an answer.

To me, that’s the key to a problemizing a question… How can you change a question so that it provokes more questions? If you ask a question and either:

A) Google can answer it; or

B) You already know the answer students will come up with; or

C) All students come to the same conclusion…

Then you didn’t really pose a good problem. You didn’t promote critical thinking.

When your questions are problematized, students need to interact with the question in a more meaningful and engaged way.