Old Wisdom, Young Foolinsness.

One of the more important posts I’ll ever bring to this forum.

https://twitter.com/karakemark/status/13...20006?s=21

How do we engage with that very short piece or any other like it in order to know whether it is actually expressing some veridical fact (that current STEM graduates are seriously lacking in the ability of critical thinking?) or if it is just simply the opinion of one man that might neatly align with the feeling bias of people who see the video and agree with the sentiment presented? 

What is the "truth" expressed by the video and how do we know if it is actually "true" or not?

What is the "truth" expressed by the video and how do we know if it is actually "true" or not?

Any deep truth that people feel that this video brings to them via the ecologist will come via the heart imo. I largely trust the guy in the video as he appears to me to be talking from the heart, he deeply feels it to be true. So that is one aspect. 

I can’t speak for others but what he says about the university graduates attitudes vibes from many sources through my reading, watching and listening first hand to my own daughter who is presently studying psychology at a well respected UK university. Taken all these factors together, what he said rings true to me. Evidence of these important words of wisdom is all around us, I just get what he’s saying. Maybe it’s bias, maybe it’s delusion, perhaps it’s my intuition. 

The thing is, everything he said may not be accurate if every word he said were to be dissected and ‘fact checked’, but the truth of the gist of what he says is very important and should be listened to, all ‘in my opinion’ of course. 

I think that I might point to what Ian McGilchrist, the psychiatrist and academic might say about this. His thinking is that the left and the right sides of our brains are both very capable. The left side being analytical in its analysis, logical, black and white, while the right is capable of taking a lot of data together and processing it in a way that differs from its other half and coming out with an accurate answer, seemingly without there being much order to how it did it. 

People can take it or leave it. Once again, both McGilchrist’s thinking and the message from the ecologist vibe with me, it may not with you. Se la vie. 

Lately you hardly seem to respond to anyone but me Chuck? Do you have a little crush? Perhaps a wee bit of your own bias? Eh...just a teeny weeny bit?  

[Laird]

Lately you hardly seem to respond to anyone but me Chuck? Do you have a little crush?

I think it’s interesting that you haven’t given my original post a like Laird, but you did give Chuck’s post one. 

The tiny ego boost that the ‘likes’ may bring mean little on one level, but the thinking behind them being awarded or withheld can be revealing. Could you explain why you chose to award Chuck’s post and not mine?

I ask this as I think my post is important (perhaps even vitally so)in that I do feel that it gets to some truths that are having and will continue to have huge impact on the human race. To me, (I think in this case) it points to you having some deeper objections to what the post is saying. I also think that your intelligence is well recognised on the forum, so it’s intriguing to me how you (we) come to give and withhold our likes. 

Admittedly our personal relationship has changed in the past two years, moving from close to further apart, but I think I can honestly say that none of my enquiry is of a devious nature. I can say that I’ve no hidden agenda, as far as I’m aware, but I know that our egos can fool us into all sorts of things.

[Laird]

I think it’s interesting that you haven’t given my original post a like Laird, but you did give Chuck’s post one. 

The tiny ego boost that the ‘likes’ may bring mean little on one level, but the thinking behind them being awarded or withheld can be revealing. Could you explain why you chose to award Chuck’s post and not mine?

Sure: I have no idea who the guy in your video is, nor whether what he had to say is true. To me, he's just some random guy with an opinion on something I am not in a position to assess (I don't regularly interact with graduate students, nor have I read any research into them that might bear on this guy's opinions). OK. Fine. Everybody's free to express their opinions, but before I "like" posts of videos of unknown (to me) guys expressing their opinions, I need a good reason to believe that those opinions are true or at least likely to be true, which, in this case, I don't have.

Chuck's post expressed essentially that only in different words, and since it echoed my own reaction to your post well enough, I liked it.

[Laird]

Also, I thought some of the claims made in the video were... "dubious" is probably a generous way of putting it. These ones in particular: "if a paper is peer-reviewed, it means everybody thought the same, therefore they approved it. An unintended consequence is that when new knowledge emerges - new scientific insights - they can never, ever be peer-reviewed."

I won't pick apart the issues I have with those claims unless you particularly want me to (especially given that to me they seem patently obvious), but when somebody makes... "questionable"... claims like that, it doesn't inspire enough confidence in me to "like" the post in which they are presented.

Thanks for this.

I definitely think picking our different thinking on these posts apart may help us to understand other opinions and thus perhaps make them more meaningful. 

I really don’t disagree or wish to comment about anything you’ve said in post#7. 

I do however, think that’s a far less important point (the one about peer reviews) than the one he makes about the attitude of the majority of graduate thinking the same way. Uncritically, robotic like thinking? It’s almost as if they’re being programmed a certain way by the very Universities that are meant to teach our brightest young people to think critically! Don’t you agree that, if true, this is a huge issue? 

I have reached a similar conclusion from another direction. I have seen many hints from others, people that I have at least some trust in, saying very similar things. I have seen it in my own daughters education, it is obvious to anyone that watches the news more or less anywhere in the West, it is obvious to me from the way that highly respected individuals are criticised and vilified by others, many of those doing the vilifying are indeed, younger graduates of a university education. The evidence is everywhere. 

I could write pages about evidence leading to how I think the way I do about these things, but it will largely be pointless. Some people will get what I’m saying, some will not, even if I should write a thousand pages.

[Laird]

Responding to your later edits to your post:

I do feel that it gets to some truths that are having and will continue to have huge impact on the human race.

Perhaps you could elaborate on those truths?

To me, (I think in this case) it points to you having some deeper objections to what the post is saying.

What do you think my deeper objections might be?

Admittedly our personal relationship has changed in the past two years, moving from close to further apart

And admittedly, a lot of that has to do with my choosing to object to some of your contributions to especially the opt-in forums, often in a none too gentle way. It's regrettable, in any case.

[Laird]

Ah, I see we posted at the same time, making at least perhaps my first question above redundant.

Don’t you agree that, if true, this is a huge issue?

Yes. Of course, "if true" is the crucial element. I'm simply not connected enough with the educational system and recent graduates to decide that it is true, nor that (whether) it is a problem unique to recent years. As far as I know, the complaints might simply be a variant of the good old "Kids these days!"