[HN Gopher] Critical Thinking Isn't Just a Process
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Critical Thinking Isn't Just a Process
Author : herbertl
Score : 99 points
Date : 2021-02-17 13:16 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (zeynep.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (zeynep.substack.com)
| dfilppi wrote:
| Parsing official statements to detect the misleading omissions is
| something I've been doing for 30 years. Lies of omission are a
| fundamental skill of those who cant or wont tell the truth, and
| has been for several thousand years now.
| cbozeman wrote:
| What line of work are you in, if you don't mind me asking?
| pattrn wrote:
| Interesting read, but I'm not sure the analysis of the following
| exchange is correct.
|
| > Q: But was it ever below 90, here or at the White House?
|
| > CONLEY: No, it was below 94 percent. It wasn't down in the low
| 80s or anything.
|
| When Conley answer's "No," that implies it was not below 90
| "here" or at the White House. And "it was below 94 percent"
| implies it was somewhere in the range of 90 to 94. Assuming
| Conley told the truth, the only way you can interpret the oxygen
| levels as being below 90 is if you ignore the presence of the
| word "no."
|
| I've noticed when speaking with physicians that they tend to give
| very precise answers (unless they believe the precise answer will
| lead to worse health outcomes for a patient). This exchange
| sounded pretty typical to me. Doesn't seem like Conley intended
| anything nefarious.
| bezout wrote:
| > CONLEY: [...] It wasn't down in the low 80s or anything.
|
| I read this last part in several ways:
|
| 1. He is telling the truth: he wants to assure reporters that
| T's oxygen level didn't reach critical levels
|
| 2. He is telling a lie: he already mentioned that the oxygen
| level was below 94. Why mentioning the low 80s?
|
| 3. He is just nervous or tired, and he doesn't want to have his
| words twisted
| sjg007 wrote:
| Trumps O2 stat was between 84 and 94.
| JustSomeNobody wrote:
| There are reports coming out the past week that seem to suggest
| Trump was in a very bad way with COVID-19.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| That "No" could mean that it was below 90, but not "here" -
| "here" could mean literally in this room, or even exactly where
| the speaker is standing right now.
| dragontamer wrote:
| But the writer has a New York Times quote suggesting that:
|
| > Mr. Trump's blood oxygen level alone was cause for extreme
| concern, dipping into the 80s, according to the people familiar
| with his evaluation. The disease is considered severe when the
| blood oxygen level falls to the low 90s.
|
| So now there's evidence that the oxygen % went below 90,
| despite what Conley said that day.
| bezout wrote:
| Honestly, where is the evidence? You're trusting the NYT
| sources to tell the truth. I trust NYT to deliver accurate
| news - but only true evidence removes any doubt.
| [deleted]
| newacct583 wrote:
| I think you're misunderstanding. The point isn't about the
| ability to infer objective truth from a dissembling source, nor
| about how to prove an objective lie from that source.
|
| It's about cultivating an ability to _detect_ when you are
| probably being lied to by an otherwise authoritative source.
| And it 's something americans have traditionally been very bad
| at.
|
| (Including, I have to be honest, you. In fact it was reported
| just last week that Trump was sicker than the public was
| informed and that his blood oxygen did indeed drop into the low
| 80's. Your desire to believe the authority figures you trust
| led you to buy the spin. But people with this kind of
| "Autoritarian Muscle Memory" described were clued in much
| earlier.)
| pattrn wrote:
| I used the qualifier "assuming Conley told the truth" to
| establish an axiom, since the author did that implicitly.
| Everything else was pure deductive reasoning.
|
| That aside, I personally believe that the entire media and
| all public figures will lie on behalf of what they believe to
| be "the greater good." Their goal is not "truth." For that
| reason, I don't believe this interview communicated any
| meaningful information; I also don't believe the follow-up
| last week communicated any meaningful information. I don't
| assume Conley told the truth. My comment intended only to
| point out a flaw in the deductive reasoning of the article.
|
| (Regarding your assumption about me, this is the exact
| problem with trying to develop opinions by reading between
| the lines. It's easy to develop strong, unfounded opinions
| without any evidence.)
| EricE wrote:
| >And it's something americans have traditionally been very
| bad at.
|
| As this comment thread is proving :p
| zyxzevn wrote:
| So he was pretty safe. Just like me and some of my friends who
| got it almost a year ago. We only had a few days of fever. Almost
| like one dose of the vaccine. Not really worth to make a fuzz
| about.
| kgwxd wrote:
| Why does the example stop at critically thinking about the NYT
| source? I'm not saying they're lying, but "someone I kind of
| trust, said someone they kind of trust, said so, in a way that
| doesn't contradict itself" isn't really a satisfactory
| conclusion.
| mannykannot wrote:
| Most of the article demonstrates its author's point by coming
| to a tentative conclusion through a critical analysis of the
| doctor's statements. The NYT article is presented as additional
| support, from other sources, for the same conclusion.
|
| Progress in science and history is often like that: a
| hypothesis is strengthened through having multiple lines of
| support, such as when the cosmic microwave background and the
| cosmic abundance of helium were added to the red shift of
| galaxies as evidence for the big bang.
|
| Being eternally skeptical to the extent of dismissing anything
| not proven is not effective critical thinking, either.
| EricE wrote:
| This is the explanation for why the deeper you are in a bubble,
| the less likely you will be to detect it - yet will be utterly
| convinced you aren't.
|
| Similar to why teenagers are convinced they are smarter than
| everyone older than they are. You don't know what you don't know.
| The more time you spend on this planet, the more you realize just
| how little of the world in general you do fully understand.
| Ultimate culmination of this is when Einstein is engaged in
| discussions about god. Want to have some fun honing critical
| thinking skills? Read up on his thoughts there. Fun stuff!
| tchalla wrote:
| TL;DR "Fault Tolerance" Capabilities are better for people who
| regularly face faults
| EricE wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| Another way to put it - don't add armor to the parts of the
| plane returning from battle that have holes, add armor to the
| parts of the plane that don't have any holes!
| tengbretson wrote:
| Is there any research on whether critical thinking is actually
| something that can be taught at all?
| DonHopkins wrote:
| >That offers a way to get at the truth by trying to detect a
| picture, and looking at the parts that have been obscured, to
| make out the actual shape.
|
| Like Mormon Bubble Porn:
|
| https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/mormon-porn-bubble-porn
| carapace wrote:
| What a very accurate visual metaphor! Cover up the BS to see
| the bare facts more clearly.
| macspoofing wrote:
| Trump's medical doctor was clearly evasive and obfuscating the
| actual diagnosis. That much is clear and was clear at the time,
| but the author goes a step further and starts playing doctor and
| diagnosing (in hindsight) the condition ... that's not critical
| thinking. That's bad reasoning and it's inline with
| conspiratorial thinking with a good mix of confirmation bias. An
| alien conspiracy theorist when presented with a particular
| phenomena would follow a chain of argument that look like this:
| "This isn't Venus. This isn't a weather balloon. This isn't
| anything I can imagine, therefore it must be aliens". It's also
| very typical of the media reporting on Trump throughout his term
| with more and more outlandish claims and conclusions.
|
| Also, there is something distasteful about the author writing an
| entire blog post about how he is a critical thinker ... Uh huh.
| Sure you are.
| mannykannot wrote:
| Instead of addressing the specific arguments made in the
| article, this post offers some unsubstantiated ad-hominem
| claims and an irrelevant and overblown analogy. So now we have
| another piece of evidence suggesting that critical thinking is
| not straightforward.
| mistermann wrote:
| > An alien conspiracy theorist when presented with a particular
| phenomena would follow a chain of argument that look like this:
| "This isn't Venus. This isn't a weather balloon. This isn't
| anything I can imagine, therefore it must be aliens".
|
| > Also, there is something distasteful about the author writing
| an entire blog post about how he is a critical thinker ... Uh
| huh. Sure you are.
|
| An interesting combo.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Zeynep is female name (Turkish spelled) of Arabic origin.
| Upvoter33 wrote:
| https://sils.unc.edu/people/faculty/profiles/Zeynep-Tufekci
| jacobolus wrote:
| "The doctor conspicuously said that the oxygen saturation was
| 'not in the low 80s' but carefully refused to say it never
| dipped below 90, and was uncomfortable and evasive answering
| other basic questions about the president's condition,
| therefore we can reasonably infer that oxygen saturation was in
| the high 80s and his condition was worse than the doctor wanted
| to admit" is pretty different from "this unidentified thing in
| the sky is not a balloon so it must be an alien spaceship".
| macspoofing wrote:
| Not by much. You can certainly speculate, but this is akin to
| reading the tea leaves to trying to derive patterns. Very
| common for media to do this on a slow news day. It reminds me
| of Alan Greenspan's briefcase being an indicator of the Fed's
| upcoming rate cut [1].
|
| Again, at the time of the press conference it was very
| obvious the doctor was evasive. His evasiveness being a
| result of Trump going through a tough recovery was a very
| reasonable speculation. Most reporters guessed that Trump was
| on oxygen at one point or another and it isn't a far fetched
| idea to suggest there was reason for concern (he is, after
| all, in the at-risk group being a senior and overweight) -
| but let's not try to claim, as the author did, that it was a
| forgone conclusion what his blood oxygen level by carefully
| parsing the words the doctor was using and using that as a
| example of the author's great 'critical thinking' skills, all
| done in hindsight. Come one. Give me a break. That's
| quackery.
|
| [1] https://money.cnn.com/1998/09/29/bizbuzz/briefcase
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