Hey Viliam, founder here – thanks for the feedback and I think your criticisms are quite valid. When we started this non-profit about 10 years ago my hypothesis was that making critical thinking more engaging through the use of design methodologies i.e. making critical thinking more accessible, could help to popularize it and promulgate a more rational mindset en masse.
I don’t think that hypothesis is exactly wrong, but I’ve quite substantially changed my thinking in the intervening time. Specifically with regard to the fallacies and biases materials that we were quite successful in popularizing (around 30m people reached worldwide under creative commons licenses). I share your skepticism about the efficacy of learning fallacies and biases – much of the time doing so can help us to be more introspective and metacognitive, but I’ve also seen citing fallacies as a means to shut conversations and curiosity down rather than open it up, and simply being aware of biases seems to have minimal effect upon their influence.
The more important thing to focus on, I strongly suspect, is how to change our motivations and mindsets. Where my thinking has shifted is that I no longer believe that cognitive tools are where we ought to begin. They’re important and useful, but humans are emotional and social creatures first, and cognitive creatures after. Any strategy that fails to incorporate this understanding will be suboptimal at best (and counter-productive at worst).
We are also working on a bigger project that aims to leverage our worst natures against themselves. Rather than sit in haughty contempt of irrationality, I think it would serve us all well to understand that we can’t shame or debate people into understanding. Rather, we ought to find ways to make people want to understand.
So glad you’ve come over to share your updated experience. And I was one of the 30MM who shared the huge chart of biases way back. I was a student in the tradition of Heuristics & Biases when I studied at Stanford, so long ago that Amos Tversky was still alive. Both Kahneman & Tversky explicitly doubted that knowing about biases could enable us to overcome the ‘fast thoughts’ that generate an immediate interpretation. I’ve heard both of them compare biases to optical illusions, which don’t go away when you realize they are illusions.
Hey Viliam, founder here – thanks for the feedback and I think your criticisms are quite valid. When we started this non-profit about 10 years ago my hypothesis was that making critical thinking more engaging through the use of design methodologies i.e. making critical thinking more accessible, could help to popularize it and promulgate a more rational mindset en masse.
I don’t think that hypothesis is exactly wrong, but I’ve quite substantially changed my thinking in the intervening time. Specifically with regard to the fallacies and biases materials that we were quite successful in popularizing (around 30m people reached worldwide under creative commons licenses). I share your skepticism about the efficacy of learning fallacies and biases – much of the time doing so can help us to be more introspective and metacognitive, but I’ve also seen citing fallacies as a means to shut conversations and curiosity down rather than open it up, and simply being aware of biases seems to have minimal effect upon their influence.
The more important thing to focus on, I strongly suspect, is how to change our motivations and mindsets. Where my thinking has shifted is that I no longer believe that cognitive tools are where we ought to begin. They’re important and useful, but humans are emotional and social creatures first, and cognitive creatures after. Any strategy that fails to incorporate this understanding will be suboptimal at best (and counter-productive at worst).
Consequently our more recent project at https://therulesofcivilconversation.org/ and https://theconspiracytest.org/ are focused more on shifting mindsets to a more introspective and metacognitive frame.
We are also working on a bigger project that aims to leverage our worst natures against themselves. Rather than sit in haughty contempt of irrationality, I think it would serve us all well to understand that we can’t shame or debate people into understanding. Rather, we ought to find ways to make people want to understand.
So glad you’ve come over to share your updated experience.
And I was one of the 30MM who shared the huge chart of biases way back.
I was a student in the tradition of Heuristics & Biases when I studied at Stanford, so long ago that Amos Tversky was still alive. Both Kahneman & Tversky explicitly doubted that knowing about biases could enable us to overcome the ‘fast thoughts’ that generate an immediate interpretation. I’ve heard both of them compare biases to optical illusions, which don’t go away when you realize they are illusions.