BookTalk.org

A true critical thinker holds all sides accountable for their mistakes. Those who underplayed the COVID threat would be rejected just as decisively (if not more, given the staggering toll in lives) as those who overplayed it. Those who said there were no contacts between Russians and the Trump campaign would be rejected just as decisively as those who said there was active collusion with the Russian government.

The critical thinker is universally skeptical. The contrarian commits a double error—he’s both excessively cynical and excessively credulous. He’s too quick to disbelieve one side and too quick to believe the opposite. For example, he’ll reject an avalanche of evidence of the safety and effectiveness of a vaccine while jumping quickly on fad treatments, like hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin. He’ll reject overwhelming proof that the January 6 insurrection was a Trumpist attack on the Capitol and respond immediately to speculation that the FBI or antifa instigated the riot.

David French 3/18/22
https://newsletters.theatlantic.com/the ... a-ukraine/

Interesting article, ay? Seems to explain a lot. BookTalk has discussed a lot of books about thinking....So waddayouse think?

It does seem the Right's knee-jerk response these days is to simply oppose anything Democrats do. As the article points out, opposition to facemasks and social distancing and getting vaccinated—to some degree—has become a Republican thing. Such opposition can become highly irrational, leading to embracing false information and conspiracy thinking. Partisanship is now the single strongest identifying predictor of whether someone is vaccinated.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-sho ... death-rate

I'm assuming getting a vaccine is a rational decision, but it could also be an intuitive response that just happens to be more in line with reality. I've heard that the liberals are more biased that way. Don't know how true that is.

I'd say those of a moderate mindset might be better at avoiding tribalism and partisanship—and thus be more open to ideas from both sides of the aisle and to be able to assess facts and interpretations based on their own merits and not whether they score one for their team.

Thanks for posting the article. I miss our conversations about critical thinking and skepticism.

Only 57% of Republicans backed Ukraine while 76% of Democrats did. Interesting. I really think that Tucker Carlson of Fox News is largely to blame for this difference. Tucker spent a lot of time arguing that Russia was right for not wanting NATO on their doorstep. Heck, he even influenced me a bit and I detest both Fox News and Carlson. (As a personal goal I watch Fox News and Newsmax almost as much as CNN, just to make sure I'm hearing both sides of ever news story.)

And then again, 56% of Republicans got vaccinated whereas a whopping 92% of Democrats did. What was the messaging coming out of Fox News, NewsMax and OAN? It was mostly about how our rights were being violated by efforts to mandate masks, Covid safety measures and vaccinations. They glossed over the efficacy of vaccines.

In the UK we don't have Fox News or other extreme TV outlets, although the British print media is heavily right leaning. The BBC is state owned and under its charter it has to be impartial so it always has to present both sides of any argument, and this kind of model tends to be followed by the other broadcasters. This greatly annoys many Conservative MPs, ministers and right-wing thinkers who dislike the BBC both because it is state owned (and therefore, as they would see it, a socialist institution) and also because they want it to be a mouthpiece for their own political viewpoint. Some have proposed that a Fox News style channel be introduced here, which I think would get a lot of opposition from the left, and probably many sensible middle of the roaders.

I don't know the figures offhand, but vaccine take-up in the UK was extremely high and probably a lot of lives were saved as a result. From the UK perspective it makes it difficult to see why many British people would want, or watch, a right-wing circus like Fox News. But maybe that's just us!

PeterDF,

I watch BBC regularly due to the fair approach to news. Thanks for sharing this info about how things are in the UK. Our conservative news media is so biased here that my blood pressure goes up when I watch Fox News or Newsmax. Just about every statement they make just oozes with bias.

I don't watch much TV news or subject myself to so-called conservative radio. But I did listen to a few minutes of some talk-radio show while driving yesterday. It might have illustrated David French's point about how contrarians operate. The subject was coronavirus vaccines, The claim as that they all had failed, even that they made vaccinated people worse. There's always a little wedge of factuality that these "skeptics" exploit in order to sell their claims of conspiracy, hoping that their audience will be predisposed to agree with them and so will not want to look for the gaping holes in reasoning. In this case, the factual wedge was the ability the virus has shown to elude and adapt, so that many fully vaccinated people have come down with covid. The speakers said that the supposed likelihood of a milder form of disease was nonsense, "if you know the data at all." Now that we have tamed the coronavirus, these folks can claim that vaccines were worthless, because, see, the virus is going away and would have done so without all the jabs. We were lied to; the drug company trials demonstrating high effectiveness were fraudulent, just money-making schemes. Crackpots used to be fringe. Having had one in the White House for four years, they're now in the center of the action.