Critical thinking should be the first thing taught to kids https://t.co/8dhvilUKRc
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 4, 2024
February 5, 2024
An excellent teaching demonstration, but who is this man? He's so relaxed and on point, that I suspect it's scripted.
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Census count Cheats America
https://rumble.com/v4b5b6c-the-u.s.-census-bureau-admitted-the-recent-census-miscounted-the-population.html
@Althouse, so now you’re skeptical. You easily fell for Tirien Steinbach‘s DEI theater at the expense of Judge Duncan at Stanford Law, and you showed no skepticism whatsoever just yesterday over the silly assertion by Roberta Kaplan, E. Jean Carroll's lawyer, that Trump’s “See you next Tuesday,” an obvious error on the dates, was a sub rosa way to call Ms. Kaplan the “c-word.” But now you’re skeptical.
Well, you be you, madam.
He's Warren Smith, filmmaker of the Secret Scholar Society podcast.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-03vp84_Vka6UTpGioESvktV6_NK6TUB&si=DNSWdtRXL5aarb1c
Scripted? Perhaps he's good at what he does. (I did watch/listen to the entire exchange.)
Try it against cognitive dissonance. If you persist, you wind up in a large fact circle.
I suspect it's scripted too. The camera is too steady, there aren't other students interrupting. It's still good for people to hear. Too many of them jump on the ____ is whatever-ist because they read others making the claim and never stop to look at the actual things that person is doing/saying to see if it's true.
So fake and Fake and scripted demolishing of a straw man.
If you are going to set up a BS video, at least address the stronger points of the opposing opinion not the weakest.
I am sure the choir that is being preached to will love it, now that they are done telling Taylor Swift to stick to music and not address any social or political issues.
I tried watching and if real and not staged; then kudos to the teacher for sticking with it. I dropped out, but I probably caught the first of the student suggesting the thoughts he provided might not be his own.
That's pretty much what I picture you having done in your classes. I don't find it too perfect to be real. I've always found that being relaxed is key to a good guided conversation--any reasonably intelligent person can do what he did if they stay clam. It's only when you get agitated that it falls apart.
The scripted suspicion is lame. People with critical thinking skills are comfortable thinking critically…
…but your strategy is on point. Exposing clips like this is going to expose and wreck the entire game plan, so he must be destroyed. Damn you Elon!
I had the same thought. I dug around in the replies, and it seems to be a guy named Warren Smith, who is both a filmmaker and teacher.
This is his YouTube: https://m.youtube.com/@SecretScholars/videos
Website: https://www.wsmithmedia.com/
Twitter/X:
On his website, he presents himself as a filmmaker and teacher of film at Emerson. "Warren Smith wrote and produced his first feature length film in 2013... At Emerson he... began teaching professional studies courses and digital filmmaking workshops. ... Warren is now a teacher and volunteer firefighter. He is developing his next feature film"
His YouTube says "Movies and videos by Warren Smith.", which to me implies that at some or all of his videos are fiction, and some videos are explicitly presented as fictional/short films. This is the original of the video Elon Musk quote tweets, where it's presented as real: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zIPPpsJY39c
On his Twitter, he says it's real, but very laconically: https://x.com/WTSmith17/status/1754331408581918728?s=20
I think either this is staged, or the the film teacher is making a project of filming real conversations with students, and the high production values/calmness in front of the camera is a product of his background in film.
A scripted teaching demonstration you say?
Flash back to 2011 and the "conversion" of "climate skeptic" Richard Muller to "becoming" a believer in climate change after a 2-year review of the "evidence." It's likely impossible for any U.C. Berkley professor vetted through the profoundly ideological U.C. Berkley hiring process to be a credible skeptic.
In the words of his co-author and credible skeptic Judith Curry:
The Muller "results unambiguously show an increase in surface temperature since 1960," Curry wrote Sunday. She said she disagreed with Muller's public relations efforts and some public comments from Muller about there no longer being a need for skepticism.
And another credible source:
Skeptical MIT scientist Richard Lindzen said it is a fact and nothing new that global average temperatures have been rising since 1950, as Muller shows. "It's hard to see how any serious scientist (skeptical, denier or believer — frequently depending on the exact question) will view it otherwise," he wrote in an email.
https://www.kqed.org/news/11936674/how-to-prepare-for-this-weeks-atmospheric-river-storm-sandbags-emergency-kits-and-more
Critical Thinking is in almost all cases an ed school dodge to avoid teaching skills such as close reading, correct grammar, classical debate, and exposing students to Western Civilization. Under the rubric of so-called critical thinking, students are merely taught to vapidly mimic their teachers in criticizing and "deconstructing" America, Western thought, hetetosexuality, etc.
This one teacher does it right -- by not actually doing what the educrats call critical thinking at all. He is teaching close reading and logic.
scripted or no.. it's a good example of HOW TO THINK
It also helps that he has a student who engages with him honestly instead of immediately falling back into emotionalism and dishonesty like I see so many do on (pick your news show on cable tv). So give the kid credit too.
Here's his channel, where this comes from:
https://www.youtube.com/@SecretScholars
and here's his comments about "scripting
"
YOUR COMMENTS on JK ROWLING & some BARBIE talk
Secret Scholar Society
Ann! That wasn’t scripted. You used to do that every day in class!!
His name is Winston T. Smith and he is a filmmaker. BFA from Chapel Hill.
Or he is just a seasoned teacher who has been down this road quite a few times before. I don't sense anything scripted here.
here's W Smiths' bio from his page:
Warren Smith wrote and produced his first feature length film in 2013 after receiving his BFA in Film Producing from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. At UNCSA he wrote 5 short films, produced 3 and directed one. He received his MFA in filmmaking at Emerson College where he wrote and directed Harvard Zero, a short film about the untold story of Harvard’s role leading up to America joining World War 2. At Emerson he designed his first class: How to make a living with a camera. He began teaching professional studies courses and digital filmmaking workshops. This has led to the course From Script To Screen, which he shaped from his experiences working as a writer, producer and independent videographer.
Warren is now a teacher and volunteer firefighter. He is developing his next feature film: The Secret Scholar Society.
It OBVIOUSLY was "scripted", you Can't Just film your students, and if you did they would hem and haw a LOT more
Scripted?? Oh, Professor, this blog—or perhaps this world—as made you so cynical.
You may be right. Probably are. If so, it's sad.
Don't worry, he's probably still an idiot.
I was reminded of that Reddit group - "Why were they filming?"
I don't know whether his calm demeanor necessarily suggests that the whole thing is scripted; the question of Rowling's supposed bigotry is such a softball that I would hope any teacher who believes she is teaching critical thinking could be just as calm and effective. I'm more suspicious about the off-camera person - whether he actually believed what he said at the beginning
All the schools claim to reach "critical thinking" now and I hope it consists of logic, basic stats and how to recognize sneaky debate tactics.
I'm afraid it's more like "teach students to criticize those we hate." But who knows.
And if I hear "we teach students how to think not what to think" one more time I'll vomit.
Everyone says that. All the time.
Scripted? Why use that loaded word? Why not well-prepared? Wasn't Althouse a well-prepared lecturer? Had she not heard many of the same misunderstandings of pivotal SC decisions time after time, semester after semester. I knew dozens of profs who lectured out the spiralbound notebook every time that taught the same introductory course and who probably answered many students' questions with the same well-rehearsed replies. If the facts don't change and the questions don't change, why should the answers? Althouse uses skeptical as a mild pejorative, which prompts me to be skeptical of her motives.
Maybe it's the student who sounds scripted to Althouse. He slants his initial question in a very pat manner, but isn't that what should alert the listener to the absence of critical thinking?
Mark said...So fake and Fake and scripted demolishing of a straw man.
Addressing an actual argument is a strawman? I don't think you know what "strawman" means.
If you are going to set up a BS video, at least address the stronger points of the opposing opinion not the weakest.
Stronger points? At least you didn't say "strong points," which would be a null set.
I'd like to see the comments (but I've never had a presence on Twitter and I don't have one on X, and I'm not about to start now). I suspect they will be a lot of, "But she IS a bigot! A dirty, dirty transphobe!" Irony utterly lost on them.
Saw this a while ago. Pretty cool nonjudgmentalistic approach to the Socrates method. I did/do the same thing with my kids/grandkids except with a heavy dose sarcastic mocking judgmentalism. I build anti-fragile people this way. You can only include the judgement part from an early age elsewise the student will shrink up crumble into dust and seek the comfort of their ignorance. I see that response all the time hear in the Althouse safe space for gamma globulins.
Imagine exactly the same dialectic analysis with Jordan Peterson...
Here’s a discussion that is very much real - it’s a discussion about queer theory, not JK Rowling specifically. But the cognitive dissonance has a strong hold on some of those kids, regardless:
https://youtu.be/PJsf5QY12rg?si=AbgPVp5HH8Kjl8km
Dave, NC School of the Arts is in Winston-Salem, not Chapel Hill. /pedant
My late BIL helped finish and then managed their newest auditorium/concert hall the first couple years that Smith was there, so maybe they crossed paths. We'll never know.
Not necessarily scripted - this is the kind of statement (from the student) that a teacher would/should expect and be prepared to address.
Our public schools and universities are polluted with liberal "educators" that lack the ability to critically think.
How are they supposed to teach it?
I find it funny that people are objecting to what I did in this post title, which was itself critical thinking.
Claimed, without evidence is what you did.
“ That's pretty much what I picture you having done in your classes. I don't find it too perfect to be real.”
But your picture of me has to be idealized. You haven’t seen the real thing. In real life students aren’t this pliable.
By the way, I find it funny that people are objecting to what I did in this post title, which was itself critical thinking.
Who is the student here? How do I know it’s not a shill?
In real life students stick to their guns. And I think there was a lot of detail to the Rowling quote that would need to be teased out to understand it properly and that happened here in what feels like a short circuited amount of time.
@Althouse: In real life students stick to their guns.
SOME do. Law students are likely very tough in maintaining a personal ideological vision -- that's why they chose law in the first place. Some students are clueless, naïve, or just getting oriented to life and don't know what to think. See Jonathan Haidt on the fragility of recent students, per his book: "The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure" (2018).
https://reason.com/2017/10/26/the-fragile-generation/
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/think-act-be/201912/why-young-people-face-major-mental-health-crisis
Do we know what class this is? I’ve watched the whole thing a couple of times. It sounds like a typical class discussion from an organizational behavior class like the type they teach at business school. We had these kinds of discussions all the time. Profs provided a framework to sort of lower the ante of ‘winning the argument’ and instead focus on the process, exactly like what the prof does here. So no maybe not the student behavior a prof might see in a con law class…
I'd say he slept at the Holiday Inn Express last night, but it's probably closed and full of illegal aliens at this point.
"In real life students stick to their guns."
In real (college) life (but I contradict myself) the students have no guns to stick to.
In real life, students believe in gun control (read: idea control).
There's no coherent argument against what Rowling says. Calmly arguing against those who assail her ideas is so easy, yet so fraught, that even intelligent people don't recognize it when they see it... or think it's not real--or "staged."
I'm not sure that I understand the issue that is implied, but not discussed. What difference would it make, if it were scripted? Would the point of the questioning be altered? Would the argument lose its efficacy, and the lesson become de-valued? Would it somehow be a less viable example of sound thinking?
The guy is an experienced, part-time film-maker. He knows how to use a camera to stage a scene effectively. Not sure I understand the point of shifting the focus to 'is it staged'? Would you rather see the students fumbling around more ineffectually, and the teacher being more vague, or maybe even biased - and if so, why?
By the way, I find it funny that people are objecting to what I did in this post title, which was itself critical thinking
Why is that funny? I don’t see where anyone is suggesting you weren’t thinking critically, I suspect they believe your suspicions are just wrong…
I'm reading a novel by "Robert Galbraith," a pen name for Rowling. In the course of a detective story, trying to find a serial killer who is into torturing and dismembering his victims, the protagonists discover an online "community" of people who fantasize about having limbs removed, or otherwise being turned into invalids for no medical reason. We are allowed to see Rowling's anger: the fact that obviously disturbed people, usually young, say something about their bodies, and demand action on their bodies, does not make any of it true or desirable. Part of her campaign against the trans movement insofar as it depends on "statements of identity" by children, heavily influenced by who knows what sources, with little or no scientific evidence that hormones and surgery will improve life for anyone at all.
I can see why the Professor thinks this might be scripted. The guy on film is almost pulling Jedi mind tricks on the beta male.
But, if you have engaged a liberal, their typical escape when the cognitive dissonance sets in is to default to "I don't have and opinion on that" or "I'm not an expert on that". That's the initial default of the beta male voice in the background. When they really get defensive they start the "are you a doctor"..."are you a teacher"..."are you an expert".
Then of course there's the liberal use of censorship and the cowardly college campus shout down technique. Neither promotes critical thinking, but are condoned by Universities.
Also, you can see liberal journalists get caught up in the same when someone knows how to handle them. Canada's Pierre Poilievre is the best at it.
Mark said...
"So fake and Fake and scripted demolishing of a straw man.
If you are going to set up a BS video, at least address the stronger points of the opposing opinion not the weakest."
Not a straw man argument. I've heard it over and over from the people pushing the trans agenda...and so has J.K. Rowling.
There are no strong points for the argument. It's based on conjecture without facts.
Scripted??
the word y'all are looking for, is "Staged"..
and HOW does that make it less important?
I love this but had the same thought that it was little too perfect.
My first reaction while watching this was to think of "Winston Smith" in the book "1984". Then I drifted toward the Socratic dialogs (which were also scripted).
Even if this exchange was staged and scripted it demonstrates a valid technique for examination of a point of view.
Useful clip. I’d call it “Intro Example of Socratic Method” and, of course, it was staged and edited (pretty sure I could see several cuts in the presentation, presumably to remove dead air and detours). No stigma in such work; we need more of it. Practice, practice, practice.
like the guy’s demeanor and am inordinately impressed by the fact in his bio that he is a volunteer fireman. I’m guessing you don’t last long in that business unless you have a steady grip on reality.
The true part is the student heard Rowling made homophobic statements and took it as fact.
People are often arguing from premises demanded by other people.
Tina Trent said...
"Critical Thinking is in almost all cases an ed school dodge to avoid teaching skills such as close reading, correct grammar, classical debate, and exposing students to Western Civilization. Under the rubric of so-called critical thinking, students are merely taught to vapidly mimic their teachers in criticizing and "deconstructing" America, Western thought, heterosexuality, etc."
What is called 'critical thinking' is in fact mislabeled Critical Theory. I see an infographic on social media purporting to be about critical thinking, but it invites judgment of others' statements without examining the merits, looking at who it benefits first of all, allowing for prima facie judgment against the statements. Example: "Trump is right about the need for border security" is eliminated right off, because Trump.
And if I hear "we teach students how to think not what to think" one more time I'll vomit.
Everyone says that. All the time.
@wild chicken, and they never mean it, do they?
The most important point to Musk's post is his intro to the video:
"Critical thinking should be the first thing taught to kids"
We all know damn well that critical thinking isn't being taught to kids, or college kids. Musk knows this too. Kids are indoctrinated by the already indoctrinated who themselves lack critical thinking ability.
I would imagine today's educators those who can critically think, keep their mouths shut and go with the liberal flow for the paycheck and inclusion in the liberal community. Pensions need protecting.
Having delved more into who the professor is, I lean towards judging this as a spontaneous discussion rather than scripted. I write this because it is easy to believe that this particular teacher might well film himself having discussions with his students- I think a scripted discussion would have had the camera on both participants. My only real doubt is that my experience is people don't change their minds about topics like this and in that direction, at all, and certainly not in 5 minutes (see Lefty Mark above for the reaction of someone that got pushback on this topic- that reaction is an authentic one).
The hive-mind is real.
Regardless of the staging or not, the lesson is a good one. It reminds me of that PM candidate in Canada (sorry can’t recall his name) who deftly responds to journalists by asking them similar type “critical thinking” questions about their question. I believe that candidate is well ahead in the polls now….
I can believe it to be scripted, but I also enjoy watching a group of hobbyists who call themselves "Street Epistemologists." Some of them are pretty good at walking people through whatever their claims are without getting themselves or their interlocutor upset.
A couple of examples are Cordial Curiousity, https://www.youtube.com/@CordialCuriosity, and the later version of Anthony Magnabosco, https://www.youtube.com/@magnabosco210, (his early stuff can be pretty aggressive.)
@Althouse, I suspect you’re right about this video clip was scripted and staged, especially since you surely have a lot more experience emoying the Socratic method than I. My point is that sometimes you are skeptical and yet often you come across as almost unbelievably gullible.
Ann Althouse said...By the way, I find it funny that people are objecting to what I did in this post title, which was itself critical thinking.
I find it funny that you have this reaction to people reacting to what you wrote, which I would have thought is why you wrote it in the first place. I've considered your suggestion and for the reason I gave I see no reason to think it's the most likely scenario.
Critical Sexist... Genderist Theory
Transphobic... homophobic? It's a colorful spectrum by their own admission.
No hate. No fear. No irrational thought or behavior. Phobias have evolved as psychiatric and political tools of projection. That said, stop the albinophobia. Repeak the bigots' "Respect For Marriage Act" prescription. Stow the Rainbow banner and rhetoric. Civil unions for all consenting adults. #NoJudgment #NoLabels #NoPoliticalCongruence #LoveWins #HateLovesAbortion
Scripted, yeah, but so are the “she’s transphobic” accusations, whether or not the accuser knows s/he’s reciting scripted lines.
Ann:
When I was at Creighton Law, I was fortunate enough to have Professor Ron Volkmer; Darth Volkmer or The Volk. It was a simple twist of fate that I was assigned to Section A rather than Section B.
The Volk was a legendary practitioner of the Socratic method. He was my favorite - and the best - professor at Creighton. He taught me how to think like a lawyer. Creighton Law alums uniformly agree.
I suspect Wisconsin Law alums hold you in the same regard.
Critical Racists'... uh, Racists Theory is a self-impeachment.
In another contentious issue, gun control, the pro-rights side sometimes asks the anti-gun side, "How do you determine what is true and what is not?" When presented with spurious claims, most progs cannot describe how they do that simple task. Most depend on authority, or upon desired outcome, to "validate" their chosen sets of facts, and reject any information not in conformity with their side of the debate.
Thus the two sides talk past one another, with one side saying, "Reality says this, and it is demonstrably true," and the other side saying, "We want this outcome, therefore these ideas must be true." The difference is insurmountable, and discussions of the subject between people following those different paradigms are useless.
This is a staged film where that problem is avoided. In a real class, a progressive student would eventually fall back on denouncing the very idea that such questioning is valid when the mere charge is sufficient to determine the guilt of Rowling.
Here’s a discussion that is very much real - it’s a discussion about queer theory, not JK Rowling specifically. But the cognitive dissonance has a strong hold on some of those kids, regardless:
This video was fun. Particularly good moment when the professor is speaking against pedophilia and a student calls out, "You're a homophobe!" The professor - calmly but with eyebrows raised - says, "I'm called a homophobe for speaking against pedophilia?"
In additional to critical thinking, or as part of it, all students should be taught the principles of logic. In my high school, there was one Logic course, offered only to AP students in their Senior year, and taught as a half year class, one class in the Fall and one in the Spring. Consequently, very few of the school's enrolled students were able to take the class. (I assume this was because only one of their faculty taught the course, and he was otherwise a teacher of English and the Humanities.)
I was not one of those students whose grades afforded me access to the class. (As many have said, "Just missed it by that much!")
Blogger Mark said..."So fake and Fake and scripted demolishing of a straw man.
If you are going to set up a BS video, at least address the stronger points of the opposing opinion not the weakest."
Please point to some damning quotes from Rowling. I'd like to read them.
Perhaps it sounds "scripted" because he (mostly) speaks in full sentences, without a lot of "ums" and "ers"?
As someone above suggested, how is this not similar to the Socratic teaching method of digging into, pin-pointing, what words and phrases in a dialogue really mean? ...as opposed to meekly accepting a pre-defined (by one party) assumption of mutual communication?
All this guy is doing is leading his interlocutor to eliminate the "question begging*" from his thinking, isn't it? ...to examine the presumed conclusions upon which his facile opinions rest?
*IANAL, but I suppose that the corresponding legal objection might be "assumes facts not in evidence"?
Would this be one of those "fake but accurate" things that were so popular a while back?
Or is this (to paraphrase woopie) "fake fake" cause the politics "sounds" wrong in the clip?
Hard to understand why everyone is so up in arms about this being scripted or staged. If this was in a Hollywood film with say; Adam Driver playing the part of teacher, everyone here would think it's a great scene and be pointing to it like they would to any literary reference.
Doesn't seem scripted to me.
I do wonder where the yelling and screaming are at... Is it remote learning? Not clear on the context/learning format. Remote learning? In any case, it's brilliant. Illustrates the decay caused by leftist hive-mind assumptions.
See Natatonic's video above. A MUST WATCH.
Note the annoying leftist pro-pedophilia females yelling and disrupting the class.
I saw it on Insty, and like Owen thought there was some light editing. I didn't think it was scripted, though.
In any case, it works. The student started with vague second-hand insinuations pretending to be serious questions and was forced to recognize and abandon them only when the prof demanded clear and explicit language.
"So fake and Fake and scripted demolishing of a straw man.
If you are going to set up a BS video, at least address the stronger points of the opposing opinion not the weakest."
I noticed that Mark fails to actually offer up a "stronger" argument to back up his claim that there is such a thing. Maybe that is the Burdon of proof fallacy, or sorts.
Anyway, Mark, the ball is in your court.
Mark said...
"So fake and Fake and scripted demolishing of a straw man.
If you are going to set up a BS video, at least address the stronger points of the opposing opinion not the weakest.
I am sure the choir that is being preached to will love it, now that they are done telling Taylor Swift to stick to music and not address any social or political issues."
You forgot to label it, "white supremacy".
As a teaching example, which it is meant to be, it works well.
It is possible it was scripted, perhaps intentionally so, perhaps a recreation of an actual event. It does not really matter. It is an excellent example of how to teach someone to think.
As for this being too quick of a turnaround, that really depends on the person. Some persons are so entrenched in their beliefs that nothing is going to work unless they change. As Mr. Swift said, “You cannot reason a person out of a position he did not reason himself into in the first place.” Others have a very weak attachment to the argument that can be dislodged with minimal effort. Beliefs that only exist due to peer pressure can evaporate when confronted by actual evidence.
The left would insinuate you right to the gulag.
Original Mike, I am not your research assistant. If you actually wanted to know, you could spend a few moments with a search engine finding a recent article on it.
Even if I led your horse to water, I still could not make it drink. Demanding that I provide examples is so disingenuous given your history here taboot
Robert Cook, when I couldn't get into a class (the English AP teacher hated my conservative older brother so much she actually put me in a remedial English class), I would go to the beautiful Poughkeepsie library or the utterly magisterial Vassar library and teach myself. Now there are great, free online classes on logic and statistics -- mostly maths and classics and philosophy. You might enjoy them. I'm designing a house and need to brush up on drafting and CAD. Not much hope for the CAD, but we've got to exercise our brains, too. I still use geometry every time I plan a septic run. Yes, we're having a crappy winter in the mountains.
If you want a study partner, I'd like to study logic again too. I mean that sincerely. Let's just skip Poly Sci.
@mikee regarding guns: Thus the two sides talk past one another, with one side saying, "Reality says this, and it is demonstrably true," and the other side saying, "We want this outcome, therefore these ideas must be true." The difference is insurmountable, and discussions of the subject between people following those different paradigms are useless.
The left always struggles with clashes between utopian ideals/dreams and the cold hard realities of implementation...especially when their own actions make a bad situation worse...defund the police...don't prosecute shoplifting...allow people to sleep in tents downtown...sanctuary cities...
The left sees countries with almost zero gun ownership (e.g., Japan) and dreams of a world where guns are banned and there's only a random assassination or two (e.g., Yakuza/Mafia; the recent homemade black powder gun used against former PM Shinzo Abe). So to this faction on the left, anything other than the complete elimination of guns is to accept defeat or an inferior moral outcome. (They echo old-school alcohol prohibitionists.) The anti-gun crowd refuses to learn about how guns work or even think about the mechanics of how pie-in-the-sky proposed laws might be enacted with 500,000,000 guns in circulation. Most of these are owned by those who would resist gun confiscation and fight back.
Anti-gun source The Trace says there are at least 494 million guns as of March 2023: https://www.thetrace.org/2023/03/guns-america-data-atf-total/
As you state, an appeal to authority works with authoritarians and those who bow to them. The only way out seems to be if an internal-left authority figure tells them to comply. Persuasion (i.e., this post and video) will not work for many. Some are too primal, too primitive, and too feral to debate anyone.
See Steven Crowder's "Change My Mind:"
https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/change-my-mind/
Yancey wrote, "My only real doubt is that my experience is people don't change their minds about topics like this..."
Except to me, it seemed the student was mindlessly repeating the "since JK is transphobic" intro when he was stopped and asked to evaluate that assumption on which his question about Harry Potter was based. When the student had time to review the evidence available, the tweets, he was no longer able to support the assumption he had made. We never hear what his opinion on any hot issue is other than his reasonable conclusion that JK's tweets did not reveal any transphobic (by which he probably meant anti-trans or trans-hatred) ideation.
If nothing else The Student can leave this conversation with the seed planted that, perhaps, rejecting the totalitarianism transactivists demand to cancel people is NOT the same as being anti-trans, and maybe the people like me who have a live and let live attitude actually don't care what adults do to themselves and with each other. We object when those adults cross the line and demand something from us that do not wish to agree to.
Critical thinking should be the first thing taught to kids
Disagree with this generally. You can't really think critically about anything unless you already have a base of knowledge from which to evaluate. How can you, for example, "critically think" about some aspect of the Civil War without even knowing who fought or even what century it occurred in? You can't do analytic geometry of you can't even do basic math operations.
Whatever it is they call "critical thinking" in today's educational establishment, that ain't it.
Polievre the apple guy
I absolutely agree with Robert Cook that Logic should be a required course in high school, if not sooner.
Do note that using logic does not guarantee a correct answer. It only guarantees, if used correctly, an answer that is consistent with the assumptions. Bad Assumptions + Good Logic = (Probably) Bad Conclusion. Teaching logic to fanatics is not going to be useful.
Blogger Mark said...
"Original Mike, I am not your research assistant. If you actually wanted to know, you could spend a few moments with a search engine finding a recent article on it.
Even if I led your horse to water, I still could not make it drink. Demanding that I provide examples is so disingenuous given your history here taboot"
Problem with that Mark is I don't know what you find egregious.
My history here? What's that mean?
"Do note that using logic does not guarantee a correct answer. It only guarantees, if used correctly, an answer that is consistent with the assumptions. Bad Assumptions + Good Logic = (Probably) Bad Conclusion. Teaching logic to fanatics is not going to be useful."
True, but if one is taught logic before an age where one has developed ingrained beliefs (or even after that, for some), one may hopefully develop a view of the world guided by logic first and emotion last, if at all, (or revise a prior, emotion-based belief system).
Critical thinking doesn't always lead to the correct answer. Or to a well justified suspicion.
Tina Trent (@ 11:25am),
"If you want a study partner, I'd like to study logic again too. I mean that sincerely. Let's just skip Poly Sci."
Thank you for your friendly offer, (including the smile-inducing advisory that we avoid Poly Sci). For reasons having nothing to do with you, I will pass. But, I appreciate your generous invitation.
At the very least, I will review the resources available on-line that will enable me to refresh and add to the scraps of formal logic I have picked up through the years.
It looks like an exercise. Scripted might be one way of putting it but I don't think that diminishes the point.
I don't know?
I'm not sure how critical my thinking is, but that just seems like thinking to me.
Less than that, it drops down to the old cold war technique of saying, "as is well known - ". If I recall, that was kind of a Pravda thing.
You start critical thinking training for a child as an infant even before they can walk or talk. A base of knowledge is not required.
I am kind of struggling with stem, logic, and computing online classes. I'm a literature and poetry person at heart, though having the luck to grow up in an IBM town, I did get a brilliant education in math to calculus.
I think it would be not just fun to pursue some of the new online courses but also actual extension of cognizance. Talking to people here is enlightening, and I learn a lot of the opinion zeitgeist as the sleazy political operative that I am, but it's like floating in a lovely warm pool.
It's not hard work. Everyone needs some hard mental hard work.
Convert everything into conjunctive normal form.
Mark proves he is the hivemind in class who will not be swayed by logic and critical thinking.
Stay Stooge- Mark. Stay stooge.
and Mark - if you are so sure Rowling is a trans-phobe - It is on you to make your case.
that you refuse - tells us all we need to know about your hivemind loyalty.
It's very good a model of what a teacher should do to untangle bad thinking.
But also, it's too good to be true.
But I like it.
Mark said...
Original Mike, I am not your research assistant. If you actually wanted to know, you could spend a few moments with a search engine finding a recent article on it.
Even if I led your horse to water, I still could not make it drink. Demanding that I provide examples is so disingenuous given your history here taboot
***********
Hey! The RULE is, "YOU make the claim, YOU support it."
Rowlings has been attacked so many times publicly that all the "scripting" needed is to know the fallacious arguments and how to counter them.
Not read the above comments, but responding to the ‘is it scripted?’:
I listened to it twice - first straight off the bat, then second to determine if there’s any truth in the ‘is it scripted’ statement/question.
It feels like it is not scripted, but the setup does seem organized. Perhaps some context of why or how the original premise is posited or comes about would help. There are younger people (the teacher; he’s younger than me hence his ‘youth’) who are actually good teachers and know how to think and express ideas. He appears comfortable with that. Atypical of the lunatic blue/green/pink-haired screech that is often exemplified as the ‘typical teacher’.
Teaching logic in school could be a problem for some types of elementary and high school teaching methods... namely, these are the facts that you will be tested on. For most of the STEM classes, this works for the basic material that students need to learn. But it does tend to instill the mode of "Teacher is the font of wisdom about everything". That mindset in the students is abused by some teachers as can be seen by what they post on Tik Tok and other social media.
Note that there is some mental effort required to pick out the unsupported statements of fact in what is presented to you and many don't bother putting much effort into doing that. This is human behavior, not ideological behavior.
There are many discussions between folks that are fruitless, except for entertainment purposes, when you realize that the opinions on either side are based on belief and reasoned out from facts that both can agree on. In mathematics we had to prove theorems from axioms (facts that the math world agreed to be true within the context of the theorem's space). Outside of the mathematical world, axioms are harder to come by. Of course, this isn't something I figured out in highschool.
Hands up for anyone who is not surprised by Mark's answer to the challenge.
“He’s so relaxed and on point that I suspect it was scripted”
Remember when 51 intelligence experts told us that Hunter’s laptop had all of the signs of Russian misinformation?
Hey! The RULE is, "YOU make the claim, YOU support it."
Only if someone on the right makes the claim. If a leftist makes a claim, it's as good as true as far as they're concerned, no proof need be offered.
Tina Trent:
I'm designing a house and need to brush up on drafting and CAD. Not much hope for the CAD, but we've got to exercise our brains, too.
Get a house layout specific CAD. They do a lot of the work for you. Unless of course, you want to do the more complex CAD thing.
Mark:
If you actually wanted to know, you could spend a few moments with a search engine finding a recent article on it.
The response of someone who can't support their assertion.
Jamie:
Particularly good moment when the professor is speaking against pedophilia and a student calls out, "You're a homophobe!" The professor - calmly but with eyebrows raised - says, "I'm called a homophobe for speaking against pedophilia?"
Followed by: "Who is it that actually makes the connection between that?".
If someone jumps spurious conclusions, consider it could be it's because their mind resides within the connection.
I really see no reason to care if this is or is not scripted. I do care that this kind of Socratic dialogue is dead in the water in most American schools. I agree totally with Tina Trent (6:48 am) that what this guy is doing is modeling true "critical thinking" not the b.s. that education people now mean by "critical thinking." As she puts it:
"This one teacher does it right -- by not actually doing what the educrats call critical thinking at all. He is teaching close reading and logic."
Close reading is it seems unheard of in education these days. Among other things, it absolutely DEMANDS that the student get OUT of himself, whereas now the insistence is on enabling him to "see himself" in what he reads. Identity prevails over keen observing, close reading, logical thinking. If I had my way, every teacher in America would be forced to watch this clip over and over instead of and for as much time as a typical education methods class lasts.
effinayright said...
Mark said...
Original Mike, I am not your research assistant. If you actually wanted to know, you could spend a few moments with a search engine finding a recent article on it.
Even if I led your horse to water, I still could not make it drink. Demanding that I provide examples is so disingenuous given your history here taboot
***********
Hey! The RULE is, "YOU make the claim, YOU support it."
2/5/24, 2:43 PM
The irony is that this the exact argument that was attempted to be made in the follow up video posted by @gilbar above.
Maybe Mark is channeling Trump? '...everyone knows it!"
Brilliant video.
Actually similar to the way the Canadian candidate for PM, Pierre Polviere (?) dismantled a reporter. The reporter made statements like “You seem to have taken a page from Donald Trump’s book “. PP responded, very politely, “What page? What book? Show me what you’re talking about.” He was eating an apple at the time and just calmly confronted the biased questions. A textbook interview for all politicians.
Good for you, Robert. In a strange way we are all friends here. Also thanks Oligonicella. I learned drafting long before CAD. And enough engineering to understand building. Programming was the barricade. I spent years doing system mockup without CAD and nobody complained. Or died. Even Andre Agassi.
Tina Trent said: "If you want a study partner, I'd like to study logic again too. I mean that sincerely. Let's just skip Poly Sci."
There are two chapters on logic for analysis and persuasion in my audio course A Way With Words: Rhetoric, Writing, and the Arts of Persuasion: https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Modern-Scholar-Audiobook/B002VA3LIA?source_code=GPAGBSH0508140001&ipRedirectOverride=true&gclsrc=ds
Many public libraries have the Modern Scholar audio courses available for free (disclaimer: I get a 25-cent royalty each time someone use a library copy, $1.00 when someone downloads a course from Audible).
Possibly "scripted" and clearly edited--for time if for nothing else.
I get the sense that one reason the student is not more defensive, and doesn't fall into denunciation and denial, is that he admires and trusts the teacher to begin with--he perceives him as someone he would like to emulate.
One "non-scripted" response might have been--"Oh, no--you're one of those damn 'conservatives' too. And here I thought you were one of us."
Happens to me quite often. I'm not nearly as calm and rational as this guy, though.
I’ve looked at Warren T. Smith’s YouTube site: The Secret Scholar Society. It wasn’t a real class. But still impressive.
Tina said,
"I'm designing a house and need to brush up on drafting and CAD. Not much hope for the CAD, but we've got to exercise our brains, too. I still use geometry every time I plan a septic run. Yes, we're having a crappy winter in the mountains."
If you want to pay for one 'Fusion 360' is easy and intuitive. I use 'Freecad' for 3D printin
. It isn't as intuitive.
Rusty said...
I use 'Freecad' for 3D printin.
2/6/24, 12:28 AM
I use OpenSCAD and just love it. It works how I think. Tried the other visual CAD programs but they are not "me" so I always come back to OpenSCAD. I also use it for 3D printing and love that I can import STLs to perform additional manipulations. If you are not familiar with it, you "program" the visuals. Coders should be able to quickly pick it up. Also LOTs of specialty libraries/extensions available. I would not try to design a house in it though...
Thanks , Todd. I'll give it a try.
I mostly print repair parts. Sometimes fishing lures.
Thanks for all the CAD advice. I used it for system (aluminum convention booths) booths. But that was simple and a long time ago. Though I did help build a two story aluminum tennis court for Andre Agassi.
Thanks too Professor Drout.
Mark said...
So fake and Fake and scripted demolishing of a straw man.
If you are going to set up a BS video, at least address the stronger points of the opposing opinion not the weakest.
Obviously those WERE the strongest arguments for "JR Rowling is a transphobe".
We know this from the fact that "Mark" didn't provide any "stronger arguments" to "prove" the point.
Ann Althouse said...
In real life students stick to their guns.
Translation: In real life, students refuse to learn?
Because the quotes the kid pulled up didn't prove what he claimed they would prove. So his choice was to be an obvious idiot, or to learn.
I suppose they could all be like "Mark", and insist there are better example out there, it's just that, um, they can't find them! yeah, that's it!
The reality is that in order to score JK Rowling a "transphobe" you have to define anyone who believes in reality is a "transphobe".
And that's virtually impossible to support when you can't just shout the other side down.
Mark said...
Original Mike, I am not your research assistant. If you actually wanted to know, you could spend a few moments with a search engine finding a recent article on it.
Hey look, it'/s the new lying Leftie trope "I dont' have to do the research for you!"
Yes, in fact you do, if you want to make a claim. Because WE are not YOUR "research assistant", so we're not going to go hunting for BS to support your lies.
You made a positive claim: "JK Rowling has said things that are transphobic". but you didn't provide any, which indicates your'e lying.
When challenged to provide them, you refused to even try.
Why? Because you're lying. Because you KNOW that she hasn't said anything that an honest and decent person would find bothersome, you KNOW that when you said "he's beating up straw men, ignoring the stronger arguments" that you were lying, and there aren't any.
It's your argument. if YOU aren't willing to "do the work" to support it, that tells everyone else that even you know your argument is crap
Greg, if you are unable to get it together enough to post a single reply, then I do not think you are worth my time as you are likely intoxicated.
To add, insulting me is not going to encourage me to spend time with your drivel either.
Enjoy attacking straw men.
Mark said...
Greg, if you are unable to get it together enough to post a single reply, then I do not think you are worth my time as you are likely intoxicated.
You're not important enough for me to carefully look through all replies to find everything you have to say before crafting some one overarching reply.
Get over yourself
To add, insulting me is not going to encourage me to spend time with your drivel either.
Enjoy attacking straw men.
Stop lying, and I'll stop attacking you.
If it were actually drivel, you'd attack it, rather than just attack me. just like I attacked you AND the drivel you produced.
But since everything I wrote at you was correct, you can't attack it, which is why you go solely for the ad hominem.
Reality check: You made a claim, but refused to even try to back it up.
Why? Because you're lying, and you know you're lying. Because if we're important enough for you to repeatedly "defend" that claim here (which we are, since you've now posted multiple times on it), then the claim is important enough to you so that if you could defend it, you would
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