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4 minutes ago, Voice of reason said:

So, how would someone such as yourself become more informed, and be able to sort the wheat from the chaff,  whereas another person wouldn't?

Because I learned to read at four, was reading ‘grown up’ books by the age of seven, was interested in politics at the age of 13-14 and have probably read somewhere between three and five thousand books on all sorts of subjects. School taught me most national curriculum stuff but the vast majority of stuff I taught myself. I studied law and trained as a scientist so my information is very much evidence based and therefore very rigourous. As a result I never take anything at face value and will only believe something once I have satisfied myself that something is true or very likely to be true.

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1 hour ago, Top Cats Hat said:

Education isn’t just a question of teachers and book learning it is also about how society sees itself and where it is going.

Too right.

 

Education is about getting the mix of book learning (that forms the bedrock of basic knowledge) and social mores (values of self, place in society and aspirations), right. Good parenting, in that respect, is as important as a good curriculum and a good delivery of it.

 

There's no such thing as anti-intellectualism in French, German or Luxembourgish schools, then (when I was in them 35 years ago) or now. Being a 'brain' is good, and to be emulated rather than derided.

 

But that was positively rampant in (OFSTED 'outstanding'-rated-) schools which my daughter frequented in S25/26/81 and Retford until Feb 2018, hand-in-hand with a plethora of parallel peer-driven psych issues (self-harming and stuff), which social media is turbo-charging.

 

On-topic: evidence-led critical thinking is the one skill that is crucial to master for discerning fake from real news. It is taught as standard in the French and Luxembourgish curricula, always has been. I don't think I ever saw any of it in my daughter's school or home work in the UK.

Edited by L00b

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I get the impression that the OP was referring to this;

 

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ng-interactive/2019/jun/22/the-rise-of-the-deepfake-and-the-threat-to-democracy

 

ie. the ability of anyone with access to a PC and the internet (and a modicum of technical ability) to produce realistic but fake video.

Edited by Longcol

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56 minutes ago, Top Cats Hat said:

Because I learned to read at four, was reading ‘grown up’ books by the age of seven, was interested in politics at the age of 13-14 and have probably read somewhere between three and five thousand books on all sorts of subjects. School taught me most national curriculum stuff but the vast majority of stuff I taught myself. I studied law and trained as a scientist so my information is very much evidence based and therefore very rigourous. As a result I never take anything at face value and will only believe something once I have satisfied myself that something is true or very likely to be true.

I think you might have the wrong forum whatsit, Top Cats Hat does you no justice, been an infant prodigy, maybe Einstein would be a better choice.

 

Angel1

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1 hour ago, Top Cats Hat said:

Because I learned to read at four, was reading ‘grown up’ books by the age of seven, was interested in politics at the age of 13-14 and have probably read somewhere between three and five thousand books on all sorts of subjects. School taught me most national curriculum stuff but the vast majority of stuff I taught myself. I studied law and trained as a scientist so my information is very much evidence based and therefore very rigourous. As a result I never take anything at face value and will only believe something once I have satisfied myself that something is true or very likely to be true.

You're not alone in having those skills though. You may believe yourself to be more analytical than others, but believing other people are more blindly led isn't wholly true. There's also many dangers at being dismissive of other peoples experience and hopes.

Other people may have a completely different set of life skills gained in completely different ways. Both sets of views, and opinions are equally as important and valid, howevervfrustrating that might feel.

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1 hour ago, Voice of reason said:

Both sets of views, and opinions are equally as important and valid, howevervfrustrating that might feel.

We aren’t discussing views and opinions, we are discussing facts.

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13 hours ago, Top Cats Hat said:

We aren’t discussing views and opinions, we are discussing facts.

We are dicussings facts and opinions concluded from facts and opinions concluded from events.

That's where previously held views and previous experiences make different people reach different conclusions.

Edited by Voice of reason

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2 hours ago, Voice of reason said:

We are dicussings facts and opinions concluded from facts and opinions concluded from events.

That's were previously held views and previous experiences make different people reach different conclusions.

Yeah, but a fact is a fact. The problem we’re suffering from is opinion is being dressed as fact.

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Tinfoilhat 

 

You have it spot on.

 

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/deepfake-videos-and-the-

threat-of-not-knowing-whats-real_n_5cf97068e4b0b08cf7eb2278?guccounter=1&guce_referr

 

 

"Newscasters could announce the start of a nonexistent nuclear war. Deepfake technology threatens to provoke a genuine civic crisis, as people lose faith that anything they see is real".

 

If people have not read McLuhan ,now is the time to do it. I do believe that his work is back in the Curriculum at some Uni's

 

Edited by petemcewan

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8 hours ago, tinfoilhat said:

Yeah, but a fact is a fact. The problem we’re suffering from is opinion is being dressed as fact.

Some facts are what they are, with no subtleties. Reporting otherwise is a plain lie. Other 'facts' are dressed in emotive language to change their impotance or scale. We see things like 'illegal immigrants flooding into the countery over the Channel' , 'Brexit wrecking the economy' .  Both statements can have some element of fact but are phrased emotively to change the scale and resonse of the reader.

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15 hours ago, Top Cats Hat said:

Because I learned to read at four, was reading ‘grown up’ books by the age of seven, was interested in politics at the age of 13-14 and have probably read somewhere between three and five thousand books on all sorts of subjects. School taught me most national curriculum stuff but the vast majority of stuff I taught myself. I studied law and trained as a scientist so my information is very much evidence based and therefore very rigourous. As a result I never take anything at face value and will only believe something once I have satisfied myself that something is true or very likely to be true.

The issue is not whether education standards are better now or not - that can't be measured in what is taught and what is learned.

 

What is lacking now is intellectual curiosity.  That is not the same as being educated, although historically the fomer usually came as a result of the latter.  Today, the latter seems to inhibit the former.

 

 

 

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7 hours ago, bendix said:

The issue is not whether education standards are better now or not - that can't be measured in what is taught and what is learned.

 

What is lacking now is intellectual curiosity.  That is not the same as being educated, although historically the fomer usually came as a result of the latter.  Today, the latter seems to inhibit the former.

 

 

 

There seems to be some reversal going on here.

Often in this forum it's claimed that the younger generations tended to vote Remain, and the older generation voted to Leave.

Now, if you are saying the younger generation are less intellectually curious, and therefore older ones more intellectually curious, would it not also hold true that this older Leave voters had been able to sort out good sources of information, whereas the younger Remainers hadn't?

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