> I can't speak for any other countries, but from the American perspective, civics education in this country is really lacking. If citizens don't understand the basics of the American government works, it's very easy for people like Trump to lie to them.
Even worse I'd say is the lack of psychology and neuroscience education. If one doesn't understand the fundamentals of how the human mind works, it's very easy to fall victim to lies from any source, including their own mind.
> A lot of citizens are not capable of separating fact from fiction.
Including people that perceive that they do have the ability. Everyone suffers from it to varying degrees (the specifics of which are not known, despite the patterns that appear to be there), but it is near impossible to perceive in oneself for many interesting reasons, including some possibly significant ones which have been observed but have not yet gotten much attention in the scientific community (who does not know what it does not know, something which may only be perceivable in certain states of mind).
My conspiracy theory is that it is not accidental that we don't teach these things in school outside of specialized programs, because it is a vector that can be used to distort beliefs across all demographics, including self-perceived informed rationalists, and the effects of this can be observed on a daily basis.
Even worse I'd say is the lack of psychology and neuroscience education. If one doesn't understand the fundamentals of how the human mind works, it's very easy to fall victim to lies from any source, including their own mind.
> A lot of citizens are not capable of separating fact from fiction.
Including people that perceive that they do have the ability. Everyone suffers from it to varying degrees (the specifics of which are not known, despite the patterns that appear to be there), but it is near impossible to perceive in oneself for many interesting reasons, including some possibly significant ones which have been observed but have not yet gotten much attention in the scientific community (who does not know what it does not know, something which may only be perceivable in certain states of mind).
My conspiracy theory is that it is not accidental that we don't teach these things in school outside of specialized programs, because it is a vector that can be used to distort beliefs across all demographics, including self-perceived informed rationalists, and the effects of this can be observed on a daily basis.