Thinking critically is in direct contradiction with the notion that everyone's opinion is equally valid. Our society does not promote critical thinking as a useful life skill, it's more about appeal to authority and belonging. Our culture would need to change to make this a life skill worth having.
>Thinking critically is in direct contradiction with the notion that everyone's opinion is equally valid
Democratic societies tend to follow the model that truth comes out of conflict in the marketplace of ideas: the best idea wins, and everyone’s opinion is equally valid as spoken, until it is shown to be unfit through competition.
Authoritarian movements tend to follow the more religious model that the truth is only knowable by a learned/privileged class in a society, and those not in this group should support them and leave them to discover it, then accept it.
So, I would say critical thinking is necessary for democracy and anathema to authoritarianism, or perhaps the democratization of critical thought is necessary for healthy democracy.
> Democratic societies tend to follow the model that truth comes out of conflict in the marketplace of ideas: the best idea wins, and everyone’s opinion is equally valid as spoken, until it is shown to be unfit through competition.
And like most ideas most people have about marketplaces, it's wrong. The marketplace of ideas is like most marketplaces in that it, by virtue of being built of people, inherits all the flaws present in those people: emotional thinking, biases (conscious and unconscious), and all the mental frailties that plague us as beings: concerns about social status, fitting in, and the desire to flex.
As a result, again like any other marketplace, simply "having the best product" is a distant last place to far more effective strategies to ensure your success in the market: good branding and advertising, collusion with other participants, vertical integration and of course, bullshitting the consumers on an industrial scale. And, failing all that, litigation.
That an idea succeeds in a marketplace of ideas is no different than a product which succeeds in a marketplace: it doesn't mean anything intrinsic about the idea/product, it just means that idea/product did well in this market, at this time, with these consumers, and if any of those circumstances were changed, it is entirely possible that product would then lose.
Since critical thinking is performed by humans, surely the same human ‘flaws’ apply.
I would think that having characteristics of humanity is not necessarily bad for a human oriented system, and I can also point to any number of atrocities that were the ‘perfectly rational’ course of action for a statesman, nation or movement at some point in time.
> Since critical thinking is performed by humans, surely the same human ‘flaws’ apply.
Oh absolutely. And that's just accounting for actual critical thinking in which human flaws enter the equation and muck things up. Huge swathes of public intellectuals claim to be rational, objective, critical thinkers all the time when they're spouting complete nonsense, usually for a paycheck.
> I would think that having characteristics of humanity is not necessarily bad for a human oriented system, and I can also point to any number of atrocities that were the ‘perfectly rational’ course of action for a statesman, nation or movement at some point in time.
I would also add to that, that a purely rational worldview or thought isn't even necessarily a good thing. We will never escape the foibles of our human limitations (at least, probably) but in the same way, we must always retain our humanity too.
That seems like a very naive view of markets. More idealistic than realistic and to a degree that’s frankly harmful as quite often bad actors abuse markets while using the idealism as propaganda to confuse, gaslighting, and distract.
