I’ve recently been thinking that there are 4 main categories of educators who are trying to correct bad thinking or help improve rational thinking and that 3 out of 4 of them are essential for improving critical thinking across society (whereas one type is probably harmful):
- Child education: those who aim to teach children “critical thinking,” – which often (but not always) means teaching the basic thinking, logic, and analysis skills that the majority of adults eventually acquire one way or another. I believe this is a valuable service (much like teaching reading, which is a valuable service even though most people will learn to read). I also think it usually sets the bar pretty low for what good thinking is, but the best of this work sets the bar higher. This work can also serve as a feeder into categories 3 and 4 if it fosters an interest in thinking well.
- Dunking, which comes in two flavors:
- 2a. Stupidity Dunking: those who fight unusually bad ways of thinking (that <1% of the population believe) – e.g., they argue against the beliefs of Flat Earthers or people who think Bill Gates created the COVID pandemic. Quite a lot of this work comes across as making fun of people with dumb beliefs or gawking at stupidity (without encouraging self-reflection on one’s own beliefs), and so I think it isn’t that valuable and may well be harmful. I believe the best of this work uses these extreme examples as case studies to teach genuine critical thinking skills, which can be genuinely valuable.
- 2b. Out-group Dunking: those that point out dumb thinking engaged in by the opposing political group (but don’t critique similarly egregious errors from their side or even defend bad thinking and lack of nuance from their side). Like dunking on Flat Earthers, I think this is usually not useful and perhaps actively harmful – it gives the impression that you (the viewer) are smart and the other side is dumb. To improve critical thinking, it’s essential to focus on your own thinking weaknesses, not just make it about other people.
- Mass market: Those who combat common types of bad thinking – e.g., that because a particular two-year stretch was unusually cold, that means humans are not causing climate change, or that food not being “natural” means it’s very likely harmful to your health. This work often focuses on public education (often for an audience that has only a limited interest in learning to think well). It often teaches just the most basic concepts/building blocks related to logic, statistics, rhetorical fallacies, and cognitive biases – since these are concepts that many people aren’t that familiar with. I think this work is often quite valuable and hopefully helps serve as a feeder into the next category.
- Advanced: Those who want to help people who already care about thinking well further improve their thinking – e.g., by discussing the strength of evidence on complex topics or the pros and cons of different policies in a nuanced way. This audience already knows many or most of the most basic concepts for thinking but could benefit from learning to apply these concepts more frequently and fluidly, as well as from learning more advanced concepts that build on the basic ones. This is the category I aim to be in with a lot of my writing. As you get more and more advanced, the market for this gets smaller and smaller, so usually, I try to position what I write in a way that it’s still accessible for the least advanced among the “advanced” audience while still hoping to say things that will interest the more advanced among this group. As such, I try to avoid jargon and avoid assuming knowledge of ideas beyond the very basics of good thinking. To contrast this with another approach, I see LessWrong as being more focused on appealing to the tip of the advanced group, which narrows the audience but can be very informative for that readership.
Other than the “dunking” category (which often has questionable value), I think all of these categories of education play an important role in the critical thinking ecosystem.
This piece was first written on January 24, 2025, and first appeared on my website on March 25, 2025.
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