college grads a minority

[marshwiggle]

Any simple answer to these sorts of debates will come up short.

For instance, there is this on climate change beliefs and education which would seem to suggest that cognitive bias and political orientation are what dictates how people think.

Studies show that education has rather modest effects on climate change beliefs when we look at society as a whole (e.g. Hornsey et al., 2016; Lewandowsky & Oberauer, 2016). Instead, when we examine political groups separately, it turns out that for people on the political left the conventional wisdom is correct: the more educated they are, the more likely they are to believe that climate change is occurring and is caused by humans. In contrast, for the political right, education has modest effects on climate change beliefs and some findings even suggest that the educated are less likely to think that climate change is occurring, is caused by humans, or that we should do something about it (e.g., Drummond & Fischhoff, 2017; Hamilton, 2011; Kahan et al., 2012). These paradoxical effects of education led some to conclude that targeting education or public understanding of science is of little use when it comes to changing climate change beliefs. Learning about these findings was intriguing: how is it even possible that people who are better equipped to understand science endorse scientific knowledge to a lesser extent than those who have lower levels of education?

This phenomena, and this very discussion, simply illustrates how the culture wars are affecting our modes of thinking.

For an issue with the opposite bias, look at how groups accept the science about biological sex, for instance as it affects athletic performance. On the left science is completely ignored in favour of ideology.

The culture wars definitely affect our modes of thinking at both (noisy!) ends of the political spectrum. The plurality near the centre who largely accept science are often drowned out in public discourse.

[kaysixteen]

I get that many folks back in the day, who never saw the inside of a college, were very smart, good critical thinkers, statesmen, etc., but things have changed, and many of these people were essentially autodidacts, back in the day when people who never went to college, even finished high school, read and read widely, and consumed highbrow educational opportunities such as old-style documentaries, PBS, etc.   This is just not the case today.   Most people in this social and educational class have actually come to eschew, often hate, education, esp higher education-- polls are now showing that a majority of GOP votership actually thinks colleges are bad for America. etc.

I was thinking about a story I read somewhere recently, which pointed out, correctly, that nowadays in the US, cigarette smoking, once common across socioeconomic lines, has largely, amongst adults, become confined to the working and lower classes and especially correllated with non-college education (1/3 of adults with only a hs diploma still smoke, as opposed to 5% of those with a graduate degree).   The author speculated that this was because the latter group simply has more knowledge and thus is less likely to risk smoking.  I think this is largely in error.   Nowadays, outside of perhaps some mentally handicapped people, how many American adults do not know that cigarette use is bad?   Some folks who started smoking as rebellious teens may have simply been unable to quit, but since we have now done a pretty good job preventing cig sales and use to minors (we now have a strict 21 year old cig age nationwide), many people are smoking, I suspect, because it is a 'f*** you, libtards' social/ tribal identity marker.

WRT my mechanic who thinks that Bill Gates engineered chips in the covid vax, what was I supposed to say to the guy?  I confess, perhaps for self-interested reasons< I did keep my mouth shut when he said it.   The same way I kept my mouth shut when the guy in my church told me the vax would rewrite his DNA.   That man was very intelligent-- he graduated first in his class at the union HVAC apprenticeship program.   He is also now dead.   The propaganda he bathed his brains with, and lacked the critical thinking skills to analyze appropriately, told him things that were just not true, and he acted on those lies, to his great hurt.

I have also been musing about the tendency of the educated to be more likely to have bought into the lies wrt vaxxes and autism.  This is true.  But, consider this-- many of these folks had kids diagnosed with autism, and were probably not thinking rationally and looking for something to blame.   It is true that correllation does not equal causation, but educated folks know that correllations *may* indicate causation, and warrant scientific investigation (if I put that frozen pizza into a 450F degree oven for a half an hour, it is no longer frozen then, and the causation is clear enough).   Also, these people did not come to this conclusion in a vacuum... they are used to trusting scientific conclusions.   And, in this case, the conclusion was a paper written by a credentialled MD researcher and published in Britain's leading medical journal.   Obviously it was debunked later, but it was reasonable for people to consider it seriously when it was published.

[dismalist]

Nowadays, outside of perhaps some mentally handicapped people, how many American adults do not know that cigarette use is bad?

Nowadays, outside of working stiffs, how many American adults know that smoking cigarettes is a great pleasure?

We must not assume that everybody who has different tastes from us is stupid. Otherwise, we wind up taking the vote away from people we don't agree with.

[By the way, cigarette smoking declined since about 1950, when there weren't all that many intellectuals, and certainly a lot since the 1990's when cigarette taxes were increased -- rightly -- to capture the extra medical cost that smokers impose on society.]

[Wahoo Redux]

There were a great many highly educated Nazis.

From my own experience, the menially-employed cigarette smoker is often someone who has a great many problems in life, substance abuse prime among these problems, and unable to launch.  The cigarettes are a manifestation of some other issue than critical thinking or information literacy.

In defense of K16, I truly believe education helps our students (even our bad ones, even ones who do not finish the degree) to develop cognitive tools and critical thinking skills which they might not have otherwise.  And no, I am not saying "college is the only way" to develop said skills (which always seems to be the strawman) but it is a very good way.

As we should always remember, education is not just about getting a job.

[dismalist]

From my own experience, the menially-employed cigarette smoker is often someone who has a great many problems in life, substance abuse prime among these problems, and unable to launch.  The cigarettes are a manifestation of some other issue than critical thinking or information literacy.

The cigarette smoker, no longer a conformist, would benefit from therapy.

[marshwiggle]

I have also been musing about the tendency of the educated to be more likely to have bought into the lies wrt vaxxes and autism.  This is true.  But, consider this-- many of these folks had kids diagnosed with autism, and were probably not thinking rationally and looking for something to blame.   

Research indicates that critical thinking and IQ are virtually uncorrelated. Also, critical thinking often doesn't happen unless people are primed for it in a specific situation. (They will normally just think the "normal" way, and don't really think deeply unless and until they're made aware that this situation explicitly requires it.)

(I think that may have come from "Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgement" by Daniel Kahneman; it was from some book I read not too long ago but I can't recall specifically.)

[Wahoo Redux]

From my own experience, the menially-employed cigarette smoker is often someone who has a great many problems in life, substance abuse prime among these problems, and unable to launch.  The cigarettes are a manifestation of some other issue than critical thinking or information literacy.

The cigarette smoker, no longer a conformist, would benefit from therapy.

Or rehab.

[dismalist]

From my own experience, the menially-employed cigarette smoker is often someone who has a great many problems in life, substance abuse prime among these problems, and unable to launch.  The cigarettes are a manifestation of some other issue than critical thinking or information literacy.

The cigarette smoker, no longer a conformist, would benefit from therapy.

Or rehab.

Irony.

Smokers have always have had fun smoking.

There are costs and there are benefits to smoking. Some people's decisions are different from ours. Some are less risk averse, some are more risk averse.

There is no reason it should matter to the rest of us.

[Wahoo Redux]

From my own experience, the menially-employed cigarette smoker is often someone who has a great many problems in life, substance abuse prime among these problems, and unable to launch.  The cigarettes are a manifestation of some other issue than critical thinking or information literacy.

The cigarette smoker, no longer a conformist, would benefit from therapy.

Or rehab.

Irony.

Smokers have always have had fun smoking.

There are costs and there are benefits to smoking. Some people's decisions are different from ours. Some are less risk averse, some are more risk averse.

There is no reason it should matter to the rest of us.

I do not make other people's smoking any of my business.

And some people just love it.  I quit and I've never stopped missing my cigarettes.

One could make the argument that smoking actually costs society a great deal of money and therefore is our business, but freedom is a dangerous thing.  Let'em smoke.  That's the smoker's right.

I am just pointing out that in this day and age we often see smoking associated with other problems such as drug addiction.  Thus, if you are looking at people smoking despite what we know about the health risks, you may very well have a symptom of other dangerous problems, not a matter of education or IQ.

[Anselm]

Long ago I was told that the experts think that 30% of high school grads should go to college. 60% should get a 2 year vocational diploma and 10% should go straight to work.   It makes sense to me that college should be for those significantly above average in intelligence and a love for learning.  Many business students should be in some sort of business trade school.  I know that they have these in Europe since I met some students in this kind of school.   

[dismalist]

One could make the argument that smoking actually costs society a great deal of money and therefore is our business, ... .

Smokers were net monetary contributors to society before excise taxes rose, and not counting those excise taxes:

Smokers do have higher health care costs, but enough smokers die early of lung cancer so a lot of social security payments are saved. This outweighs the extra health care costs.

Meanwhile, excise taxes have been raised to cover extra public health care costs.

we often see smoking associated with other problems such as drug addiction.  Thus, if you are looking at people smoking despite what we know about the health risks, you may very well have a symptom of other dangerous problems,

Yeah, therapy for having fun and taking risks is apparently what's needed.

[Kron3007]

From my own experience, the menially-employed cigarette smoker is often someone who has a great many problems in life, substance abuse prime among these problems, and unable to launch.  The cigarettes are a manifestation of some other issue than critical thinking or information literacy.

The cigarette smoker, no longer a conformist, would benefit from therapy.

Or rehab.

Irony.

Smokers have always have had fun smoking.

There are costs and there are benefits to smoking. Some people's decisions are different from ours. Some are less risk averse, some are more risk averse.

There is no reason it should matter to the rest of us.

The decision to smoke, and continue to do so, is not based strictly on critical thinking and intellectual capacity.  The problem is that we are not robots, we are biological creatures with a social structure and are inherently different biologically. 

Many of us smoked when we were younger.  Some of us quit, others still smoke.  We all knew it was bad for our health, finances, etc., but decided to start anyway due to social pressures.  This is definitely not a matter of critical thinking since we all knew these things, it is a matter of social structure.  This extends to beliefs, where you are more likely to support the beliefs of your peers even if they are spurious and defy fact (ie young Earth christians....).       

The "decision" to continue smoking is also not really based on a rational thought process.  Again, we all know it is bad for us and most people would like to quit, but it is not that simple.  I know some people who can smoke periodically then quit fairly easy, while others just cant kick the habit even when they try.  I smoked briefly in high school, but was able to quite fairly easily while I have friends who were never able despite many attempts.  It was just easier for me.  Likewise, some people can go tho the casino periodically and have a good time, while others develop a problem and end up gambling away their house.  These choices have little to do with rational thought or critical thinking, and much more to do with your biological predisposition.  Perhaps there is a link, but it is not that clear cut IMO.

In the case of university, I really do think it is more correlation than causation.  Sure, my critical thinking likely improved during my studies, but I think the bigger part is that people who are naturally good critical thinkers are simply more likely to go to university in the first place.  There is also a huge environmental (family/social structure) component involved in this.  People who grow up in households that value and support higher learning are probably more likely to read to children at a young age and foster these characteristics throughout their upbringing.     

   

[Hibush]

... people who are naturally good critical thinkers are simply more likely to go to university in the first place.  There is also a huge environmental (family/social structure) component involved in this.  People who grow up in households that value and support higher learning are probably more likely to read to children at a young age and foster these characteristics throughout their upbringing.     

The mechanistic underpinnings are crucial to understand if one is to plan for the future student body, whether the goal is to have the institution get enough students to survive, or it is to have a student body more ethnically representative of the overall population.

A competitive school is going to have trouble attracting and retaining a brilliant young person whose parents think college is frivolous and who did not read to the kid nor engage in critical dialogue throughout their life. Some schools try gaming the admissions criteria and offering full aid to get the student to matriculate, but then leave the student to flounder without needed social support or habits of mind.

[ciao_yall]

One could make the argument that smoking actually costs society a great deal of money and therefore is our business, ... .

Smokers were net monetary contributors to society before excise taxes rose, and not counting those excise taxes:

Smokers do have higher health care costs, but enough smokers die early of lung cancer so a lot of social security payments are saved. This outweighs the extra health care costs.

Smokers were also contributing to the economy through working, paying taxes, and supporting their families. The widows and orphans left behind can be a source of survivor benefits, paid for by taxpayers. So, not sure it's a net net.

Meanwhile, excise taxes have been raised to cover extra public health care costs.

Are you sure it's sufficient to cover the excess costs? The tobacco lobby works pretty hard to make sure cigarettes remain affordable.

[dismalist]

One could make the argument that smoking actually costs society a great deal of money and therefore is our business, ... .

Smokers were net monetary contributors to society before excise taxes rose, and not counting those excise taxes:

Smokers do have higher health care costs, but enough smokers die early of lung cancer so a lot of social security payments are saved. This outweighs the extra health care

Smokers were also contributing to the economy through working, paying taxes, and supporting their families. The widows and orphans left behind can be a source of survivor benefits, paid for by taxpayers. So, not sure it's a net net.

Meanwhile, excise taxes have been raised to cover extra public health care costs.

Are you sure it's sufficient to cover the excess costs? The tobacco lobby works pretty hard to make sure cigarettes remain affordable.

I said smokers contributed on net, not counting excise taxes, so surely more with the higher excise taxes specifically justified by higher health care costs.. The loss of income taxes is also in the calculations.

Smokers contributing to the economy? Widows, orphans? There's less money left over for them when the smokers are dead! Don't marry a smoker and/or get more people to smoke!