Critical Thinking Skills

A topic came up with a colleague that is near and dear to the work I do.  It related to a couple of topics that had been in the news in recent months.   The news she had been reading grossly misrepresented the facts in each case.  I shared with her what I had seen in the data that was relevant which really contradicted what she had read.  She was really quick to dismiss me saying something to the effect of, "I don't have access to your statistics or information.  All I can rely on is the news."  That is where the conversation ended.

I've had similar conversations with other people and each time I walk away feeling so disappointed.  These are people who although may not understand the nuance of the specific topic, have some knowledge into what we do.  They are people I had always felt were reasonably intelligent.  And yet they are completely closed to anything I, a colleague someone they probably would call a friend, might have to say.

I suppose there was a day when the nightly news was reasonably objective.  Then we switched to this 24/7 news cycle with news "entertainment" companies thrown into the mix.  Add in social media and its algorithms and it feels like a losing game.

But it's not really new.  I remember a conversation I had with my ex-husband in the last 6 months or so we were together where he made a claim in support of Elon Musk.  It was a claim that didn't sound right to me but I hadn't done the research to know any different so I asked him more about it.  

His defenses were up before the question even fully left my lips.  He had only read the headline.  He claimed hadn't prepared a whole defense.  He didn't want me to question him.

I didn't want a thesis from him.  And he had to have known I wasn't universally against Musk at that time.  We had quite a few discussions about the complexities of him and what he had accomplished.  There is nuance to most topics.   (This was back in late 2023 or early 2024.)  So I was open to hearing more facts.  But I needed more than a headline.  I wanted details that I could analyze.  I wasn't willing to just take for fact something that had been written in some article.

I grew up with parents who demonstrated critical thinking skills consistently.  We didn't just assume the news was right.  We discussed it.  We compared it to other information we knew.  We checked sources.  We talked about other sources.  It wasn't criticism to question someone else's information, although it also didn't mean we had to agree with them.  There are still topics my Dad and I disagree on but when we discuss them, we discuss facts.  We don't dismiss each other.

I wasn't prepared for a relationship where I could not enter into discussions like that with my spouse.  And I wasn't prepared for a world where my colleagues would be quicker to trust their media sources than their colleagues who work directly in the field.  Do people not learn critical thinking skills growing up?