Synergies We Learn to See: Critical Thinking for the Masses

As my fellow colleague Lyn’s article has suggested, social media has bred a culture of mindlessness and ignorance when consuming information, which has consequently propagated this false and/or questionable ‘facts and statistics’ under the belief that it is true. A vicious cycle that increases its victims exponentially, the algorithms present in social media can be quite shady, and seem conclusive when it is the exact opposite. 

For example, information that is repeated in many news sites may initially feel trustworthy, because you’d expect the information to have been checked and confirmed by all the separate outlets. However, if said information is repeated verbatim by every outlet, and if none of them can give a credible source to the information except for one another, then it’s very likely that what we have on our hands is a case of circular reporting. 

That said, while misinformation might be around every corner, that doesn’t mean you always have to be their victim, dear reader. Like any problem, there are solutions and strategies that you can use to keep yourself safe from falsehoods. Integral to all of them is critical thinking skills. Recent literature has evidenced that ‘critical thinking, as a form of information literacy, provides a means to critically engage with online content’. The moment you let someone else think for you is the moment you become vulnerable. Every and all information you come across is best validated by or through yourself. 

That is not to say that you should make a career in every single field so that you can verify every single piece of information laid before you (though I’d greatly applaud you if you could have more careers than Barbie). After all, it is not and should not be expected for everyone to have deep and technical understanding of all fields because of our society’s focus on specialisation. Rather, you should learn the fundamental critical thinking skills that can be applied to all situations such that, even if you can’t personally attest to it, you can personally attest that reliable sources can attest that the news is true.

So what exactly are critical thinking skills, and how do you gain them? 

I’m sure all of us have heard of critical thinking skills from our school teachers and educational syllabuses and thought that sounded like the most pointless or abstract thing to learn. However, critical thinking appears so frequently in our lives because they’re extremely versatile and applicable. Regardless of what field you’re working in, you’ll be working with information and the processing of that information, a process which requires critical thinking at every step. Consequently, it is very important to ensure that you develop and continue developing critical thinking skills throughout your life (that’s right, even after graduating school too!).

Then what skills and mindsets should you focus on honing if you want to become a critical thinker? Due to the constraints inherent to this being an article, we’ll focus on avoiding five pitfalls of misinformation, of which the first three are outlined by the University of Victoria’s LibGuide.

The first thing to watch out for is a lack of deliberation. Suppose you’ve lost your keys. You’re much more likely to find them if you’re deliberately looking for them than when you’re not, right? The idea is similar. By being aware that the information you’re reading could be false, you raise your guard against being fooled by such information because you become more aware of warning signs and signals that are telling you that the information needs further verification. This mindset can be cultivated by just being conscientious about the information you read, and not simply absorbing everything. When scrolling, take the time to think whether what you’re reading is really true or not. 

Understandably though, this method requires you to have the mental energy to verify information to the detail if you truly want to believe in it completely. Hence, I recommend that you pick and prioritise which information you verify. If the information matters to you and you want to share it or keep it in mind to apply to your life, make sure that it’s something you can truly believe in. If the only reason you believe in it is because it hasn’t been proven false, then really anyone can say anything is true. Don’t believe because it isn’t wrong, believe because it can’t be wrong. Don’t let something someone took 3 seconds to come up with change your thoughts without even checking it!

Secondly, watch out for repeated news. Of course, this doesn't necessarily flag information as untrue, but it should raise the idea that you might succumb more easily to believing in that idea. The human mind is predisposed to familiarity. That’s why the more you see a piece of information, the more likely you are to believe it. Well, don’t let it trick you! As much as it wants to, repetition will never necessarily indicate accuracy. So, when you see constantly repeated information, make sure to question whether you believe it because it’s actually true or because you’ve read it too many times.

Third, watch out for novel news. False news is more likely to be novel news. When learning new information, our brain is more likely to accept it as it grabs our attention and makes it feel as if we are learning something new and updating what we know, encouraging us to take it in as fact. Ironically, in a way this point is contrary to the second point, because though repeated news can be trouble, it doesn’t necessarily mean that novel news are reliable either, which only drives home the point that the frequency with which a piece of information appears does not say anything concrete about it’s reliability.

Finally, stay calm, don’t get provoked. Social media, in an attempt to go viral and increase ad revenue, will strive to maximise interactions with its readers, whether positive or negative. Frankly speaking, people are more likely to comment when they disagree with something than when they agree. Hence, posts are motivated to negatively provoke readers to be disseminated further by the algorithm, which will increase its interactions further and repeat the cycle. As such, one of the best things you can do to resist being affected by misinformation is staying calm and rational. When emotions become involved, your biases rise to the surface and affect your actions without you realising. So remember, they’re trying to make you mad. Don’t give them the satisfaction of succeeding.

With that, I send you off into the world with, hopefully, more skills equipped. But wait, did you realise that I misnumbered the number of things to watch out for? No. Well. The fifth is this: do you actually believe me? What makes you think I’m right, I’m only Isabella Yan, the first-year film studies student who’s Wui Shuen’s (Head of Operations) cousin, and you don’t know anything about me nor my trustworthiness, nor do I have any credits to offer. So will you decide for yourself, or will you let me, and everyone else, do it for you?

By Isabella Tan Yan