Random Thought

[dr_tectonic]

Thought:

The way to get a trait to spread throughout a population is with selection pressure: making those who have the trait more successful than those who do not. Positive or negative selection will both work.

If you want to teach people something, put them in a situation where they need to know it to accomplish some goal. They *will* figure it out.

"Critical thinking" seems to be the trait that is most needed by our modern citizenry, if we want to make the world a better place.

So we just need to figure out some way of making basic critical thinking skills correlate with success in some widely desirable context... Right?

EDIT: Please note, I'm not talking about removing "stupid" from the gene pool -- that's something that other people brought up in the comments section, and frankly, although I made a couple jokes about it, it's a lousy idea on a number of fronts. All I said was, it seems to me like we need more "critical thinking" going on, and the way to get that is to somehow reward that with success. Okay? Okay.

Comments

Re: white trash

[kung-fu-monkey.livejournal.com]

Thank you. My "ghost" post this morning was attempting to explain that, but I think I really lost my cool trying to get there. Some people just have not had the chance to realize that critical thinking is what's really needed to make them more aware of situations. The promise of wiping out a caste of people doesn't really help show that we've got anything on them. I dunno. I'm getting upset again. I think I'll stop now.