Oh, great, they are now messing with our fund raising appeal. If I had not gotten up in the middle of the night to check, I would not have caught their removal of our plea for help. This is what we have to put up with practically daily now as things are speeding up and getting much more intense. Please help us fight this battle by donating off to the right at the donation button and send a message that we will not be stopped. Thank you and Bless you for all your support to our mission.
Vatic Note: I went to school as a kid when the school system was completely under local control, by a local school board and the local PTA who attended meetings regularly and gave input. During that time, our education system ranked #2 in the world. Today its federalized and has dropped to #39.
I bring this up to provide a context for this article below about our critical thinking skills which I bemoan all the time. The teaching mechanisms are controlled tightly by the Feds and monitored regularly and funding is tied into the school complying with Federal mandates. Its why we have dropped so hard and so fast.
As kids we were not only taught to "ask questions" if something did not make sense, but were given answers or taught to think through the answers ourselves. Critical thinking skills is a must for any analyst or researcher, since half the job is after you found the information. Then you must "critically analyze what you have read and then ask questions to fill in the gaps of those things that don't or didn't make sense.
Math in school is one of those subjects that continually pushs the envelope in using our Critical thinking skills. Below he shows us why the powers that be, attack that skill, on a continuous basis to try and prevent our developing it to its full potential. I found this to be an excellent article and worthy of keeping handy to refer back to when in doubt or if you are committed to developing the skill for yourselves. We are going to need it if these insane psychos prevail.
WE did a blog on "The 25 Tactics of Disinformation", very early on in this blog, and #5 is name calling instead of rational discussion. He explains below why that is in there and how it disrupts the critical thinking process. He also alludes to the method of countering it so it does not take you out of your critical thinking mode.
The War On Critical Thinking
I’ve been a member of a certain online forum for a few months now. The topic of the forum centers around truth, logic and exposing conspiracies as well as government and media corruption.
The owner, an ex NSA analyst, and core members there are very astute critical thinkers and they have cut through many of the lies rammed down the throats of the unwitting using sheer logic and common sense to investigate the legitimacy of the stories pushed out through the media.
They have proven that the Fukushima nuclear reactors were sabotaged in March 2011, the 9.0 earthquake reported on that date didn’t happen, and most recently, that the explosions in Damascus, Syria were nuclear detonations rather than conventional explosives. So as you can imagine, the people and groups who want to keep these facts hidden under a veil of lies have been taking a lot of interest in the community.
After each new revelation the forum gets hit by trolls either working as individuals or with software allowing them to log in to multiple accounts at once and they spam the hell out of the place. We’ve come to expect it over there now, but I took a great interest in the methods they were using.
I kept asking myself why they were posting the types of messages and replies and after several months, I’ve formed a theory: It’s not the site, the forum or the topics they are attacking, it’s not even really the people – it’s the minds of the members – specifically: the critical thought process itself.
Here’s why I’ve come to this conclusion:
When a person is thinking critically, they are using and developing the area of their brains that allow for that type of thinking. The more you think this way, the more refined and astute that area of the brain becomes. And in a world where critical thinking is the enemy of the control structure of the elites, they and their minions will do anything to make sure the critical thinking portion of the brain gets as little use as possible.
When a troll injects religion into the forum – and they have expended a great deal of time and energy trying to do so – they bring the reader’s brain out of critical thinking mode and into reflective, belief or creative mode. Now that the brain is in this mode, it’s nearly incapable of the critical thinking part because it’s busy elsewhere.
Slinging personal insults is another one of their tactics. Not only does it cause tension and deter casual readers or new people from joining the discussion, it puts the brain of the person being attacked into defensive emotional mode where critical thought is overpowered by emotion. You’re not thinking critically and using logic when you’re mad. You are reacting, not acting.
Calling things into doubt puts the brain into cognitive dissonance mode where the reader struggles with him/her self. What’s really true and what’s a lie? Are demons controlling everything? Is reality a hologram or program playing out in some galactic super computer? We see topics like this over there all the time and their sole purpose is to distract and give the impression that logic is futile.
It’s fascinating to watch this play out. On the majority of forums online, those topics and tactics have flooded the discussions but on this particular forum, the members are so astute that they recognize the troll tactics instantly and the moderators simply delete the threads. It’s a constant game of whack-a-mole but the trolls are powerless over there. It’s actually hilarious seeing their reactions.
But, I digress…
Online trolls will do anything they can on forums, social media, blogs, etc. to pull your mind out of logic and critical thinking mode and into anything but. Your best defense against this is simply knowing what they’re doing and why.
The forum full of smart people and critical thinkers I’ve been talking about is here: Jim Stone’s Forum. The domain name is a bit strange, but it’s that way because his other sites have been targeted so badly he had to abandon them. If you decide to visit the forum, please leave your religious ruminations and existentialism at the door, or you won’t last long
The article is reproduced in accordance with Section 107 of title 17 of the Copyright Law of the United States relating to fair-use and is for the purposes of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.
That's an intriguing theory as to why trolls do what they do. Regardless of whether that is the intention of the trolls, it is nonetheless the result of what they do. For that reason, it behooves us to keep in a critical thinking mode regardless of whether we're thrown a curve ball by a troll or just a plain old-fashioned fool.
ReplyDeleteAAR, remember in the beginning of this blog, we did one on the 25 tactics of disinformation? They use it to train their trolls. So they do it on purpose. I added a section in the body of this blog about those tactics and you can match them up with what he is saying. Its either intentional or a coincidence.
ReplyDeleteGood post my friend. You are right about Math. When I was in school, my parents used to say that the math they taught us was total opposite of how they were taught. I failed tremendously in math, and they always swore I had a "learning disability" because I was so slow with the stuff. They go through it way too fast, and then how you work it out, it's backwards from how you should really work it out.
ReplyDeleteIt gets worse in High school with Algebra, when over 60% of the classes fail that subject. It's split into 2 classes now because of that. Algebra A and B. So actually you are doing the same useless crap TWICE because most kids fail it.
I never got past Algebra in school. I had a teacher who was a college professor in Algebra ,and a mathematician. This man would get there and tell you that high schools had no business whatsoever teaching that stuff, and he was a really great teacher but even half of his class failed.
Thanks, Gary. You are so right about math, I had to do tutoring about a year ago for a quarter with 4th graders. I ended up with 6 at a time, when I am only suppose to have 1 at a time. These were bright kids, so I didn't understand why they were failing. That is when the teacher explained to me how very restricted they are in teaching. They have to follow fed guidelines or they get written up if they don't, and could get fired after a while.
ReplyDeleteI won't go into the whole bloody mess, but after one quarter teaching these kids the way I learned, they all ended up a year later I found out, with B+ and A- grades.... after failing, so you know the system is the problem, not the kids. Dumb them down so they won't ask questions and will believe anything the press feeds them.