I genuinely think this is actually one of the most important things we can do at this point because the epistemic crisis we’re in the middle of is probably the greatest and most difficult threat to democracy we face. https://twitter.com/wwedanielbryan/status/1325582166063919106

Although I would say that older people might immediately need this more than young people, my strong impression is that Millennials and Gen Z are relatively savvy overall when it comes to discerning the validity of information.

Zoomer QAnon/Pizzagaters on TikTok notwithstanding

Here’s the problem, though: this isn’t just about knowing how to do research. One of the things you will ALWAYS hear from conspiracy theorists is “do your own research/I did the research”. This is even more about the decline of epistemic elites and knowledge gatekeepers.

Both of which are super problematic in and of themselves! Knowledge production is a key element of oppressive social power. But the fact remains, one of the primary tactics on the part of the right wing media apparatus has been to destroy trust in knowledge institutions.

So without restoring some form of that trust, all the research in the world won’t help you. Which is part of where the whole discerning-truth-from-misinformation comes in, but you can’t do that unless we all live in and agree on the same facts and valid sources for those facts.

So... It’s a much bigger challenge than not knowing how to do research, and I honestly don’t know what we do about it.

Okay, let me try to clarify what I mean here, because I’m getting good responses to this but they’re still dependent on doing what I’m saying has been maybe irreparably damaged, which is relying on a shared epistemology and trusting certain sources over others.

You have about a third of the country that literally does not trust traditional knowledge production. They’ve been taught that the mainstream media lies. They’ve been taught that academia is all evil socialist atheists indoctrinating the youth.

They’ve been taught that the medical community is 100% in it for the money and social power (see, one problem here is that not all of this is totally completely *wrong*).

Is the world round? Yeah, sure. How do I know? People I trust have told me it is.

Now, I can also do experiments on my own, fairly simple ones, that do prove pretty conclusively that it is. But I don’t do those, because I have other things to do and the people I trust telling me it is? That’s good enough for me.

Someone who believes in Flat Earth does not give a shit about any of that.

You cannot reason a Flat Earther out of being one. You can throw all the research in the world at them. They don’t believe you because they’re literally in a different factual universe from you.

They’re in a factual universe where all those smart knowledgable people you trust as elites and knowledge gatekeepers are liars and brainwashers.

You can’t teach these people Occam’s Razor, because they’ll just twist it around to support Flat Earth.

You can’t teach them how to discern good research from bad because they’ve already decided that the people who do the good research are liars. How do they know they’re liars? Because they’re saying the world is round, and people who say that are lying.

Conspiracy theorists are research *fiends*. 9/11 Truthers know more than I will ever know about structural engineering. Their ability to learn things isn’t the problem here. Nor is their critical thinking, because conspiracy theorists are actually pretty good at that.

I know, I know, you don’t believe me. Trust me, they are. People don’t get into conspiracy theories because they can’t think critically, they get into conspiracy theories because something very deep about how they understand the world is broken.

Now a massive hydra of an ideological media empire has made it a project, over the course of decades, to create a country that is something like 30% conspiracy theorists, or at least people vulnerable to that kind of epistemic breakage.

And you can shove those people into all the media literacy courses you like. Some of them might bend a little, but probably most of them won’t, or they’ll take what you teach them and through a kind of malignant alchemy transform it into something that works against you.

HOW KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION WORKS ON THE DEEPEST LEVEL IS BROKEN.

You can’t teach people to discern good knowledge from bad if they already don’t trust you or anything you have to say.

Because the very things that make certain kinds of knowledge trustworthy to you are what make it entirely untrustworthy to them.

Stuff like media literacy courses is good. Teaching critical thinking is good. But beyond a certain point you’re just managing symptoms.