People are as a mass more educated than ever, so you'd expect the quality of public debate to be getting higher - In particular in politics and the media. The compulsory reservations thread got me thinking of this:. Increasingly fake news,populist demagogues, celebrity trash culture and irrational argument are however on the rise.
Who and what is responsible for this? Personally I think that one aspect of education missed out upon is critical reasoning. It wasn't taught in any great level when I was at school until A Level General Studies and even then not to a massive extent until University. Yet how can we expect people to make key decisions as rational actors if they do not have these toolkits available?
Another sector I blame is the media, increasingly market driven. In the good old days when I was a boy, not too long ago, there were only four channels available to most,which all had a strong public service remit. Now it's all about chasing ratings and giving the viewer instant satisfaction. I'm not a believer in mass censorship or rolling back technological progress here though. But we do need to up standards somehow, to promote truth and reason and intelligent discussion.
Has anyone else any idea why it is we are in this mess and how we get out of it?
We've had mass democracy with reasonable policies before (be they left, right or centre) and there was a time when policymakers were more likely to give way to experts rather than tabloid newspapers and their ilk, which ironically seem to become more influential even as their sales decline.
Who and what is responsible for this? Personally I think that one aspect of education missed out upon is critical reasoning. It wasn't taught in any great level when I was at school until A Level General Studies and even then not to a massive extent until University. Yet how can we expect people to make key decisions as rational actors if they do not have these toolkits available?
Another sector I blame is the media, increasingly market driven. In the good old days when I was a boy, not too long ago, there were only four channels available to most,which all had a strong public service remit. Now it's all about chasing ratings and giving the viewer instant satisfaction. I'm not a believer in mass censorship or rolling back technological progress here though. But we do need to up standards somehow, to promote truth and reason and intelligent discussion.
Has anyone else any idea why it is we are in this mess and how we get out of it?
We've had mass democracy with reasonable policies before (be they left, right or centre) and there was a time when policymakers were more likely to give way to experts rather than tabloid newspapers and their ilk, which ironically seem to become more influential even as their sales decline.