Six brainwashing techniques They're using on you right now

Cheezy the Wiz said:
Then were you get it from? Are you saying it can't be learned?

If we knew where you got it from with a degree of certainty... then we wouldn't be having this discussion. I don't believe however that it is best "taught" in the conventional sense of 2+2=4 (you teach orthodoxy not critical thought).
 
If High school had some sort of mandatory focus in its curriculum on critical thinking that would be a good start. I don't even remember if my high school did that but I don't think they did. It seems high school is more focused on either making kids good little worker drones or funneling them into college with good test scores more then anything else.

However I think a lot of this has to do with plain old laziness as much as, if not more so, then education.
 
If we knew where you got it from with a degree of certainty... then we wouldn't be having this discussion. I don't believe however that it is best "taught" in the conventional sense of 2+2=4 (you teach orthodoxy not critical thought).

I meant you teach it through exposure. You know, class discussions about newspaper articles and stuff. Creating an environment in which it is encouraged, I guess.
 
illram said:
If High school had some sort of mandatory focus in its curriculum on critical thinking that would be a good start. I don't even remember if my high school did that but I don't think they did. It seems high school is more focused on either making kids good little worker drones or funneling them into college with good test scores more then anything else.

Then critical thought becomes the thing that needs to be drilled into the good little worker drones and into the ones who require good test scores. Teaching to the test has some seriously perverse incentives.

Cheezy the Wiz said:
I meant you teach it through exposure. You know, class discussions about newspaper articles and stuff. Creating an environment in which it is encouraged, I guess.

Not going to work. To do that you would need to overturn the whole intellectual fabric of education.
 
I think the original #1 is the most efficient method of brainwashing.

It is, especially when combined with #2. Who doesn't love an old-fashioned good vs. evil battle of Biblical proportions?

In other news, I have no clue why I was subscribed to this thread without making a single post or even seeing this thread. I can only assume I've been corrupted by the Washington porno-industrial (was that the prhase?) complex's mainstream media and don't remember subscribing to this thread. :D
 
The results of teached critical thinking that I've seen have been mostly previous dogmas replaced by the new ones. People who think critically do for big part that by nature, but even more it comes with practice: thinking.

Some things take time to realize. On the way many people get lazy and take comfort of belonging to some group or just defending their position. Those rhetorics mentioned in OP aren't just something "the enemy" uses. The result is that there's plenty of discussion whose only end is to show you're right, no one changes his opinions, and the drift becomse bigger and bigger. I must myself admit that I'm not too fond of "losing" argument. I've knowingly said something I could myself refute in order to "win".

The next challenge after you've get rid of them brainwashing you is to stop brainwashing yourself.

Now can we return discussing Salma's cleavage?



("You" means here just passive, like "one". It doesn't mean Cheezy or any else specific poster on this thread. Even though I don't believe education is very efficient in teaching real critical thinking, it's better to try it than not to).

EDIT: After reading Cheezy's last post I understood that I have been thinking those methods of teaching critical thinking that I've witnessed. If the whole of education was based on the student activity instead of telling them how things are, it would probably reach better result on this area.
 
Cheezy the Wiz said:
Or have a professor who gives a good god damn.

And for the rest of us? :p
 
usthem6.jpg

God help us all...
 
That Wal-mart cheer is really quite creepy.
 
You know, every once in a while, I go look at foxnews.com. They have a tremendous number of boobies. While I love boobies, isn't it, well, completely unrelated to actual news? And for the record, CNN has boobies too, but only as part of their Sports Illustrated coverage. And for CNN, it's not every day. For Fox, it's every day.
 
Great article. I've been guilty of every one of those techniques, and most of the people here have too.
 
Interesting, but I thought the great majority of people who take time to think about these things already know about those methods... None of the methods described there was a surprise at all for me. And yeah - the "us vs them" is amazingly efficient. Seen it a "million" times applied successfully...
 
That Wal-mart cheer is really quite creepy.

I couldn't understand what they were saying.

The sound in that video was crappy. The chant is more stupid than 'creepy'. It's no different than what teens chant for high school pep rallies.

It would be 'creepy' if people actually used the chant for motivation, but that is rarely the case. Most people say it because they have to, not because they 'believe' it actually works.

And where I work it is not done everyday anymore. We only do it like once every couple of weeks to a month, at the end of the 'general meeting' which is when everybody in the warehouse has a meeting instead of the daily meetings we have with just our individual areas.

Words to the chant: (there are sometimes different versions to the last couple of lines)

Give me a W...W!
Give me an A...A!
Give me a L...L!
Give me a squiggly...squiggly! (meant to represent the '-' in the Wal-mart name, at this point the more enthusiastic goofballs in the group will shake their hips, but most sane people will just half-heartedly raise their hands to fake some enthusiasm).
Give me a M...M!
Give me an A...A!
Give me a R...R!
Give me a T...T!
What's that spell...Wal-mart!
I can't hear you...Wal-mart!
What's number one...Safety!
Who's wal-mart is it...My wal-mart!
 
"You have a Nintendo Wii? Are you a toddler or just a ******?"

Best line in the whole article, which was solid by the way.
 
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