How to build a usable nuclear fusion power plant. Zero is way too many for such a difficult task.
Listening and empathy. Putting themselves in others’ shoes instead of just seeing/speaking/thinking about I, me and myself.
Media literacy and reading comprehension. Specifically, the ability to infer an intended target audience for a particular piece of work. A large part of media literacy is being able to view a piece of media, and infer the intended audience. Maybe you see an ad for pink razors, and can infer that it is aimed at women who shave. But that’s just a simple example. It should also extend to things like internet comments.
People have become so accustomed to laser-focused algorithms determining our media consumption. Before, people would see a video or comment they didn’t resonate with, infer that it wasn’t aimed at them, and move the fuck on. But now, people are so used to their algorithm being dialed in. It is to the point that encountering things you don’t vibe with is outright jarring. People don’t just move on anymore. They get aggressive.
Maybe I make a reel about the proper way to throw a baseball. I’ll inevitably get at least one or two “but what about me? I’m in a wheelchair, on crutches, have a bad shoulder, have bad eyesight and can’t aim, etc… Before, those people would have gone “this clearly isn’t aimed at me” and moved the fuck on. But now they make a point of going “but you didn’t make this specifically for me.
It has gotten so bad that content creators have started adding disclaimers to their videos, news articles, opinion pieces, etc… It’s fairly common to see quick “and before I get started, this video is just for [target demographic]” as if it’s a cutesy little thing. But the reality is that if they don’t add that disclaimer, they’ll be inundated with “but what about [outlier that the content clearly wasn’t directed at]” types of responses.
How to turn greenhouse gasses into pure drinking water. I wish I knew how to do that.
Critical thinking.
They should teach basic philosophy in schools; common formal fallacies and such.
But then the eletorate would actually be making good decisions, how would the rich afford their 10th yacht?
Financial literacy
Number 1 by far is knowing how to separate your opinions from your identity.
I’ve been thinking about this for years and I can’t shake the thought that identity politics is the root of most major problems in western society (esp. US). It means people interpret criticism of their opinions as personal attacks instead. This overblown defensive reaction leads to turning around and conflating the opinions of others with their worth as human beings.
Yes, there some truth to that. If you hold hateful & bigoted opinions, I would say that makes you a shit person. But you’re not necessarily condemned to that forever, because opinions can potentially change. This is tied in with Karl Popper’s “Paradox of Tolerance”, i.e. ideas should be tolerated unless they themselves are so intolerant as to undermine the wider marketplace of ideas.
When we equate (potentially temporary) opinions of others with immutable value, that’s what leads to dehumanizing them and taking away their fundamental rights. And as has always been the case throughout history, the burden falls primarily on vulnerable groups (immigrants, ethnic or social minorities, children and the elderly, etc).
People need to understand that YOU ARE NOT YOUR OPINION. Others can and should criticize your opinions, but that doesn’t mean they are attacking you personally. Defend the opinions, but don’t turn around and go ad-hominem in response. And for fuck’s sake, unless an opinion is so abhorrent or intolerant that it threatens someone else’s existence (e.g. Nazis), you don’t get to take away the holder’s rights to citizenship, food, shelter, healthcare, etc.
EDIT: And yes I do consider this a skill that people have to learn. I think most should be capable by maybe… age 7.
Critical thinking. Religion and our education system beat curiosity out of people and they end up being unable to process information on their own.
Also driving. People can’t stay in their own lanes, stop three car lengths from an intersection because they don’t understand that the ‘see the tires in front of you’ made sense in low sedans with sloped hoods and not their massive SUVs with flat hood, and don’t bother signaling when changing lanes slowly.
One thing many forget about critical thinking is to also be critical of your own thoughts as well. Too many people think it’s only about attacking other people’s opinion.
Critical thinking. Religion and our education system beat curiosity out of people
And now AI is here to run cleanup on any critical thinking those two haven’t already destroyed.
and don’t bother signaling when changing lanes slowly
I always love playing the road trip game of “Are they changing lanes slowly without signaling, or are they fucking with their phone and just drifting?” 😠
Oof yes and don’t get me started on roundabouts.
Is nuance a skill?
Like, the world isn’t black and white, left and right, right and wrong, etc, but too many people want to simplify complex issues down into binary choices and leave out any trace of nuance.
We live in a hyperbolic age. People’s attention has been commodified so almost all messaging is exaggerated to pull attention to one pole or another. Nuance and patient, thoughtful debate can’t live in that atmosphere.
Not to mention we’re in a period of morality panic. We’ve been brainwashed to think there are only good and bad, either with us on all thoughts or against. We’ve been sucked into a hard lined good vs. evil plot, except everyone is wrong.
Are you really claiming that ALL messages are exaggerated and that thoughtful debate can NEVER exist???
😜
Clutches
pearlshyperboles
Maybe related: The ability to understand complete statements and considering the context, instead of latching onto one phrase and ignoring the rest.
Not sure if it’s an actual skill, but it certainly is a trait that fits this question. It’s gotten so bad that I tend to tag people with “Nuanced” if they’ve proven to understand this, so that I know they’re actually reasonable if I see them in a discussion over a controversial topic.
It’s like we live in a floating point world, and too many people are only capable of dealing with integers lol.
I’m stealing this.
I wish I could do this with the web version. I’d like to tag people “Made sense once - don’t block”
I agree, and I’d say the backing skill is emotional maturity or emotional management
We’re living in a particularly toxic time, and splitting is a reversion
Somewhat related is the belief that things are simple rather than complex. I’d argue that thinking something is simple - or believing you have a solid understanding of it - should be a red flag that you probably don’t know as much as you think. I mean, when have you ever heard a true expert give a short and simple answer to anything?
How to handle criticism. To take the best from it, learn from it, try to become more of what is important to yourself and leave the rest.
It’s either not taking it at all, thinking everyone is wrong… or it’s giving it to much attention. Like thinking the opinion of people that you don’t respect at all, that you don’t even like counts too. You’ll never be right for everyone. But being criticised by people that care to make your life better is actually precious.
I might as well go first: Basic troubleshooting and reasoning.
I mean, we’re not talking debugging assembly language here. But at least you should be able to reply correctly to the question “is it dead or faulty?” when it comes to a computer. And when a your car has a weird noise, at least try to locate it for an obvious cause such as something rolling around under your seat.
EDIT: And one important aspect of troubleshooting many people don’t get is how to narrow down the problem. Let’s say your wifi isn’t working - have you checked on any other device whether it’s working there? Someone else mentioned binary search which has a lot of overlap with this.
“I don’t know what the error said, I clicked ok and it went away. Now fix it”.
Bingo.
I used to work with internet on trains, and the system was relatively simple by today’s standards. Not so much back then, but:
- One carriage had UMTS/LTE and CDMA modems and a router that load balanced between the uplinks. Usually in the restaurant carriage, because there would only be one per train. It also had a short range wireless link in each end for other carriages to connect.
- Each carriage that could potentially be in the same train had wireless clients in each end for connecting “upstream” towards the router.
- All carriages had a wifi radio
On other words, many potential points of failure. And sometimes we’d get tickets such as this sent our way: “Internet doesn’t work”
- No info about which carriage
- No info about when
- No info about where
- No info about which train
I mean, that’s really a software design issue. Like, the system should be set up to have a system log of those.
Most visual novel video game systems provide a history to review messages, if one accidentally skipped through something important.
Many traditional roguelikes have a message log to review for the same reason.
Many systems have a “show a modal alert dialog” API call, but don’t send it to a log, which frankly is a little bit bonkers; instead, they have separate alert and logging systems. I guess maybe you could make a privacy argument for that, not spreading state all over even the local system, but I’d think that it wouldn’t be that hard to make it more-obvious to the user how to clear the log.
Well, it might be a ‘software design issue’, but it’s really more of a branching point that was made long ago and reflects the world we live in. It could be fixed, but the point is that error messages are often not logged but people tend to act like they must be, and that their vague description of an issue should be enough to track it down like ‘something flashed on my screen last week’.
Hell people can’t even describe useful parts of an error that’s correctly happening…‘it’s not doing ANYTHING!’ can often mean anything from not booting, to the mouse not moving, to ‘it’s working perfectly but icons are snapping into place instead of staying exactly where I’m dragging them’.
This is usually coupled with the expectation that I’m going to use some special knowledge to do it rather than just pasting the contents of the error message into a web search and following the simple instructions contained in the first link.
I had that stuck to my desk at work for years. And I haven’t even opened the link yet to see if it’s the one I think it is.
Yep, it was 😁
This grinds my gears super hard. I’ve had a few new hires come through and they can’t do anything unless someone tells them to do something or if its written out step by step. Absolutely no critical thinking, curiosity or even basic understanding of why we’re doing what we’re doing, the job might as well be severance lol. I have no idea whats going on, they interviewed well, had relevant experience and can do the basics but as soon as we have to troubleshoot or use our brains they just go dear in the headlights. Its something thats difficult to train.
Maybe they prefer the work to be mysterious (and important)
Maybe they got in trouble too many times for not doing it exactly as instructed, even if the instruction is obviously bullshit in some ways?
I’m trying to work things out but I swear its a generational “kids these days” thing. Its a science field with lots of interpretation, judgement, problem solving and troubleshooting too so critical thinking is really important.
Basic troubleshooting and reasoning.
That drives me nuts sometimes. Like even professionals sometimes seem unable to do basic troubleshooting. I work in live music, I am not a tech/engineer but have done a lot of tech work on and around stages.
Simple stuff like - one speaker is not giving a signal, two techs are unable to identify the fault for over 20 min. I observe for a bit, they check the console, they check the speaker, they check the power supply.
And I, half joking, ask - have you switched sides already? Both look at me like they don’t understand my question, I walk over to the signal line for the PA, unplug them both, plug the left side into the right signal and vice versa on the other side - the problem moves from one speaker to the other, so it has to be a faulty cable. I was so baffled by that.
WHY IS THAT NOT THE FIRST THING YOU DO??? It takes seconds!
Or a wireless in-ear system has weird noises in the signal, I suggest to switch the frequency, the old tech grunts at me that he has already done that, I check and he moved the frequency like 10mhz. I suggest to move to a totally different frequency range and he gets rude so I go somewhere else. Half an hour later it turns out I was right. Why do you fuck around with firmware and shit before you do something simpler and quicker?
I used to work as a refrigeration technician and when I first started I was working with an old Russian dude who had no filter. We’d walk into a store and he’d ask the owner “ok so what’s the problem?” and if they ever said “the machine isn’t working.” he’d immediately reply with “no shit man, I wouldn’t be here if it was working…” Lol
Basic cooking skills
Reading comprehension
Listening to someone speak without interrupting
Remembering to let other people speak when having a conversation
Yes omg it’s so stressful to try to finish a thought before I get interrupted again.
Sewing. Learn to sew! It’s very helpful!
My mom said “never learn to sew. You will look at clothes and say ‘no way I am buying that, I can make it’ and then you won’t make it, and you will have nothing to wear”.
I did sew costumes for my kids for Halloween, stuff that doesn’t have to last, but get what she was saying.
I do, however, cook much better than she did and am not sorry, still like going out to eat. And can make cocktails better than most I’d get at a bar but still find joy in going out for a drink. I think she was right about clothes though, they aren’t an experience like going out to dinner.
People have said “critical thinking”. I agree, but we can be more specific than that:
- Formal logic to think clearly
- Relational frame training to think fluidly
- Human cognitive bias awareness and mitigation strategies to avoid magical thinking or otherwise systematic cognitive errors
- Discourse Analysis to be critical of any message https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LKiaYBVAEUk&pp=
- Mindfulness and acceptance skills to engage with what our thoughts and body tell us, regardless of whether it’s painful or difficult
- Visible Thinking Routines to make thinking and communication with others easier
- Research design (Joseph A. Maxwell) and system design (How to Design Programs) to seek information critically and how to systematically tackle challenges
This covers so many other things.
My usual specific go-to is how to search the internet for things. But not knowing how to search for hyper-specific things is the symptom of a lack of critical thinking skills.
other things
Interesting. So you’re saying that critical thinking is not what I mentioned, but rather it is something different (an “other thing”). What would you say critical thinking is?
Not at all, I’m saying that many smaller problems people often cite are simply symptoms of a lack of critical thinking.
Basic sewing
Also empathy
