Think about it
One of my education professors built an entire course around one uncomfortable idea: too often, we are not taught how to think. We live “stimulus-response lives.” He said most people walk into a room, hang their brains on a hook, and don’t question anything.
In retrospect, he might have been a genius.
Here’s the part that should bother us all. His premise was that if we don’t teach people to think critically, they aren’t just passive. They can be easily manipulated. And the people who understand how to move them — politicians, marketers, executives, and even well-meaning advocates — have been doing it since Homo sapiens ran the Neanderthals off the planet.
To be clear, this is not a criticism of teachers. Most great teachers I’ve known try to do exactly the opposite. They push students to question and to think. But they are working inside systems that too often reward conformity over curiosity.
For 10 years I ran communications for two health systems. My job was to tell a story, and I was good at it. But that’s the point. I did what good communicators do. I accentuated the positive, eliminated the negative, and didn’t mess with Mr. In-Between. I didn’t lie, but I curated. I made complicated issues look clearer than they were, and people believed them.
That’s not science. That’s marketing. And it works especially well when people haven’t been consistently taught to ask the right questions.
For example, can open-heart surgery contribute to cognitive decline in some patients? The answer is yes. The numbers vary, but the pattern is real enough to deserve attention. So what? Bypass or other options? At least now you know to ask.
Here’s the truth: The scientific method is not complicated. You see something. You ask a question. You form a proposed explanation. You test it. You evaluate the results honestly. And then you force yourself to stay open to being wrong.
That’s the key. You follow the evidence, not what you’d like it to be.
Too often, our schools, media, and workplaces reward certainty and ignore thoughtful doubt. We memorize and perform. We don’t always spend enough time learning how to interrogate what we’re told. Who is telling me this? What do they want? What aren’t they saying?
The result is that we can be capable, intelligent, and successful, but still unprepared for the volume and complexity of the information coming at us.
For decades, the story was “eat less fat and live longer.” Then we learned that the sugar industry had been quietly shaping the narrative to protect its market share. We made health decisions based on what became a kind of herd mentality.
Or, take defense spending. When military contracts are tied to most congressional districts, questioning the budget becomes more than policy. It becomes a local economic threat. Over time, economic interest and patriotism blur, and questioning the military industrial complex starts to feel disloyal.
Now add social media algorithms to the mix. They amplify emotion, reward outrage, and keep feeding us what we already believe. The problems compound. We end up drowning in information but lacking the tools to evaluate it.
Is this about villains? Or is it about a public that has not been adequately trained to think, to use the scientific method, to look for gaps and then work to fill them?
In “The Tipping Point,” Malcolm Gladwell explains how ideas spread, how small shifts can trigger big changes. What he describes is powerful. But those tipping points depend on a population ready to receive, repeat, and reinforce a message without examining it.
That is the vulnerability.
The good news is that things don’t have to stay this way. We can teach thinking as a life skill. Start early. Encourage kids to question their own assumptions before they question anyone else’s. And here’s the real challenge: we need to reward intellectual honesty. When someone says, “I was wrong,” that should be seen as a strength, not a weakness.
It won’t eliminate spin. But a public that knows how to think is much harder to move without evidence.
And that would change just about everything.
Nick Jacobs is a resident of Windber.