I think the thing is over that last 10 or 15 years critical thinking has been redefined. I'm not quite sure when the phrase "dumbing down" was coined but really we seem to be working toward this as if it is our most important goal. Create a society that believes that "nobody knows anything so everything is ok" and that doing this is the "American Way!"

I think that people have been encouraged to question ideas and theories in this timeframe but this has been done not to turn them into critical thinkers but to make them easier to manipulate. A good example would be talk radio where we supposedly have a free exchange of ideas between the public and a host. Items of the day are brought up and discussed and in general these items are questioned and dissected. It gives the appearance that an issue is being broken down, faults found in the person or idea being discussed, and other conclusions are drawn. In the end the listener has the impression they have now heard more than one side, that they have several "opinions", theories, and ideas to examine. This is almost never the case though and in the end what they have is just a multiple choice set of ideas to choose from and as human beings we choose the idea we like the most or that fits what we want to believe.

The internet is another good example because a person could spend hours on the internet "researching" a topic and find thousands of items related to that topic. This gives the impression again that many ideas and theories have now been examined but this "research" in the end is only as good as the researcher and or the sources of the information they have found. On a topic like Global Warming, which is used in that video, a person doing "research" on the internet would find thousands of items in no time. They could read 200 different things that state Global Warming is a farce and 50 things that state Global Warming is a major issue mankind must deal with. This would give the impression that they have now "researched" the subject and found an overwhelming amount of evidence Global Warming is nothing to be concerned with. The wealth or quantity of information often only confuses the issue more.

I think these things help solidify a persons certitude about an issue and their "feeling" they now have enough information to make a judgment on that issue. Of course there is always the curve ball, as mentioned in the video, that they find a piece of information that they feel allows them to question a preponderance of evidence that points to a likely outcome. Throw that into the mix and they fall back on believing what they want to believe.

There are two big words I think that have been drilled into people over the last 10 or 15 years to make them question more and research less, bias and profit. These two words have been used to give people the impression we are living in a world swamped with people who want to lie to us and manipulate us and that navigating that swamp is too complex and we can "never know the truth" so we should just believe what we want. The result is a large segment of our populace gives up because they now "believe" getting to the bottom of anything is beyond them.