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Dad’s Corner
THE ANTI-HEURISTIC
By: Justin P. McCarthy | February 2, 2023
If you’re an SMMC member reading this, you’re likely between 35 and 55 years old. Chances are you would have been somewhere along your high school, college or graduate school[1] journey in the 90s or early 2000s, which means the Internet as we conceive of it today showed up right in the middle of your formative late-childhood or early adult years to disrupt… roughly everything.
Along with so many other foundational changes in how humans connect and transact with one another, the functional advent of the Internet[2] led to a massive and largely unfiltered proliferation of media and other content, much of it accompanied by dishonest–or downright hostile–intentions. Alongside its manifold wonders, the Internet crawls with bad actors of all stripes seeking tirelessly to bilk, filch and mislead the underprepared, with aims ranging from personal financial gain to nationwide political upheaval.
Governments understandably focus their efforts on the most critical threats, safeguarding military, infrastructure and other macro-level concerns. Corporations aim to protect their own interests–as my wife will tell you after successfully intercepting the latest faux-phishing email sent by her IT department, just to make sure everyone’s awake!
Families and individuals are more or less left to fend for themselves: sure, there are established–if often-shifting–best practices and people who will teach you the basics, but the day-to-day business of keeping ourselves comfortably insulated from the basest ravages of the digital jungle is a Sisyphean slog of constant, tiresome, thankless work. I spent almost a decade in technology consulting and I still couldn’t tell you the last time I updated the firmware on my router, my NAS or the three wireless access points we keep tucked away in dusty corners around the house.[3]Shame on me!
The one area of cyber defense I do always bother with is building up our family’s collective resistance to spam, scams and bad ideologies of all sorts. Consider email alone: of the more than 122 billion emails sent globally each day, about 80%–or almost 102 billion–are spam.[4] That’s not to mention the billions of daily posts on Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, Douyin, QQ, Pinterest, WhatsApp and the rest of the social media platforms which mire us neck deep in data of questionable pedigree.
As adults, we’ve (hopefully) mastered techniques for spotting misinformation[5] and defending ourselves against the dark arts of phishing, smishing, digital kidnapping and a whole host of other nefarious, tech-enabled iniquities. As ChatGPT again shakes up absolutely everything the Internet shook up 25 years ago (which was absolutely everything), we–and now our children–will need to adapt quickly and constantly if we’re to keep up.
Unless you’re an information security professional tracking the ever-evolving specifics of how the wicked bend the datasphere to suit their execrable aims, your best bet is likely the more generalized defense of sharpening your critical thinking skills–and those of your kids.
Unsurprisingly, given the sorts of highest-order thinkers who ponder and teach it, the concept of critical thinking has many different academic definitions. The most concise–and relevant to us–I’ve found:
“Critical thinking is the ability to think clearly and rationally about what to do or what to believe.” (University of Hong Kong)
Equally unsurprisingly, ChatGPT, when asked to “Define critical thinking in terms understandable to a grade-school child, in fifty words or fewer” came up with this–on the first try!
“Critical thinking is like a detective's work. It means asking questions, looking at all the information, and using your brain to figure out what's true and what's not. It helps you make smart decisions and solve problems.”
Numerous scholars have explored the benefits to people of all ages of brushing up on their critical thinking skills. Beyond an enhanced ability to spot electronically delivered BS, people who train in critical thinking are better able to:
- Understand the logical connections between ideas
- Identify, construct and evaluate arguments
- Detect inconsistencies and common mistakes in reasoning
- Solve problems systematically
- Identify the relevance and importance of ideas
- Reflect on the justification of one's own beliefs and values
As far as benefits specific to young children, teaching them critical thinking can:
- Enhance decision making ability
- [Be c]rucial for self reflection
- Enhance curiosity
- Enhance academic success
- Reinforce creativity and problem solving skills
What’s not to love?[6] Rather than attempting–or expecting our children to attempt–the impossible task of tracking every potential information threat we might come across, online or off, why not equip ourselves and our young ones with the tools required to have a fighting chance at making the best decisions possible in every circumstance–regardless of whether it’s familiar or entirely novel? The same skills which might help you realize that incendiary tweet everyone’s forwarding might have been faked to stir up trouble can help your children navigate their world more safely and with better outcomes.
The best part? There are scads of resources available online, and many of them are free.[7] You can begin by teaching and modeling sound critical thinking skills at home. If the kids take to it–and if you’re willing to shell out a few dollars–Outschool (how much do we love Outschool?) has a whole lineup of courses for kids aged five to 18.
The single best resource I’ve found? These critical thinking cards from thethinkingshop.org: hand them to your precocious grade-schooler or teen, delight as they master pointing out the availability heuristic, confirmation bias, the fundamental attribution error, the slippery slope, appeal to authority, the composition division fallacy and more–then come to regret it instantly as they methodically turn their newfound reasoning skills on you and poke holes in every argument you make. Then, smile with pride, because you’ve done your job.
[1] Go ahead and take a moment to pat yourself on the back for living in our state’s healthiest, most educated county, which also boasts the nation’s ninth-highest median household income. Bully for you and yours!
[2] A point which I and many other gaming chair technology historians would peg at the public release of Netscape Navigator in 1995.
[3] That is, of course, until writing that sentence shamed me into doing it, which also afforded a solid hour and a half of procrastinatory bliss. Two birds! To ensure this boring but important drudgery gets tackled in the future, I’ve also calendared a recurring quarterly half day, which has a fair chance of working–unless it’s football season.
[4]At an average of 75 KB per email, that’s 7.65 petabytes of spam generated each day–accumulating more than 139 times the volume of data in the entire Library of Congress every year. Just pure, useless dross.
[5] See also: Snopes and sites like it, though beware; they can be biased, too!
[6] Alright, maybe a handful of things? Maybe?
[7] I also feel compelled to suggest this Cornell University program for adults (go, Big Red!).
Justin P. McCarthy lives in Tiburon with his wife, Katie, and their three children--Jack, Ali, and Claire. He’d be delighted to hear from you at jpm.smmc@gmail.com.