We’ve really not moved on that far intellectually from the witch trials.
Cognitive biases seem to be unavoidable. Even if you are well-educated about a particular bias, it often takes reflection (internally or externally motivated) to recognize it in your decisions / behavior.
Fallacious reasoning is often just as good at convincing an audience, which is one of the reasons they are still in use despite many or most being documented and named in ancient times.
Individual training in critical thinking skills can help, but theocrats (in specific) and authoritarians (in general) spend a lot of effort making sure that public education is robbed of that. But, that’s not enough to “intellectually move on”; even with that training, bias occurs. So, we have to build systems for bias detection and remediation if we want a just global society.
Cognitive biases seem to be unavoidable. Even if you are well-educated about a particular bias, it often takes reflection (internally or externally motivated) to recognize it in your decisions / behavior.
Fallacious reasoning is often just as good at convincing an audience, which is one of the reasons they are still in use despite many or most being documented and named in ancient times.
Individual training in critical thinking skills can help, but theocrats (in specific) and authoritarians (in general) spend a lot of effort making sure that public education is robbed of that. But, that’s not enough to “intellectually move on”; even with that training, bias occurs. So, we have to build systems for bias detection and remediation if we want a just global society.