Master the LNAT.Learn to spot the strongest objection.

Critical Ignoring

The textbook cognitive strategy is critical thinking, an intellectually disciplined, self-guided and effortful process to help identify valid information. In school, students are taught to closely and carefully read and evaluate information. Thus equipped, they can evaluate the claims and arguments they see, hear, or read. No objection. The ability to think critically is immensely important. But is it enough in a world of information overabundance and gushing sources of disinformation? The answer is "No" for at least two reasons. First, the digital world contains more information than the world's libraries combined. Much of it comes from unvetted sources and lacks reliable indicators of trustworthiness. Critically thinking through all information and sources we come across would utterly paralyse us because we would never have time to actually read the valuable information we painstakingly identify. Second, investing critical thinking in sources that should have been ignored in the first place means that attention merchants and malicious actors have been gifted what they wanted, our attention. So, what tools do we have at our disposal beyond critical thinking? In our recent article, we - a philosopher, two cognitive scientists and an education scientist - argue that as much as we need critical thinking we also need critical ignoring. Critical ignoring is the ability to choose what to ignore and where to invest one's limited attentional capacities. Critical ignoring is more than just not paying attention - it's about practising mindful and healthy habits in the face of information overabundance. We understand it as a core competence for all citizens in the digital word.

Without it, we will drown in a sea of information that is, at best, distracting and, at worst, misleading and harmful. Three main strategies exist for critical ignoring. Each one responds to a different type of noxious information. In the digital world, self-nudging aims to empower people to be citizen "choice architects" by designing their informational environments in ways that work best for them and that constrain their activities in beneficial ways. We can, for instance, remove distracting and irresistible notifications. We may set specific times in which messages can be received, thereby creating pockets of time for concentrated work or socialising. Self-nudging can also help us take control of our digital default settings, for instance, by restricting the use of our personal data for purposes of targeted advertisement.

Lateral reading is a strategy that enables people to emulate how professional fact checkers establish the credibility of online information. It involves opening up new browser tabs to search for information about the organisation or individual behind a site before diving into its contents. Only after consulting the open web do skilled searchers gauge whether expending attention is worth it. Before critical thinking can begin, the first step is to ignore the lure of the site and check out what others say about its alleged factual reports. Lateral reading thus uses the power of the web to check the web. Most students fail at that task. Past studies show that, when deciding whether a source should be trusted, students (as well as university professors) do what years of school has taught them to do - they read closely and carefully. Attention merchants as well as merchants of doubt are jubilant.

Ralph Hertwig Director, Center for Adaptive Rationality, Max Planck Institute for Human Development; Anastasia Kozyreva Cognitive scientist, Max Planck Institute for Human Development; Sam Wineburg Professor of Education and (by courtesy) History, Stanford University · The Conversation · CC BY-ND 4.0 · “When critical thinking isn't enough: to beat information overload, we need to learn 'critical ignoring'”