It probably is. Now the question is where that "dominant paradigm of not questioning authority" comes from. No argument from me that it is real. But we do not know what would happen if we could do away with it. It seems to have basically been there all throughout human history and in basically all places with more than a hundred people or so, hence we have no data. Obviously, said "authorities" have no interest in having their "authority" questioned, and hence we are unlikely to see any larger experiments.

I do have one data-point. People that realize what they are in at some point, when they were born into a cult. These people are independent thinkers under very adverse conditions. So the skill can be found in some people without them ever having been taught. I am not aware on any research that quantifies how many people born into a cult can get out of it on their own because they realize what it is. Would be interesting to know.
 

Funny that there are always some clueless people with mod-points ready to confirm my statements about clueless people.

You fail. If you have "personal axioms", you already are just looking to confirm you preconceptions, not trying to find out what actual reality is. Don't worry, you are the same as around 80% of the human race in that.

No, but on far too many occassions, strange cats have come up, jumped on my lap, and settled in, as if they KNOW I'm allergic to cats!

"But mom... I wanted bigger tits!"

"Shut up, honey, I made sure she could cook. Her dumplings are to die for!"

Can you have makeup sex with a chat bot? Not really the same then, is it?

How much do those mail order bridges cost now? (Asking for a friend!) With my luck, I'd get one of the Temu mail order brides,,,

My cat judges me. AI doesn't. /s

Can I still bring my emotional support bot on the plane with me? She just looks like a sex bot, she's not one, really!

Hehehehehe ^^

No idea why anybody modded that "insightful". Probably people with a mental temperature at "room temperature" as well.

In actual reality, "room temperature" is a non-scientific term for "around 20-25C". It serves, for example, for descriptions like "can be stored at room temperature".

And that too. This idea does not even really work for humans.

That said, I am not confident most people can be "raised to think". I think there is a group (the "independent thinkers" at 10-15%) that will always learn it. There are about 5% more that sociology describes as "can be convinced by rational argument on important questions". I think these are essentially the people that can and need to be taught. The 80% rest? You can teach them that experts usually know their stuff, how to recognize experts and tell true from false ones and that they themselves are not experts. But that may be it. I know, this sounds very little for a "knowledge society", but observable reality (also here on /.) shows us that many people are not successful thinkers and many just use their mental skills to justify whatever conclusions they arrived at NOT using these skills.

I was saying that the US and Israel will have to eventually make some sort of peace with Iran, since they cannot wipe Iran out. They cannot occupy it either. And religious fanatics typically cannot be intimidated into surrendering.

My apologies if that was unclear.

The thing is, there is no general definition of "quantum material".

Well, maybe the regular wester definitions of "love" are basically delusional. A lot gets heaped on the term and most of it does not actually pan out once you look closely.