Chapter 36 Exercises: The Learning Society

Exercise 1: The Personal Epistemic Audit

Time required: 30 minutes Materials: A list of beliefs you hold; honest reflection

Choose five beliefs you hold about contested factual matters — not values, but claims about facts in the world (health, science, economics, history, current events).

For each belief, work through this audit: 1. State the belief precisely: not "vaccines are generally safe" but "the MMR vaccine is associated with a risk of serious adverse events at approximately X per Y doses" 2. What is your primary source for this belief? 3. What type of source is it? (Peer-reviewed meta-analysis / Peer-reviewed single study / Journalism about research / Opinion column / Social media / Word of mouth) 4. How confident are you? (0-100%) 5. Given the source type, is your confidence calibrated? (Strong evidence → high confidence is calibrated; social media share → high confidence is almost certainly not calibrated) 6. What would change your mind about this belief?

After completing the audit, write a brief reflection: Are you more or less confident in your beliefs than you were before? What does this exercise tell you about your epistemic habits?

Exercise 2: The Science Headline Deconstruction

Time required: 15 minutes per headline Materials: Any recent science-related news headline

Find three recent science headlines (search "new study shows" or "scientists discover" in any news source). For each headline, apply the four-question filter from the chapter:

1. Was this one study or a meta-analysis? (Look for the original research if possible)
2. Was the finding correlation or causation? (Look for the study design: observational or experimental?)
3. How large was the effect? (Look for effect sizes or percentages, not just statistical significance)
4. Has it been replicated? (Search for other coverage of the same finding)

After applying this filter to all three headlines: How many survived without significant caveats? What was the most common way the headline overstated or misrepresented the underlying finding?

Exercise 3: The Lateral Reading Practice

Time required: 15 minutes Materials: A new-to-you information source you've recently encountered

Identify one information source you've recently encountered that you don't already know well — a website, a publication, a social media account that shared something you found interesting.

Apply lateral reading: 1. Open a new tab immediately (don't read the original source yet) 2. Search the source's name + "review," "criticism," or "about" 3. Search the source's name + "funding" or "ownership" 4. Look for any third-party fact-checks of their content 5. Look for their track record on accuracy in their specific domain

Based on what you found: How does your assessment of the source's reliability compare to your initial impression? Did you find anything that surprised you?

Exercise 4: The Confirmation Bias Test

Time required: 30 minutes Materials: A topic you have a strong existing view on

Choose a topic where you have strong existing beliefs. Now deliberately seek out the strongest, most credible argument against your current view.

Rules: - It must be a real argument made by people who are not obviously ignorant or acting in bad faith - It must engage with evidence, not just assertion - It must be the best available version of the contrary argument (the "steelman," not the "strawman")

After encountering the best contrary argument: 1. Is there any part of it you find genuinely compelling? 2. Did it reveal any weaknesses in your reasoning you hadn't noticed? 3. Did your confidence in your original view change? By how much? 4. If your confidence didn't change at all, is that because the contrary argument was genuinely weak, or because you were looking for reasons to dismiss it?

This exercise is designed to be uncomfortable. That discomfort is information.

Exercise 5: The Information Diet Audit

Time required: 20 minutes Materials: Awareness of your recent media consumption

Estimate your information diet for the past week: - What are your top 5 information sources? (Social media, news sites, podcasts, YouTube channels, etc.) - For each: What is their primary incentive structure? (Advertising revenue / Subscription revenue / Ideological mission / Educator mission) - For each: What perspectives do they primarily represent? - Collectively: What perspectives are well-represented in your information diet? What's absent?

This isn't about political balance per se — it's about epistemic diversity. If all five of your primary sources have similar ownership structures, funding models, or ideological orientations, your information diet has low epistemic diversity regardless of its political slant.

Identify one high-quality information source you could add to your diet that would increase epistemic diversity.

Exercise 6: Apply Learning Science to a Societal Learning Problem

Time required: 30-45 minutes Materials: The content of this chapter; your own thinking

Choose one of the following societal learning problems: - Scientific literacy: Why do people have difficulty evaluating scientific evidence? - Misinformation spread: Why does false information spread so effectively? - Political polarization: What role does epistemic failure play in political polarization? - Educational equity: What would need to change for learning science to reach all learners, not just those who read books like this one?

Write a 400-500 word analysis applying concepts from this chapter (and from the broader book) to your chosen problem. What does learning science tell us about why this problem exists? What does learning science suggest about how it might be addressed?

Exercise 7: Design a "Learning Science for Everyone" Lesson

Time required: 30 minutes Materials: This chapter; the broader book

Design a 15-minute lesson that could teach someone who has never read this book one key insight from learning science. Requirements: - The insight must be genuinely applicable in their daily life - The lesson must include a simple Try This exercise - The lesson must explain why this insight matters (not just what it is)

After designing the lesson, reflect: What did the exercise of designing the lesson teach you about what you know and don't know about this material? (Notice the Feynman technique operating here.)

Exercise 8: The Belief Update Log

Time required: 5 minutes per entry; ongoing Materials: A dedicated section in your learning journal

Start a "Belief Update Log" — a simple record of times when you've changed your mind about something in response to evidence.

For each entry: - What was the original belief? - What evidence or argument prompted the update? - What is the new, updated belief? - What does this update tell you about the quality of your previous evidence base?

This exercise has two purposes: it builds the habit of noticing and celebrating belief updates (rather than seeing them as threats to identity), and it creates a record of your epistemic health — a person who never updates beliefs is epistemically unhealthy; a person who frequently makes calibrated updates is epistemically healthy.

Aim for at least one entry per month. Share the log with an accountability partner if you'd like social reinforcement for the update habit.