Through high school I was very active on an online video game forum. This was when I first noticed people's tendency to hate wrong information on the internet. People would correct each other over and over and a topic that was left unsolved would always be active until THE right answer was found or the argument turned into a slew of insults. During this time I also noticed tension between the opinions of the members of the forum. Some members believed that the best "strategy" for the game was that which the professional players were using with no possible deviation (or only minor deviations in the right situation) from that strategy. Others believed that strategies they had tried in their games would be useful and they would try to figure out other strategies that should work either mathematically or rationally. These two viewpoints would often conflict with the former side usually saying that if the strategy was good enough the professionals would already be using it. That reasoning doesn't make complete sense though. Professionals, or experts, although very knowledgeable can't know everything. The collaboration between people can sometimes come up with new insights. Bias is also greatly reduced when a large number of people teach compared to one person.
I find communal acquisition more useful than authoritative acquisition usually. In a philosophy class for example, there are multiple points of view for any subject. Although the teacher will try to be objective and present each side equally, it is usually very clear which side the teacher likes the best. The students then don't worry about learning why that side is better for their own reasons but rather why the teacher thinks that side is better so that they can appease the teacher. The same happens in math classes where a particular approach to solving a problem is preferred by the teacher and that is the one that is learned by the students instead of exploration of other methods. Bias can never be completely removed but communal knowledge can greatly reduce it which is what makes communal knowledge so valuable.
I agree that communal knowledge sources tend to have less bias than authoritative ones. This promotes critical thinking, because it presents students with unbiased information from which they can develop their own theories and ideas. When the information is presented in a biased manner which, as you mentioned, is often the case with authoritative sources, students develop notions which may result solely from the authors' opinions and not the students' own exploration.
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