The Internet Isn’t Making Us Dumber – It’s Making Us More ‘Meta-Ignorant’ • Hacker News Board

Re: The Internet Isn’t Making Us Dumber – It’s Making Us More ‘Meta-Ignorant’

#41

Post by danso » Sat, Apr 22, 2017, 9:13 PM UTC

iamacynic wrote: post #32

lordnacho wrote: post #26

The problem with ignorance in the internet age is you can now find sources that confirm your wrong headed ideas, entire ecosystems even. If you haven't learned how to think before becoming an adult, I fear that you won't. Sorry for sounding condescending, but I've run into so many people who are misinformed, and let's just say "misinformed" means they don't know what the academic orthodoxy is in a given field, but th…

40s, huh? i'm in my 30s and i learned about 5 years ago that changing peoples' minds is an impossible, pointless task. people come to their own conclusions based on the bullshit they choose to surround themselves with. you could think the moon is square, doesn't bother me one bit. i'm living my life, not yours. it's far better to focus on your own knowledge and self improvement. it yields a higher return on investmen…

As someone who has changed his mind, I've found that it is wrong to think that minds can't be changed. When people complain about how minds aren't changed, they are typically complaining about minds not changing now, i.e. At the point of debate. But minds can change over time, it's just that you don't get that immediate feedback that you want.

Re: The Internet Isn’t Making Us Dumber – It’s Making Us More ‘Meta-Ignorant’

#42

Post by sametmax » Sat, Apr 22, 2017, 9:14 PM UTC

lordnacho wrote: post #26

The problem with ignorance in the internet age is you can now find sources that confirm your wrong headed ideas, entire ecosystems even. If you haven't learned how to think before becoming an adult, I fear that you won't. Sorry for sounding condescending, but I've run into so many people who are misinformed, and let's just say "misinformed" means they don't know what the academic orthodoxy is in a given field, but th…

But that probably includes you. You are not immune to this. Actually the entire human specie is subject to it, and regularly discover it's been wrong about incredibly important topic, at the level of a small group, a community, a country or the entire planet.

As an individual, you have most probably a huge number of things you just believe and never try to challenge. And among that, many that, if challenged by someone else, you would still hold to.

All in all, you can't start to change the world unless you recognize your own failures in the other people. They may do stuff you know are perfectly dangerous. And you may know better for a lot of things. But in the end, you are like them, and need to see it instead to have a real influence instead of thinking you are above that.

Re: The Internet Isn’t Making Us Dumber – It’s Making Us More ‘Meta-Ignorant’

#43

Post by type0 » Sat, Apr 22, 2017, 9:22 PM UTC

EliRivers wrote: post #24

wernercd wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good ones don't... just like any field... "Intelligent" people know how much they don't know... "Stupid" or "ignorant" know everything and want you to know it. Doctors, Mechanics, ... nerds... no one group is immune to this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect "The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which low-ability individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing…

With warning of anecdote rather than evidence, Doctors are the worst [1] for this! So many of them seem to think they're scientists, when the majority of them are far from it. [1] In the hyperbolic sense; I wouldn't like to suggest a literal truth here

Well if you listen to doctors they'll say we apply scientifically proven methods, and some portion of them actually do science. My impression is that doctors like to sound smarter than they often are. Since medicine is more of an art form than anything - most physicians are like artists (albeit highly trained ones). And as with any art you have the whole spectrum of quality.

Re: The Internet Isn’t Making Us Dumber – It’s Making Us More ‘Meta-Ignorant’

#44

Post by sandworm101 » Sat, Apr 22, 2017, 9:23 PM UTC

oxide wrote: post #40

pavlov wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally know a man in his late thirties who nearly died of AIDS a few years ago because he had read "credible sources" on the Internet and convinced himself that HIV is harmless. This happened already in the early 2000s. For over a decade, he ignored his HIV status (not knowing either way) thanks to the "advice" from contrarian experts on the Internet. One day he finally had a flu that didn't seem to go away. A…

That truly is admirable. These examples of ignorance remind me of my own similar anecdote: I attended a dinner, out of politeness, with my grandparents and their friends. A man staying with them saw me puffing on my personal vaporizer, cornered me, and proceeded to tell me that he was diagnosed with lung cancer after trying to switch to a PV himself. "I smoked cigarettes for 30 years, never had a problem. Those elect…

Lung cancer is a strange one. As smoking levels drop, in some populations one can say that "most" lung cancer has nothing to do with smoking. So the doc has 10 patients with lung cancer, but only one of them is a smoker. With such numbers is gets hard to say that smoking was the cause. It was easy when the same doc had 30 patients and 21 were smokers, but times change. Statistics are hard and need to be revisited regularly.

Re: The Internet Isn’t Making Us Dumber – It’s Making Us More ‘Meta-Ignorant’

#45

Post by the_af » Sat, Apr 22, 2017, 9:25 PM UTC

eightysixfour wrote: post #33

iamacynic wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

40s, huh? i'm in my 30s and i learned about 5 years ago that changing peoples' minds is an impossible, pointless task. people come to their own conclusions based on the bullshit they choose to surround themselves with. you could think the moon is square, doesn't bother me one bit. i'm living my life, not yours. it's far better to focus on your own knowledge and self improvement. it yields a higher return on investmen…

> you could think the moon is square, doesn't bother me one bit. i'm living my life, not yours. The problem is when this wrong headedness starts to interfere at a public policy level, like climate change.

It's also extremely difficult to talk to someone who truly thinks the moon is square. Suppose I actually want to talk about the moon? Or suppose I admit there's a lot I don't know about astronomy (a fascinating subject!), and this person thinks it's an invitation to speak about astrology?

What I mean is, it doesn't even have to affect public policy to be bothersome. It also affects informal small-talk with acquaintances.

Re: The Internet Isn’t Making Us Dumber – It’s Making Us More ‘Meta-Ignorant’

#46

Post by chris_va » Sat, Apr 22, 2017, 9:26 PM UTC

lordnacho wrote: post #26

The problem with ignorance in the internet age is you can now find sources that confirm your wrong headed ideas, entire ecosystems even. If you haven't learned how to think before becoming an adult, I fear that you won't. Sorry for sounding condescending, but I've run into so many people who are misinformed, and let's just say "misinformed" means they don't know what the academic orthodoxy is in a given field, but th…

It seems like it should be possible to at least quantity this phenomenon for each topic by doing some internet segmentation and classification. I assume telling someone that they are in a fringe bucket is not actually an effective way to reconsider their position, though.

Re: The Internet Isn’t Making Us Dumber – It’s Making Us More ‘Meta-Ignorant’

#47

Post by boomboomsubban » Sat, Apr 22, 2017, 9:27 PM UTC

lordnacho wrote: post #26

The problem with ignorance in the internet age is you can now find sources that confirm your wrong headed ideas, entire ecosystems even. If you haven't learned how to think before becoming an adult, I fear that you won't. Sorry for sounding condescending, but I've run into so many people who are misinformed, and let's just say "misinformed" means they don't know what the academic orthodoxy is in a given field, but th…

Both of your examples are things that have been common forever. There were germ theory skeptics, still are, that ignored the science showing how many deaths doctor hand washing prevented. And radiation healers were massive in the early twentieth century.

Re: The Internet Isn’t Making Us Dumber – It’s Making Us More ‘Meta-Ignorant’

#48

Post by nebabyte » Sat, Apr 22, 2017, 9:29 PM UTC

awarer wrote: post #7

"The fundamental cause of the trouble in the modern world today is that the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.” — Bertrand Russell

Or, in graph form: http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2177

Re: The Internet Isn’t Making Us Dumber – It’s Making Us More ‘Meta-Ignorant’

#49

Post by drdeca » Sat, Apr 22, 2017, 9:29 PM UTC

cookiecaper wrote: post #35

lordnacho wrote: post #26

The problem with ignorance in the internet age is you can now find sources that confirm your wrong headed ideas, entire ecosystems even. If you haven't learned how to think before becoming an adult, I fear that you won't. Sorry for sounding condescending, but I've run into so many people who are misinformed, and let's just say "misinformed" means they don't know what the academic orthodoxy is in a given field, but th…

It's not that people "haven't learned to think". It's that their perception of reality is driven by their ego. It must be understood that this is the case with all mentally competent people . An ego's appetite can be trained and controlled, but generally speaking, everyone wants to see themselves in the same basic, overwhelmingly positive way. When an "empiricist" comes into the fray, they've trained their ego's appe…

This reminds me a bit of brazenautomaton's philosophy, but with less depression about popularity.

Re: The Internet Isn’t Making Us Dumber – It’s Making Us More ‘Meta-Ignorant’

#50

Post by the_af » Sat, Apr 22, 2017, 9:31 PM UTC

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #9

I see this sort of thing on Hacker News all the time. Programmers that are, I'm sure, the top of their field comment in threads about biology or something out of their field with the most silly and wrong answers. A thread about nutrition or something out of their realm of expertise on here is about as useful as reading a Facebook or YouTube comment chain. That doesn't stop them from speaking authoritatively about it.…

Haha! So true. And nutrition in particular seems to be something the tech-literate crowd seems to want to "hack". It's always fascinating to read threads in HN about dietary supplements or keto-this-or-that or paleo diets or how it's better if you only sleep 2 hours per day total and only drink special shakes made by some dodgy startup, all of this frequently debated with religious reverence.