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

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

#81

Post by kuschku »

coldtea wrote: post #21
kuschku wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luckily most of the people here, if they wanted, could easily get an entry-level education in any field, because they know how to study from books, can get access to the material, etc.

Potential is not reality.

Potential is the requirement for democracy, though.

You can only have democracy if everyone has the chance to educate themselves on the topics that are relevant to them.

If, in your country, the majority never learnt how to do so, then democracy will inevitably fail. Many people in STEM or other sciences have an advantage due to that, but this should be standard for all.

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

#83

Post by laretluval »

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…

Are you sure that traditional sources of knowledge, and traditional ways of making people believe things, result in greater accuracy? Consider that over half of the papers in many fields, including medicine, are statistically bogus: http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jou... http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/08/25/071530

On average the results in science papers are probably more accurate than random stuff you read on the internet. But I suspect the difference in error rate is uncomfortably small, much smaller than those who are smug about science would like to believe.

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

#84

Post by openasocket »

pavlov wrote: post #37
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…

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…

AIDS denialism is a curious thing. There was this magazine Continuum which claimed AIDS was a conspiracy unrelated to HIV. The tragic irony is that the magazine stopped publishing because all the major contributors died of AIDS.

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

#85

Post by kuschku »

louithethrid wrote: post #28
kuschku wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luckily most of the people here, if they wanted, could easily get an entry-level education in any field, because they know how to study from books, can get access to the material, etc.

Oh, yes, its so easy, thats why every programmer aquiring domain specific knowledge never makes any mistake and the software - once feature complete, always guarantees satisfied customers. We are instant experts, just add hot water and stire for five minutes.

No.

I am saying, the people here could actually make qualified comments, if they wanted to. They could learn about the topics they comment on.

But they choose not to.

Which is a different story from most of humanity, which doesn’t even have a choice, doesn’t have a chance to learn.

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

#86

Post by lovemenot »

type0 wrote: post #39
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…

> which supposedly connects to one of your auras, and has a nice animation of how it scans every single one of someone's organs. This kind of things makes me feel sick. I knew a family, their child got some minor infection, they didn't believe in antibiotics and tried to cure him with "alternative" methods. Suffices to say - that kid is no longer alive. Edit: I wish they were convicted for manslaughter.

I am not supporting their ignorance. But I imagine their belief arose from some deep issue with human agency. ie the apparent arrogance of trying to control natural forces, which would have been ascribed to the Divine, just one or two generations ago.

Nevertheless, I take issue with your edit. I believe your wish is in fact rooted in your own desire for agency. Those parents have lost a child, albeit from their own ignorance. In light of this, how do you think their prosecution would be a gain to society? We can surely educate others without inflicting even more damage on those poor, grieving parents.

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

#87

Post by pavel_lishin »

lordnacho wrote: post #54
boomboomsubban wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But before the internet you had to go out of your way to find a second snakeoil salesman. In the internet age, they can be your whole village.

> But before the internet you had to go out of your way to find a second snakeoil salesman. In the internet age, they can be your whole village.

Well, they'd pass through your village at regular intervals. But I understand what you're saying - in the old days, a snake-oil salesman had to travel through each village, and risk his business and life. Today, you can hire a botnet to reach ten million people with your claims of a magic stock about to rise, or a pill that makes you irresistible to women, or a device that cures your cancer.

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

#88

Post by pavel_lishin »

krapp wrote: post #36
shouldbworking wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This happens on HN within our field too :) . I see stuff hit the front page all the time, only to be ripped to pieces a few hours later when someone that knows what they're doing appears. Do you remember the "super fast hash algorithm" from a few weeks ago that turned out to be rubbish? What about the "high performance TCP proxy" on the front page right now that's not proxying correctly or with unusual speed? People…

>Do you remember the "super fast hash algorithm" from a few weeks ago that turned out to be rubbish? What about the "high performance TCP proxy" on the front page right now that's not proxying correctly or with unusual speed? Seems like debunking Hacker News stories might make for a fun project.

I suspect your definition of "fun" may align with a very small percentage of the population.

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

#89

Post by mirimir »

canadian_voter wrote: post #34
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…

The problem with ignorance in the internet age is you can now find sources that confirm your wrong headed ideas, entire ecosystems even. When I was young, lonely and isolated, the internet was a godsend: it connected me to like minded individuals and expanded my horizons. It exposed me to a world of ideas about science, technology, history, politics, music, etc. at a time when everyone around me was mentally stagnant…

Wow, homeopathy. It's a carryover from alchemy. So you identify a poison, which causes some effect. You titrate the dose-response. Then you argue that some miniscule amount, orders of magnitude below an effective dose, relieves that poison's effect. That's from alchemy. And then people who believe you feel better, given how strong the placebo effect can be.

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

#90

Post by mxfh »

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.…

I think, in my ignorance, that this is a deeply human desire to understand the world or at least parts of it. If there is a simpler, less complex concept you can grasp it's always something that appeals to some.

And also there is a need for belonging and FOMO, so if you find a nice subculture that appeals to you and is graspable in it's complexity, it's way easier to stay informed and connected in that, than a more general topic.

Specialisation is indeed is the only way to understand something to the state of the art for more than two centuries or so now, since it's humanly impossible to have a working understanding of the whole of human knowledge.

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