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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’

#111

Post by johnvonneumann »

sofal wrote: post #62
danso wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Exactly. I'm tired of self-proclaimed internet veterans witnessing people digging in on individual online conversations and then concluding that nobody ever changes their mind and all debate/discussion is pointless. I have done a 180 on so many positions I used to have thanks in no small part to people online who did not take this asinine defeatist perspective and went ahead and engaged in debate while the other side…

I feel that in many ways, there is a take-a-side mentality bred into all of us via social cues from a young age. Your football team, the city/country you are from, the education provider you attended. And as I've gotten older, I've become more and more convinced that in many instances, people view position switching as some sort of deadly sin. So they stay locked into their opinion. I have a mate who is pretty smart, but a lot of his ideas and beliefs come from his Dad, and as a result, you are no longer just breaking down his opinion, you are attacking the Father figure's. And over the course of our friendship, we have always had running debates on various things, and I was struck recently by his comment of "Well, you didn't always think that". The comment was made in a pretty smug way, like I had somehow lost the debate because at some point, realised that I was probably incorrect. I think this is the most damaging thing, like there is a certain level of pride taken in just taking A position. Not necessarily arriving at one through debate or critical thinking.

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

#112

Post by teach »

the_af wrote: post #50
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.

My wife is a dietitian with a PhD, and I can scarcely stand to read HN comments on nutrition articles. And I'm not the one with the degree!

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

#113

Post by laretluval »

kvb wrote: post #104
laretluval wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

While it may be true that 50% of papers are wrong in some fields, the papers that are wrong are probably not the most highly publicized ones or the ones in the most prestigious journals (and when those papers are wrong the incentive to publish corrective papers is high), so this probably isn't quite as big a problem as it's made out to be.

> the papers that are wrong are probably not the most highly publicized ones or the ones in the most prestigious journals

If you google around about the replication crisis you will discover that the opposite is true.

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

#114

Post by the_af »

stan_rogers wrote: post #92
the_af wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 acquaintan…

There is, however, a rather large difference between "bothersome" and "a bunch of idiots voting for things that are going to kill people, possibly even me... and winning".

Yes, fully agreed, the latter is dangerous. The former is still annoying, though.

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

#115

Post by cwp »

Ok, if the article is right, then:

  - our minds don't bother to remember things when we know the information is stored externally and easy to access
  - given the aggressive way our minds exploit this, remembering must be expensive
  - given that we can now get by while remembering less than before
  - to what end can we put memory capacity we've now freed up?
One answer might be "living longer". As our lifespans extend, we may find ourselves accumulating too much knowledge to quickly remember things when we need them. If we're able to conserve memory more during our early lives, we may be able to stave of senility longer.

Or maybe we can put that capacity to other uses. Our brains are pretty adaptable, and maybe we can use some of it that was devoted to remembering facts and experiences to instead remembering skills or languages or thinking about the present.

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

#116

Post by inimino »

CountSessine wrote: post #63
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…

If you have some opinion about just about anything, you can find support for it, in fact a web of support, which will really test your reasoning skills. Maybe this is a technological problem with a technological solution? This strikes me as being a sort of blindness to the epistemic web-of-supporting-knowledge. What we claim to know is ultimately supported and reinforced by other propositions that are consistent with…

This is basically Wikipedia. Wikipedia gives you the consensus view on pretty much every area of human knowledge. People who reject Wikipedia as a reliable source would reject the solution you propose as well.

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

#117

Post by jinfiesto »

lovemenot wrote: post #86
type0 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Doesn't this whole argument hinge on the notion that children don't have a right to life/medical care outside of the context of the agency of their parents?

If they do, doesn't it follow that parents denying appropriate medical care to their children (on whatever grounds) is tortiously negligent and therefore ought to be prosecuted?

"We can surely educate others without inflicting even more damage on those poor, grieving parents."

On the contrary, I think we should make an example of people like this. The penalty for doing something like this really ought to be high enough to dis-incentivize people from carrying out these kinds of actions based on their idiotic beliefs.

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

#118

Post by fiddlerwoaroof »

laretluval wrote: post #113
kvb wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it may be true that 50% of papers are wrong in some fields, the papers that are wrong are probably not the most highly publicized ones or the ones in the most prestigious journals (and when those papers are wrong the incentive to publish corrective papers is high), so this probably isn't quite as big a problem as it's made out to be.

> the papers that are wrong are probably not the most highly publicized ones or the ones in the most prestigious journals If you google around about the replication crisis you will discover that the opposite is true.

This is a fairly good example of the sorts of biases one even finds among scientists: http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/01/12/37566392...

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

#119

Post by vivekd »

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 just an internet thing. The entire profession of Chiropractic care has long been established to be a pseudo-scientific field. Research on the effectiveness of the treatment is at best conflicting and it's effectiveness is not scientifically established except to say that it may be as effective as Tylenol for certain types of lower back pains. That hasn't stopped people from rushing to them and governments from licensing and regulating them giving what is essentially snake oil salespeople the credibility of state backing.

There are many other examples of pre-internet mass gullibility, like homeopathy, Reiki and assorted foolishness. Maybe the internet has made it easier to market foolishness, but I doubt we can say it has made us more foolish or gullible.

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

#120

Post by zardo »

vivekd wrote: post #119
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 just an internet thing. The entire profession of Chiropractic care has long been established to be a pseudo-scientific field. Research on the effectiveness of the treatment is at best conflicting and it's effectiveness is not scientifically established except to say that it may be as effective as Tylenol for certain types of lower back pains. That hasn't stopped people from rushing to them and governments fr…

>Maybe the internet has made it easier to market foolishness, but I doubt we can say it has made us more foolish or gullible.

No, but it does help connect everyone with the particular flavor bullshit they're going to enjoy eating up.

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