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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’

#121

Post by winfred »

quirkafleeg wrote: post #109
astrodust wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just gullibility, it's being taken in by the siren song of some compelling hypothesis and then being slow-boiled by these increasingly ridiculous "facts" that are used to sustain that trance. Normal, grounded people don't wake up one morning and go "I get it, the Jews and Soros are conspiring to suppress the truth about the Flat Earth ", they get there by baby steps, each one veering more and more into the i…

> If Google started to detect the pattern of someone slipping into madness and did what they could to start to refute things, to sprinkle in some helpful counter-points with their diet of pure nonsense, maybe we can save people who'd otherwise be lost. To which the response is who are Google to influence how or what people think? It's easy to make up pure-nonsense examples that nobody believes - like Soros suppressin…

>To which the response is who are Google to influence how or what people think?

But they are already doing just that. I watched a few Youtube videos related to Quantum Mechanics and my recommended queue was flooded with videos full of pseudo scientific nonsense.

It took me considerable effort in having these weird videos no longer recommended to me. I think we can just be honest about what caused it, it's a lack of intelligence in the sorting algorithm, that currently isn't able to distinguish between true and false statements.

I understand there are areas where this line is vague, but if I watch a few videos about astronomical events, why am I getting recommendations about aliens visiting earth?

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

#122

Post by javajosh »

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…

To me it's more like wanting your city to be a clean place. You see some trash, you pick it up and throw it in a trash can, even if it's not yours.

When people have clearly wrong beliefs (e.g. a square moon), it might not matter all that much to you, but they might harm someone else by spreading the trash, or worse, connect with like-minded people and create a real danger for others (legislate pi to be 3). That mind of trash is no less a part of your environment than the physical street, and I think it's a very good thing if you make an effort to pick up the trash, even if it's not yours.

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

#123

Post by new299 »

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…

Those people existed before the Internet was widely available. They just shared information via books, leaflets etc. Arguably I'd say the Internet makes it less sustainable as they can't help but be exposed to contradictory beliefs.

However it also makes it easier for them to organize and spread their ideas...

I'd love to see data on wether this is a net gain/negative.

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

#124

Post by winfred »

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…

>i learned about 5 years ago that changing peoples' minds is an impossible, pointless task.

And you learned the wrong thing. It is possible to change peoples minds and behavior with online conversation. It just isn't easy and it doesn't go quick (a single line directly pointing out a flaw often isn't enough, you have to bring across that you exerted effort, to show you care). If over time enough people invest time and effort into pointing out that you are wrong in something, you will change your mind. You might not admit it, you might not even notice it, but it will happen.

You might be right that it is perhaps not the fastest or most efficient approach, when you suggested spending time and money on actually influential things (though I'm not sure what you have in mind there).

Just look at the responses you have received so far here. Several people with different backgrounds have responded to you and said "you are wrong, you can change people's minds in online social interactions".

Now you have a choice. Will you hold on to your (really not very good for mankind as a whole) statement, so that it self-fulfills and you can still consider your own opinion correct and your thoughts and behavior consistent?

Or will you take that leap and believe people can change and act accordingly going forward?

Edit: I hope you realize that if you respond to my plea with a convincing statement and I believe you and change my mind, we both enter seriously troubled waters.

After all, do you really want to change my mind on the fact that one cannot change someone's mind in a social media setting, in a social media setting?

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

#125

Post by crazyhatfish »

nnfy wrote: post #107
astrodust wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just gullibility, it's being taken in by the siren song of some compelling hypothesis and then being slow-boiled by these increasingly ridiculous "facts" that are used to sustain that trance. Normal, grounded people don't wake up one morning and go "I get it, the Jews and Soros are conspiring to suppress the truth about the Flat Earth ", they get there by baby steps, each one veering more and more into the i…

I appreciate your intent, but to me the concept of google operating as an arbiter of truth is unsettling.

They're already doing this, although for good currently. [https://theintercept.com/2016/09/07/google-program-to-deradi...]

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

#126

Post by visarga »

We used to remember information, now we remember keywords to retrieve the information. We haven't lost it, it's just one step away. The information is stored implicitly.

The upshot is that we have turned into skilled information seekers and are used to evaluate the quality and credibility of our sources.

We might not remember all the trivia, but when it comes to discovering new interesting domains and quickly learning a lot about them, and finding people with similar rare interests, the internet (google) is king.

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

#127

Post by tomjakubowski »

visarga wrote: post #126

We used to remember information, now we remember keywords to retrieve the information. We haven't lost it, it's just one step away. The information is stored implicitly. The upshot is that we have turned into skilled information seekers and are used to evaluate the quality and credibility of our sources. We might not remember all the trivia, but when it comes to discovering new interesting domains and quickly learnin…

I'll have to remember to recall that, once, I saw a very insightful HN comment about how we used to remember information, and now we remember... -- bah, I forgot, let me go look that up.

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

#128

Post by Qwertious »

inimino wrote: post #116
CountSessine wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Wikipedia gives you the consensus view on pretty much every area of human knowledge."

Doesn't Wikipedia say that climate change is a thing? I bring that up, because it contradicts much consensus.

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

#129

Post by lordnacho »

laretluval wrote: post #83
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…

The kinds of things that are in current journals are on the cutting edge. We should expect a fair few lines of inquiry to turn out to be negative or wrongly done.

The sort of knowledge I'm talking about is the kind of stuff that's been known for decades, acknowledged by everyone who's studied it.

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

#130

Post by Qwertious »

cookiecaper wrote: post #59
lordnacho wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But that probably includes you. Absolutely, there must be things I think are true which are not. And particularly there must be opinions I would find hard to change. I don't deny that. For instance the whole religion thing, I'd probably take it with a rather large grain of salt if god appeared and started giving evidence for himself, even though I think of myself as someone who is swayed mainly by evidence. But I al…

>But I also think, perhaps wrongly, that we can actually learn things about our world, and the way to do that is roughly what we call science. And currently, a lot of people simply cannot think in this way. I disagree. I think that people contort themselves to find ways to see themselves as internally consistent precisely because they are rational within the inescapable prison of their own perception. The issue reall…

'This is called "sales" when it's done on a 1:1 basis and "marketing" when it's done en masse. It can be very difficult when there are powerful entities competing to cast the psychological context in their favor.'

Uh, marketing hasn't attempted to provide any arguments that attack conclusions, for a long time. It's been primarily about creating subconscious associations that are completely separate from arguments.

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