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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’

#131

Post by inimino »

Qwertious wrote: post #128
inimino wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What? Are you trying to say that the consensus view is that climate change isn't a thing?

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

#132

Post by lovemenot »

jinfiesto wrote: post #117
lovemenot wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, grie…

I can scarcely imagine the pain of losing a child and knowing that it was due to my negligence. Do you seriously think that, on top of all this suffering, the risk of a custodial sentence would add further disincentive?

I am not arguing that these parents were not idiotic, just that their further punishment can serve no purpose.

We may have to agree to disagree though.

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

#133

Post by astrodust »

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?

Give people a long leash, but when they're way off to the end of the bell-curve of normality throw them a life-line.

> It's easy to make up pure-nonsense examples that nobody believes...

That's actually an example of things people do believe. If you engage with some of those wild outliers you can learn a lot, quickly. Some of them are trolling, but many of them have extremely firm convictions. Maybe it's Sandy Hook. Maybe it's chemtrails. It's usually a bunch of stuff, all tangled together.

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

#134

Post by astrodust »

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 do it when they detect someone seeking to physically harm themselves (e.g. suicide). This could be the same for severe mental harm.

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

#135

Post by astrodust »

winfred wrote: post #121
quirkafleeg wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 i…

You watch one "free energy" video for chuckles and all of a sudden YouTube keeps surfacing more and more of these things, there's an infinite supply of them apparently. It just won't stop.

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

#136

Post by kichuku »

ars wrote: post #101

This is why I never took notes as a child. If I took notes I forgot everything I learned. If I didn't, I remembered it.

I found the opposite to be true for myself. If I don't take notes, I forget soon. But if I take notes, at the time of taking notes, I am processing the information in a way that I can explain myself. So somehow that helps me remember a little longer even if I don't read those notes a second time.

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

#137

Post by Qwertious »

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.

Nutrition makes a lot of sense, when you consider just how much time the average person spends around food - you're generally reminded of nutrition three times a day.

It's a large aspect of health, money, and comfort (see: going to the toilet), and frankly there isn't very thorough consensus (it's been suggested that the food pyramid is biased by commercial interests of the time), and what's more, most people aren't cooking or paying for their own meals when they learn about it in school, so they don't remember it that well anyway.

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

#138

Post by Qwertious »

SolarNet wrote: post #55

Ranking systems help solve this. For example in games. Even in 5v5 games better players will eventually get to the top, because they will cause more games to be won in aggregate over their career. Similarly, systems of apprenticeship, and rankings found in things like martial arts and sports. The problem is that we need 100,000 doctors, some of them will be more informed than others. The less informed ones will cause…

Problem with ranking is that the worse you are, the more you're put into toxic teams with players that don't cooperate/are griefing, thus are much easier to blame for your failure. What's worse, that blame is often legitimate.

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

#140

Post by canadian_voter »

astrodust wrote: post #133
quirkafleeg wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? Give people a long leash, but when they're way off to the end of the bell-curve of normality throw them a life-line. > It's easy to make up pure-nonsense examples that nobody believes... That's actually an example of things people do believe. If you engage with some of those wild outliers you can learn a lot, quickly. Some of them are tr…

Give people a long leash, but when they're way off to the end of the bell-curve of normality throw them a life-line.

Hello User. We've noticed you've been spending more time on StackOverflow than 99% of our other users. May we suggest you spend some time looking at cat videos to balance things out? -- Your friends at Google

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