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Social Media: Making Us Dumber?

nytimes.com

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Re: Social Media: Making Us Dumber?

#31

Post by humanrebar »

boomlinde wrote: post #27
asabjorn wrote: post #3

As a liberal that subscribe to The NY Times I wonder why they always have to make these issues so politicized, even when they are making a good observation. The problem they describe, violent reaction to opposing views, seem present amongst all sides of the political spectrum and it does not seem limited to extreme opinions. The article seems in a very indirect way to make argument that violent reaction to and ostrac…

> The problem they describe, violent reaction to opposing views, seem present amongst all sides of the political spectrum and it does not seem limited to extreme opinions. On all sides, sure, but saying that "violent reaction to opposing views" isn't necessarily the result of holding "extreme opinions" seems a bit oxymoronic. Or what exactly do you mean by "violent reaction"?

People often violently overreact to relatively minor social or legal offenses. Like when bad parents who get caught on video get death threats. It's not an extreme opinion that kids should have good parents.

Re: Social Media: Making Us Dumber?

#32

Post by thriftwy »

afpx wrote: post #7

It shows how far the US has shifted to the right when the NYT would describe Pinker as a liberal. Twenty years ago his views were considered more center-right (in the US at least). But, I am off-topic ... The biggest problem with social media is that it massively amplifies radical (and, often ignorant or misguided) opinions. This especially disturbs me, because I sort of helped cause it. As a kid, I wanted the more r…

What really amplifies radical opinions is the feeling of exclusion from decision-making community.

When a person feels their opinions are appreciated, they tend to try and play nicer with others. When a person feels their opinion is ignored and silenced, they tend to radicalize and hold increasingly flamboyant opinions.

Compare how hot topic the copyright was when studios insisted they'll get to enforce whatever they lobbied into the laws and won't hear the internets' crowd, and how milder it is today when they had to cave eventually and decrease expectations for entitlement. Even if not many things actually changed.

Re: Social Media: Making Us Dumber?

#33

Post by minikites »

>That’s because the pernicious social dynamics of these online spaces hammer home the idea that anyone who disagrees with you on any controversial subject, even a little bit, is incorrigibly dumb or evil or suspect.

I see some merits in this article and I agree with certain parts up to a certain point, but the portion I quoted above is actually more troubling to me. There are lots of people who refuse to believe basic, empirically-proven concepts about the world and social media is merely revealing the ignorance of those people. Celebrating it or saying that everyone has a valid opinion (despite that opinion being based on something false) is even more harmful than the conflict spurred by disagreement, in my opinion.

Re: Social Media: Making Us Dumber?

#35

Post by weeha »

cbcoutinho wrote: post #17

This is great time to mention one of my favorite books on the media and public discourse: Amusing Ourselves to Death - Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, by Neil Postman. In the book, the two infamous dystopian novels of the 20th century (1984 and Brave New World) are compared to determine which one our world most closely resembles. The two books differ in how they describe the source of the dystopia. It's…

I guess this inspired Stuart Mcmillen with this strip: https://therionorteline.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/huxley-v...

Re: Social Media: Making Us Dumber?

#36

Post by Dowwie »

To trust information given by someone I trust is probably in my hard wiring. I don't feel dumber because I reacted to shared information. However, more than ever, I try to question the validity of the content and won't go beyond a sensational title if the source is questionable. I used to trust content, but now I take deliberate, mindful steps to question it. At the least, social media has become more exhausting because of this.

If I could wave a magic wand, I would introduce friction to sharing media. It is far too easy to share false information. Further, information that bubbles to the top is rife with bias and fortifies a bubble.

Ideas worth experimenting:

1. Make the decision to share more salient. Prompt the sharer with a question that forces a moment of reflection. For instance, "if we replaced the author's name with your own and your reputation were at risk, would you share this?".

2. Replace the crude upvote/downvote mechanism with something more nuanced. Separate upvotes from downvotes. Prompt the voter with a list of reasons why he/she voted accordingly. Make voting history public.

Re: Social Media: Making Us Dumber?

#37

Post by asabjorn »

empraptor wrote: post #10
asabjorn wrote: post #3

As a liberal that subscribe to The NY Times I wonder why they always have to make these issues so politicized, even when they are making a good observation. The problem they describe, violent reaction to opposing views, seem present amongst all sides of the political spectrum and it does not seem limited to extreme opinions. The article seems in a very indirect way to make argument that violent reaction to and ostrac…

> The article seems in a very indirect way to make argument that violent reaction to and ostracizing of people that hold opposing opinions is ok when you hold the correct opinions and not when you don’t I'm having trouble seeing how you got this impression.

In a case study like this I was hoping for an understanding of how we on the left contribute to a climate where it is ok to be non-factual, as it is much easier to change yourself than others and NY Times audience is clearly the left. Especially since it concludes that everyone "rushes for the safety of their ideological battlements". What are those embattlements? What are the factual nature on each side? My question if it is just taking one example in an ongoing tit-for-tat fight.

Maybe I should just accept that this a case study and every case study does not present a balanced analysis. It will seek to provide one example of a problem and it is up to you to generalize.

Re: Social Media: Making Us Dumber?

#38

Post by markdog12 »

gaius wrote: post #30
Quarrelsome wrote: post #19

Is it not possible we were always this dumb but more that most of us talked less? This isn't beyond the standard "pub talk" but today that "pub" is the online world and published for all to see. Where previously you'd have reporters and sub-editors and editors to publish; today you can just run your mouth off whenever you want and the crowds can all hear. This sort of thing makes us _look_ dumber compared to the era…

This sort of thing makes us _look_ dumber Context is important; your friends in the pub know when you are joking, or not entirely serious, or making a rhetorical point, or playing devils advocate, or are referencing an earlier conversation, or telling an inside joke, or have just misunderstood something. Random strangers on Twitter read everything as an unequivocal statement. And respond accordingly.

This is an excellent point. In other words, pub talk taken on good faith, internet talk taken on bad faith.

Re: Social Media: Making Us Dumber?

#39

Post by adriand »

It's become vogue to talk about social media in this manner but the problem is much more generalized. Sensationalist news from mainstream/traditional media outlets does exactly the same thing. And the sensitivity around issues of race, gender, sexuality, and so on, is destroying our ability to engage in civil discourse with one another - not just on social media, but even in our classrooms.

Here's an example of what I mean. A couple of days ago I was in a waiting room somewhere and as a result ended up watching a few TV news headlines. Some teacher in Wisconsin assigned her fourth-graders some homework that asked them to provide "3 'good' reasons for slavery and 3 bad reasons", which sparked a predictable uproar:

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/school-homework-good-reas...

Unsurprisingly, no one was willing to go on the record to try and defend or even explain the assignment. It's toxic. And yet, I don't think it's racist to try and parse the teacher's intention here (or just ask for a comment from them!) The teacher put "good" in quotes, which is a good clue, and I can certainly come up with "good" (in quotes) reasons for slavery (e.g. cotton-picking is highly labour intensive and there was tremendous demand for raw cotton by the rapidly industrializing cotton industry in England).

That's a far cry from an assignment that says, "provide a persuasive moral basis for the goodness of slavery". But apparently we can't have conversations like this in our society any more, because there's no room for nuance.

As a nerd, like many of you, I like having intellectual conversations with plenty of nuance, in which one gives the people around you plenty of leeway and the benefit of the doubt ("hmm, that sounds a bit racist, but I respect this person - let me ask a question to see what they mean"). It seems to me that the places in which we can have those conversations are increasingly limited. It definitely isn't social media. It's not the workplace. Apparently, it might not be academia, either, although I haven't been in school for a long time and can't speak from personal experience (stories like the one I just shared, though, seem to back up this impression).

We're left with smart, intellectual, nuanced people having hushed conversations in coffee shops or pubs where no one can overhear them, because we're all afraid of how our words might be twisted, misinterpreted, and ganged up on. It's a real shame.

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