tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post766201361974658953..comments2024-03-28T00:11:33.489-04:00Comments on bensozia: Links 18 February 2022Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01037215533094998996noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-73763545687997145412022-02-19T11:02:48.087-05:002022-02-19T11:02:48.087-05:00Those landscape photos are a feast for BingThose landscape photos are a feast for BingShadowhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05353532874773316117noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-70378062669458311492022-02-18T11:30:29.500-05:002022-02-18T11:30:29.500-05:00And here I am sitting, watching, and waiting for t...And here I am sitting, watching, and waiting for the robot to smack the guy with the hockey stick. Shadowhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05353532874773316117noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-16344491252352522722022-02-18T10:27:00.511-05:002022-02-18T10:27:00.511-05:00William Saletan on 25 years at Slate: "In the...<i>William Saletan on 25 years at Slate: "In the old days, there was a lot of hope that the information age would make us smarter. It didn’t."</i><br /><br />How does one define "smarter"? If Saletan thought that the internet would somehow magically increase people's intellects, that's... sort of an insane thing to think.<br /><br />Did he expect the internet to make people better educated? Because it has, at least on the individual level. Making it easier for people who want to learn to find the information they are looking for, generally is going to increase how much those people know (up to a certain point). But if Saletan thought that society as a whole was going to become better educated because of the internet? Then he doesn't understand what the real limiting factors of knowledge and education in a society are.<br /><br />People overall are dumb and uneducated because they choose to be. We had libraries before the internet; we had educational television and home videos; we had all sorts of educational resources available to the people who wanted to use them to learn things. Sometimes access was a limitation, particularly for the poor, but overall, most Americans had every opportunity to learn - they just didn't bother to do so.<br /><br />The real problem is that our society and our culture simply doesn't value education. The great Isaac Asimov once put it rather neatly:<br /><br /><i>“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge'.”</i><br /><br />The internet is just a tool, like a very advanced and convenient card catalog and library collection. It puts the world's information at your fingertips, but it can't make you care enough to look things up; or to question your assumptions; or to question what you read and seek out competing viewpoints; etc.<br /><br />You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. And you can lead an American to knowledge, but you can't make them learn.<br /><br />We just don't give a damn. In fact, we're actively encouraged not to. We're directly taught by society that experts are not to be trusted; that facts aren't as important as feelings; that logical fallacies and arguing in bad faith are how you "win"; that the very point of having a discussion is to separate out competing "winners" and "losers" instead of promoting learning and cooperation and mutual benefit for all.<br /><br />The internet is just an amplifier of what already exists. It <i>has</i> made people smarter - the people who care enough to learn have used it to learn, to great effect. It just <i>also</i> has made people stupider - the people who instead value ignorance have used it to become more ignorant, to equal effect.<br /><br />The problem, as ever, is the same it always has been: garbage in; garbage out.<br /><br /><i>On two occasions I have been asked, "Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?" ... I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.</i><br /><br />It's not a hard concept to grasp. No matter how impressive the internet is as a tool for educating people, if you expect it to educate people who don't want to be educated, you're in for a terrible disappointment.<br /><br />We keep making this idiotic mistake. A new technology comes along, and we expect it to make humanity better. But that's impossible. Humanity has to make itself better.G. Verlorennoreply@blogger.com