Comment on "Algorithms are breaking how we think"
scarabic@lemmy.world 2 weeks agoGood points.
I do think It’s been a longer road to where we are than most people realize. Conservative talk radio and Christian AM radio had been peddling disinformation, outrage, and conspiracies for decades prior to the Internet. That really paved the way for today’s bullshit, and the prevalence of podcasts in the conservative media wackosphere helps show that.
I think his point is that the more people conflate their social media algorithms with the internet, the less able they become to do some basic research.
I guess that didn’t come through very clearly for me. Does using Instagram actually harm people’s Googling skills? This is a bold claim, and while interesting, was not founded on any evidence. I could tell he’s concerned this might be the case but he didn’t have any particular knowledge of this to present. Which is odd, because he typically has extensive knowledge about what he’s presenting.
It was a bit of an odd video for him. That’s fine. He’s more than earned the right to the occasional weird editorial.
jwiggler@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
I hear you, I don’t think it was very standard for him and wasn’t really rigorous in terms of research. Personally, I do buy what he’s saying for the most part, but yeah like he said, I dont think there are any concrete studies on this. But, to me, research (or, I guess I should call it knowledge acquisition) is a little like training a muscle – the longer you avoid it, the harder it is to get started. And if you never do it, the first time is painful. I mean, that first time, you have to find out how to find out, rather than just finding out (lol)
It reminds me of this book I read called The Internet of Us by Michael P Lynch. He talks about how dependent we are on the Internet to know things, and it’s made us, ironically, less connected. We’ve forgotten how to find out information by other means. He sets up a couple little exercises for himself: to find out, without the Internet – What is the capital of Bulgaria? Is a four-stroke engine more efficient than a two-stroke? What’s the phone number of my representative? What is the best reviewed restaurant in Austin, TX? – and it turns out pretty difficult for him. All throughout the book he talks about the philosophical implication of having knowledge at our fingertips, at the cost of, perhaps, losing the ability to acquire knowledge through other means.
You should check it out! archive.org/…/internetofusknow0000lync_w8o8
I found out about it from this philosotuber on YT, he kinda gives a better run down of the book than me around 20 seconds in www.youtube.com/watch?v=uctUh0Z2YTc
scarabic@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I can’t argue with the notion that we’re worse at finding information through other means. I’d just say that’s the way times change, though.
I’m reading Henry Huggins to my son right now and in it, a boy needs to find out how to take care of a fish he’s bought. He waits for his dad to come home in order to ask him, and when dad doesn’t know, they go on a trip to the library. The librarian has a little trouble figuring out where the right book might be, and ultimately can only find him one that he needs adult help to read.
And that’s a success story for those times.
While we’re certainly worse at things like that these days, we’re better off in other ways that more than compensate IMO. It’s still good to know how to resort to books, but I think it’s romantic to bemoan the options for learning nowadays (not that you are doing that).