There isn't enough discussion of the difference between cause and root cause. Clearly, technology can't possibly be the cause of old people getting agitated ab

There isn't enough discussion of the difference between cause and root cause. Clearly, technology can't possibly be the cause of old people getting agitated about how young people are destroying the civilization left for them. That complaint has been circulating as far back as we can find records. I suspect we'd be getting closer to root cause if we examined how people observe other people. Heinlein has a great idea for a profession in "Stranger in a Strange Land". There are Witnesses who go through painstaking training to ensure that they can actually, truly, literally be impartial observers of events. For example, if asked "what color is that house" they would reply "this side of the house is white." Most people aren't even aware of all the simplifying assumptions they're making when they observe the world, which means they can't account for avoidable mistakes when they think on their observations. The image of kids looking at their phones instead of the painting is just that. It's a picture of kids looking at their phones while in the vicinity of a painting. A single picture tells you nothing about the context in which that picture was taken, and that's before you start worrying about image manipulation. I suspect the vast majority of the times when old people get annoyed at young people are really just people failing to remember that their observation tells them much less about the situation than they assume. This framework seems more powerful because it helps explain other things. For example, I think the reason the "social justice movement", such as it is, is struggling to be taken seriously is that it's impossible to photograph. The civil rights movement was easy to explain. All you needed were pictures of burning crosses, or nooses, or whites/coloreds signs, or police dogs, or fire hoses. The message didn't get lost in the aggressive filter everyone applies to their observations. The social justice movement is about much more abstract things like the 2nd and 3rd order effects of obscure laws or accumulated subjective experiences. So the only parts you can photograph are people shouting and/or crying. The message is guaranteed to get lost in the filter, so it's basically impossible for anyone who's merely observing it to get the truth. In the same way, it's impossible to capture what someone is thinking/feeling when they're using technology. The experience is subjective. You can't tell if they're asleep with their eyes open, or mindlessly poking colored squares, or doing homework, or falling in love, or discovering a new perspective. All you can observe, over and over again, is just a person staring at a screen. The truth of the situation is not observable, yet we continue to base our understanding of the truth on our observations.