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As a kid growing up in the first generation to not know a world without the internet, I had always thought humanity was headed for a golden age of wisdom, learn

As a kid growing up in the first generation to not know a world without the internet, I had always thought humanity was headed for a golden age of wisdom, learning, and truth for all. That there was no way evil people could control the masses any longer for their own means via ignorance. How sadly wrong I was. It is becoming more and more clear to me that for the average person, technology has become nothing more than another tool for the propagandists of the world to influence their minds. It turns out that having a supercomputer in your pocket at all times does not magically induce the ability for critical thinking.

gdulli 10y ago
> It turns out that having a supercomputer in your pocket at all times does not magically induce the ability for critical thinking. Until you have wisdom you don't truly appreciate the difference between knowledge and wisdom.
thr0waway1239 10y ago
"Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it." Henry Ford You are right to expect that the internet could make it easier to do such thinking. Except, you are not taking into account another factor: "Hard work never killed anyone. But why take a... Oooh.. another like on my Facebook post"
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- dvcc 10y ago
  I don't think people set-out to not think, it's just we're by default lazy thinkers. Cognitive dissonance pushes us to find our own contained, biased circles within the internet, where we can 'think' without the requirement of resolving conflicting thoughts. Because, no matter what weird views we might have, there is bound to be a few hundred people out there that share them. The internet just made it easier to find them.
  - pixl97 10y ago
    >it's just we're by default lazy thinkers Thinking is expensive. Somewhere around 20% of our bodies energy use is our brain working. It's probably been an evolutionary advantage in many cases to offload our thinking to the right people for most of history.
MR4D 10y ago
Surprisingly, this is why reading Orwell's "1984" is mandatory in many high schools across the country. Clearly they aren't doing a good job of teaching it, as you and many others share that view (or did for some period of time). Looked at from a different angle, "1984" could be viewed almost as a how-to-manual, just as Machiavelli's "The Prince" is today.
- badsock 10y ago
  Forgive the pedantry, but The Prince has /always/ been viewed as a how-to-manual, because it literally is one.
  - badosu 10y ago
    There is the possibility it was written as a satire (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prince#Interpretation_of_The_Prince_as_political_satire_or_as_deceit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prince#Interpretation_of_T...).
    - balabaster 10y ago
      Like Lily Allen's The Fear, could be taken as a satirical bash against a consumerism she is disgusted with, or it could be interpreted as autobiographical, blaming society for her being the way she is as if to remove herself from being at fault. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P191zutE1D0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P191zutE1D0 I guess it would depend on the mindset of the listener as to which interpretation they choose.
    - HarryHirsch 10y ago
      Liar's Poker was written as satire. Michael Lewis found it perplexing that some of his audience thought the characters in there to be ideals to emulate.
badsock 10y ago
I'm in the same boat. But my naivete was in thinking it would be easier to dispel lies when facts where easily linked to. The propagandists' workaround was to just attack facts.
- bbctol 10y ago
  The thing is, "facts" aren't just mined out of the ground, and people underestimated how much our concept of what a "fact" is was affected by our information infrastructure. There is very little true foundation of facts to build on; scientific inquiry and reason are structures just like anything else, and can be disrupted by new media.
- creaghpatr 10y ago
  "fact" is just a rhetorical label that relies on continuous social consensus, as tempting as it is to believe otherwise. The "facts" change or evolve all the time. That's the whole point of the scientific method.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - badsock 10y ago
    You're not wrong, but I also think that culturally we've made a big mistake by not acknowledging that there's a gradient here. There /is/ an objective reality, and we can measure it to varying degrees of accuracy. The air temperature at a given place and a given time, for instance. Of course there's always the possibility of it being wrong (e.g. a passing hot air current, a faulty thermometer, etc.), but to live as though you can't record the temperature is absurd. It paralyses action based on evidence, rather than ideology, if everything is considered equally suspect. Yes, we're going to get it wrong sometimes, and that has a cost. But there's also a cost to thinking that you can't ever get it right, and that is letting people the who routinely dismiss inconvenient evidence have their way all the time. I think we've swung too far towards the latter.
    - 10y ago
M_Grey 10y ago
Technology doesn't change who and what people are, it just empowers them. “The release of atomic power has changed everything except our way of thinking ... the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker." (Einstein, 1945)
wcummings 10y ago
100% this (though I do remember a world without the internet, not for very long). I think Snowden was a loss-of-innocence moment for a lot of people our age.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
projproj 10y ago
Apropos Dune quote: "Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them."
FullMtlAlcoholc 10y ago
One of the biggest surprises for me was to see that with most people connected to the internet, it can be used as a tool to intensify bullying and revenge porn. I thought it would forever be a refuge from bullying. I also grew up on mostly semi-anonymous networks like AOL, Prodigy, and Compuserve

gdulli 10y ago

> It turns out that having a supercomputer in your pocket at all times does not magically induce the ability for critical thinking. Until you have wisdom you don't truly appreciate the difference between knowledge and wisdom.

thr0waway1239 10y ago

"Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it." Henry Ford You are right to expect that the internet could make it easier to do such thinking. Except, you are not taking into account another factor: "Hard work never killed anyone. But why take a... Oooh.. another like on my Facebook post"

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
dvcc 10y ago
I don't think people set-out to not think, it's just we're by default lazy thinkers. Cognitive dissonance pushes us to find our own contained, biased circles within the internet, where we can 'think' without the requirement of resolving conflicting thoughts. Because, no matter what weird views we might have, there is bound to be a few hundred people out there that share them. The internet just made it easier to find them.
- pixl97 10y ago
  >it's just we're by default lazy thinkers Thinking is expensive. Somewhere around 20% of our bodies energy use is our brain working. It's probably been an evolutionary advantage in many cases to offload our thinking to the right people for most of history.

MR4D 10y ago

Surprisingly, this is why reading Orwell's "1984" is mandatory in many high schools across the country. Clearly they aren't doing a good job of teaching it, as you and many others share that view (or did for some period of time). Looked at from a different angle, "1984" could be viewed almost as a how-to-manual, just as Machiavelli's "The Prince" is today.

badsock 10y ago
Forgive the pedantry, but The Prince has /always/ been viewed as a how-to-manual, because it literally is one.
- badosu 10y ago
  There is the possibility it was written as a satire (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prince#Interpretation_of_The_Prince_as_political_satire_or_as_deceit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prince#Interpretation_of_T...).
  - balabaster 10y ago
    Like Lily Allen's The Fear, could be taken as a satirical bash against a consumerism she is disgusted with, or it could be interpreted as autobiographical, blaming society for her being the way she is as if to remove herself from being at fault. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P191zutE1D0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P191zutE1D0 I guess it would depend on the mindset of the listener as to which interpretation they choose.
  - HarryHirsch 10y ago
    Liar's Poker was written as satire. Michael Lewis found it perplexing that some of his audience thought the characters in there to be ideals to emulate.

badsock 10y ago

I'm in the same boat. But my naivete was in thinking it would be easier to dispel lies when facts where easily linked to. The propagandists' workaround was to just attack facts.

bbctol 10y ago
The thing is, "facts" aren't just mined out of the ground, and people underestimated how much our concept of what a "fact" is was affected by our information infrastructure. There is very little true foundation of facts to build on; scientific inquiry and reason are structures just like anything else, and can be disrupted by new media.
creaghpatr 10y ago
"fact" is just a rhetorical label that relies on continuous social consensus, as tempting as it is to believe otherwise. The "facts" change or evolve all the time. That's the whole point of the scientific method.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- badsock 10y ago
  You're not wrong, but I also think that culturally we've made a big mistake by not acknowledging that there's a gradient here. There /is/ an objective reality, and we can measure it to varying degrees of accuracy. The air temperature at a given place and a given time, for instance. Of course there's always the possibility of it being wrong (e.g. a passing hot air current, a faulty thermometer, etc.), but to live as though you can't record the temperature is absurd. It paralyses action based on evidence, rather than ideology, if everything is considered equally suspect. Yes, we're going to get it wrong sometimes, and that has a cost. But there's also a cost to thinking that you can't ever get it right, and that is letting people the who routinely dismiss inconvenient evidence have their way all the time. I think we've swung too far towards the latter.
  - 10y ago

M_Grey 10y ago

Technology doesn't change who and what people are, it just empowers them. “The release of atomic power has changed everything except our way of thinking ... the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker." (Einstein, 1945)

wcummings 10y ago

100% this (though I do remember a world without the internet, not for very long). I think Snowden was a loss-of-innocence moment for a lot of people our age.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

projproj 10y ago

Apropos Dune quote: "Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them."

FullMtlAlcoholc 10y ago

One of the biggest surprises for me was to see that with most people connected to the internet, it can be used as a tool to intensify bullying and revenge porn. I thought it would forever be a refuge from bullying. I also grew up on mostly semi-anonymous networks like AOL, Prodigy, and Compuserve