8 ms·

Social Media: Making Us Dumber?

236 points by pratap103 9y ago

minikites 9y ago
>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.
- throwanem 9y ago
  Anti-vaxers are a bugaboo here. When PZ Myers mistakes Steven Pinker for a fascist because no one has the interest or the attention span to grasp an argument that takes eight minutes to make, we have a real problem.
j05huaNathaniel 9y ago
*Media Is Making Us Dumber
nurettin 9y ago
NYT requires a digital subscription.
- thinkMOAR 9y ago
  And they require almost all articles to be posted on HN. I have a feeling majority of their (click) traffic comes from HN. It would be nice of there was a limit on how many articles from same domain can be posted on HN. Nytimes articles in my humble opinion are listed here too often. Or a rule that you cannot post paywalled content. It's becoming quite frustrating when you click a nytimes link.
  - nurettin 9y ago
    Maybe we need a browser extension to show $ sign next to digital subscription links.
- dredmorbius 9y ago
  https://archive.is https://archive.is
- throwanem 9y ago
  ...while Twitter and Facebook are free.
  - nurettin 9y ago
    ... and none of them are good.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
asabjorn 9y ago
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 ostracizing of people that hold opposing opinions is ok when you hold the correct opinions and not when you don’t, and I strongly believe all sides should be held to the same standard of discourse.
- hkmurakami 9y ago
  Sadly your view, which is the same as kind, seems to be seldom held by our peers.
- avenius 9y ago
  You make a good point - they appear to make themselves part of the problem, which in my view is the increasing polarization of topics. There no longer seems to be any middle ground in the public discourse, instead everyone is entrenched on their respective poles. It's immensely frustrating.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - Consultant32452 9y ago
    I hit this hard the other day. There's a TV show I really like called the Runaways. On Hulu, where I watch that show, they seem to constantly run this one commercial cheerleading how great it is that the show is so diverse. I commented on social media that the commercial felt like it was trying to lecture me and has ultimately detracted from my viewing experience. It didn't matter that in the context of this conversation I was talking about how this particular show, which happens to be very diverse, is one of my favorites, the fact that I rebuffed the SJW cheerleading instantly turned me into a Nazi.
- indubitable 9y ago
CodeWriter23 9y ago
I’m pretty sure it’s just revealing the dumb, at scale.
- camus2 9y ago
  It just make it is easier for extremists of all sides to find each other and build echo chambers to strengthen their ideas. Now this article is a bit hypocritical as every journalist and news media out there is also on social media and use it as a communication and advertisement channel, just like like everyone else. NYT and co love Facebook and Twitter when it helps them bring in paid customers.
- saint_fiasco 9y ago
  It is also spreading the dumb much faster. Used to be everyone would have dumb ideas but they would be different ideas. Now the dumb ideas converge really fast around the latest global outrage. A single widespread dumb idea is more dangerous to democracy than a million dumber localized ideas.
afpx 9y ago
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 radical, fringe perspectives to have greater influence in the mainstream. But, in an age when content is free (I.e. paid for by ads), the loudest and most extreme make the most money. Now, I cringe. There’s little discussion, dialogue, or dialectic - less prefrontal cortex and lots more amygdala and limbic. And, if we think of the PFC as what makes us most human, most intelligent - then yes, we dumb. But, don’t lose hope. There are still plenty of moderate and reasonable people out there. It’s just that they’re not normally the raucous, crass ones. A rule of thumb for me is to shun the loudest most aggressive voices, because they almost always know very little.
- thriftwy 9y ago
  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.
  - asabjorn 9y ago
    Groups like alt-right or social justice warriors seem aware that what they advocate are sometimes based upon factually incorrect statements. I believe these groups are aware that they are fighting for an action through rhetoric that use factual statements that can easily be shown to be incorrect. Further, it seems like they believe better facts supporting their view could be found if their actions were implemented because they insist so much that their subjective truth should be respected to the same degree as real facts that disagree with their subjective truth. My interpretation is that the awareness of their factual problems is what motivated these groups to develop a pattern of violent intolerance towards anyone that questions it, as people that do not agree with the action would otherwise outnumber them in the discourse and make it harder to implement the action. There seem to be a synergy between alt-right and social justice warriors in particular, as both narratives need an antagonistic other that justifies why it is ok to be violently intolerant towards anyone that questions their view.
dba7dba 9y ago
This book comes to my mind. https://www.amazon.com/How-News-Makes-Dumb-Information/dp/0830822038 https://www.amazon.com/How-News-Makes-Dumb-Information/dp/08... Sommerville argues that news began to make us dumber when we insisted on having it daily. Now millions of column inches and airtime hours must be filled with information--every day, every hour, every minute. The news, Sommerville says, becomes the driving force for much of our public culture. News schedules turn politics into a perpetual campaign. News packaging influences the timing, content and perception of government initiatives. News frenzies make a superstition out of scientific and medical research. News polls and statistics create opinion as much as they gauge it. Lost in the tidal wave of information is our ability to discern truly significant news--and our ability to recognize and participate in true community. I used to consume news daily, obsessively even when I was younger. I was that addict that used to refresh cnn.com compulsively every few minutes at a stretch. Now, I come to HN and a few other niche sites for 'information' or 'news'. But I no longer visit cnn or NYT as much any more.
- paulie_a 9y ago
  Anecdote:. I was at a bar tonight and noticed the tv had the same "breaking news" headline on for three hours. It wasn't breaking news, just news. News that wasn't even that important
  - dredmorbius 9y ago
    Mark Blythe: https://youtu.be/TdivPhu-jTQ?t=380 https://youtu.be/TdivPhu-jTQ?t=380
ilitirit 9y ago
The drama of the Internet is that it has promoted the village idiot to the bearer of truth - Umberto Eco, on Social Media
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
cbcoutinho 9y ago
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 been a while so please excuse any inaccuracies - in 1984 the world is controlled by authoritarian governments through fear, misinformation, and endless distractions, whereas in Brave New World the world is controlled by an authoritarian government through mind-numbing pleasure and shallow entertainment. The governments in these books both rely on citizens being reduced to their lowest common denominator. I think people during the cold war could most easily imagine, and thus be most afraid of, a world that resembled 1984. The book I mentioned in the beginning of this post argues the view that we should have actually been more worried about a world more closely resembling Brave New World. Today we are constantly fed a mind-numbing amount (mis)information that we also simultaneously look for because it makes us feel better. Unfortunately, this media barrage also robs us of our attention and ability to critically think about important issues affecting our society. If anyone is interested in reading a book written before the age of social media (published 1985) and exploring these ideas, I highly recommend this one.
- bklaasen 9y ago
  It's extraordinary how relevant this book still is. Postman was a student of McLuhan, but wrote in a much more accessible style.
- weeha 9y ago
  I guess this inspired Stuart Mcmillen with this strip: https://therionorteline.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/huxley-vs-orwell.jpg https://therionorteline.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/huxley-v...
- zingmars 9y ago
  Thanks for the recommendation, I will take a look at it. This kind of reminds me how I felt when I was reading both those books. I had already seen all the memes about 1984 not being an instruction manual, and it left me kind of confused, because the direction the west is moving towards doesn't really resemble what was described in the book (at least, not yet). Then I read Brave New World and it certainly read like something more relevant to our current situation. Both are horrifying stories though, and it pains me that US, a nation that once prided itself for being 'free' has 2 conflicting mainstream ideologies, both of which call for a bigger government in an attempt to oppress the other side.
Quarrelsome 9y ago
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 of print media but maybe together and on average we were always this dumb in the first place but now we just see it better.
- daemin 9y ago
  So as before you would say 'dumb' things to your inner social circle of friends, with an occasional stranger overhearing. Today you can say those same things online, but instead of it just being your friends it's effectively on the public record and everyone can see and comment on what you said. This reminds me of a story that Clay Shirky told about how one of his students/coworkers wanted to announce the breakup of her engagement. She carefully configured her settings on the FB, then changed her relationship status. But even so everyone knew in real time and she was deluged with questions and messages. The reason both of these situations are so jarring is because everyone instantly sees this information, where as previously it took a lot longer to filter through the social graph.
  - asabjorn 9y ago
    People say things now in a social context in real life and then someone takes it out of context to rile up a mob online, making it dumb because it was taken out of context and used against them. As we are all humans most people with the context probably recognize this and are secretly glad they were not the ones targeted, although I doubt most of us want this kind of society. It seems reasonable to believe that the person misrepresenting is often aware of the context and is disingenuous in their representation. And if not I am not sure why we are giving the stage to people with poor comprehension skills and a correspondingly violent temper.
- gaius 9y ago
  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.
sjcsjc 9y ago
surely, "Social Media Are Making Us Dumber" [tongue firmly in cheek]
julianpye 9y ago
So the singularity is approaching even faster!
sebow 9y ago
It's not actually much about Social Media and the internet in general but the fact that some person/entity dictates the course of discussion, and you obviously can blame the people who follow them but at the end of the day most people like to conform themselves and associate with a group because that's how we evolved, in groups.(or better said tribes) I surely wasn't around when the TV appeared, but i'm pretty sure it wasn't so much about the technology or the time spent on it, but more about the fact that the number between the people who come up with the content and the topics discussed and the people receiving the information is highly disproportionate. The fact that you have NYT say, what in essence is alt-media,that is "making people dumber" it's kind of hypocritical.The article it's just a rage about the simple fact that an academic figure is more edgy than the vast majority. I would rather stop decaying the quality in the selection of topics through politics.
Dowwie 9y ago
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.
- markdog12 9y ago
  > If I could wave a magic wand, I would introduce friction to sharing media Even better, suffuse everyone with that great skepticism you speak of. Unfortunately, your suggestions are infinitely more practical.
  - throwanem 9y ago
    Unfortunately, those suggestions are just as impractical, because maximally incontinent sharing is maximally remunerative to a platform which monetizes user engagement.
    - Dowwie 9y ago
      Yes, they are impractical for those platforms that monetize maximal engagement.
adriand 9y ago
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-reasons-slavery_us_5a566d6be4b08a1f624af02f 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.
- smcl 9y ago
  I know where you're trying to go with this and your heart is in the right place, but the example is awful and does not help in the slightest. I have a feeling that I'm gonna get "ugh, replies like yours are exactly the problem, smcl!" but to me asking children to come up with some good side of slavery is up there with trying to find the good side of the holocaust. Whether "good" or "bad" is in quotes doesn't really change that it's a stupendously bad way to approach the subject. It might be an intellectually stimulating conversation for some, but if it's a conversation only occurring in hushed tones in coffee shops or in private then I think that's probably for the best.
benkarst 9y ago
We are getting dumber. Social media is simply a mirror.
Allower 9y ago
Speak for yourself. Seems more likely social media is making it more difficult for stupid people to hide.
oliv__ 9y ago
No, you're already dumb and social media is just bringing it out.
DyslexicAtheist 9y ago
I just did what I wanted to do since a very long time: deleted my Facebook company page and my personal profile and added all the facebook domains to my /etc/hosts sinkhole[¹] I can finally breathe again. [¹] https://github.com/jmdugan/blocklists/blob/master/corporations/facebook/all https://github.com/jmdugan/blocklists/blob/master/corporatio...
gallerdude 9y ago
Does anyone have a twitter timeline archiving tool? I get some major FoMO when it comes to not checking twitter.
- prepend 9y ago
  There are a bunch of twitter to RSS tools. Here’s one I played around with a while ago, https://twitrss.me/ https://twitrss.me/ I actually prefer reading twitter via rss. There’s no missing out, and you can organize by topics, user groups, stuff like that.
  - gallerdude 9y ago
    Thanks for the help!
nvr219 9y ago
Why doesn't the opinion piece link to the youtube video it talks about?
debt 9y ago
The other day I started reading a book and fell asleep almost instantly because it was so boring. So instead I started listening to a lecture on YouTube and I fell asleep almost instantly. So then after that I opened that Instagram explore page and was engaged for hours. Social media is definitely making us dumber. It's 15-60-second hits of all the good parts of everything and that's it. No context, no substance, just the good stuff.
jccalhoun 9y ago
I think that using an example of people misinterpreting and then spreading something without having familiarized themselves with the original sources to claim that social media makes us dumber is pretty dumb.
Bromskloss 9y ago
Selection bias? ;-)

236 points by pratap103 9y ago

>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.

throwanem 9y ago
Anti-vaxers are a bugaboo here. When PZ Myers mistakes Steven Pinker for a fascist because no one has the interest or the attention span to grasp an argument that takes eight minutes to make, we have a real problem.

j05huaNathaniel 9y ago

*Media Is Making Us Dumber

nurettin 9y ago

NYT requires a digital subscription.

thinkMOAR 9y ago
And they require almost all articles to be posted on HN. I have a feeling majority of their (click) traffic comes from HN. It would be nice of there was a limit on how many articles from same domain can be posted on HN. Nytimes articles in my humble opinion are listed here too often. Or a rule that you cannot post paywalled content. It's becoming quite frustrating when you click a nytimes link.
- nurettin 9y ago
  Maybe we need a browser extension to show $ sign next to digital subscription links.
dredmorbius 9y ago
https://archive.is https://archive.is
throwanem 9y ago
...while Twitter and Facebook are free.
- nurettin 9y ago
  ... and none of them are good.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

asabjorn 9y ago

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 ostracizing of people that hold opposing opinions is ok when you hold the correct opinions and not when you don’t, and I strongly believe all sides should be held to the same standard of discourse.

hkmurakami 9y ago
Sadly your view, which is the same as kind, seems to be seldom held by our peers.
avenius 9y ago
You make a good point - they appear to make themselves part of the problem, which in my view is the increasing polarization of topics. There no longer seems to be any middle ground in the public discourse, instead everyone is entrenched on their respective poles. It's immensely frustrating.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- Consultant32452 9y ago
  I hit this hard the other day. There's a TV show I really like called the Runaways. On Hulu, where I watch that show, they seem to constantly run this one commercial cheerleading how great it is that the show is so diverse. I commented on social media that the commercial felt like it was trying to lecture me and has ultimately detracted from my viewing experience. It didn't matter that in the context of this conversation I was talking about how this particular show, which happens to be very diverse, is one of my favorites, the fact that I rebuffed the SJW cheerleading instantly turned me into a Nazi.
indubitable 9y ago

CodeWriter23 9y ago

I’m pretty sure it’s just revealing the dumb, at scale.

camus2 9y ago
It just make it is easier for extremists of all sides to find each other and build echo chambers to strengthen their ideas. Now this article is a bit hypocritical as every journalist and news media out there is also on social media and use it as a communication and advertisement channel, just like like everyone else. NYT and co love Facebook and Twitter when it helps them bring in paid customers.
saint_fiasco 9y ago
It is also spreading the dumb much faster. Used to be everyone would have dumb ideas but they would be different ideas. Now the dumb ideas converge really fast around the latest global outrage. A single widespread dumb idea is more dangerous to democracy than a million dumber localized ideas.

afpx 9y ago

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 radical, fringe perspectives to have greater influence in the mainstream. But, in an age when content is free (I.e. paid for by ads), the loudest and most extreme make the most money. Now, I cringe. There’s little discussion, dialogue, or dialectic - less prefrontal cortex and lots more amygdala and limbic. And, if we think of the PFC as what makes us most human, most intelligent - then yes, we dumb. But, don’t lose hope. There are still plenty of moderate and reasonable people out there. It’s just that they’re not normally the raucous, crass ones. A rule of thumb for me is to shun the loudest most aggressive voices, because they almost always know very little.

thriftwy 9y ago
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.
- asabjorn 9y ago
  Groups like alt-right or social justice warriors seem aware that what they advocate are sometimes based upon factually incorrect statements. I believe these groups are aware that they are fighting for an action through rhetoric that use factual statements that can easily be shown to be incorrect. Further, it seems like they believe better facts supporting their view could be found if their actions were implemented because they insist so much that their subjective truth should be respected to the same degree as real facts that disagree with their subjective truth. My interpretation is that the awareness of their factual problems is what motivated these groups to develop a pattern of violent intolerance towards anyone that questions it, as people that do not agree with the action would otherwise outnumber them in the discourse and make it harder to implement the action. There seem to be a synergy between alt-right and social justice warriors in particular, as both narratives need an antagonistic other that justifies why it is ok to be violently intolerant towards anyone that questions their view.

dba7dba 9y ago

This book comes to my mind. https://www.amazon.com/How-News-Makes-Dumb-Information/dp/0830822038 https://www.amazon.com/How-News-Makes-Dumb-Information/dp/08... Sommerville argues that news began to make us dumber when we insisted on having it daily. Now millions of column inches and airtime hours must be filled with information--every day, every hour, every minute. The news, Sommerville says, becomes the driving force for much of our public culture. News schedules turn politics into a perpetual campaign. News packaging influences the timing, content and perception of government initiatives. News frenzies make a superstition out of scientific and medical research. News polls and statistics create opinion as much as they gauge it. Lost in the tidal wave of information is our ability to discern truly significant news--and our ability to recognize and participate in true community. I used to consume news daily, obsessively even when I was younger. I was that addict that used to refresh cnn.com compulsively every few minutes at a stretch. Now, I come to HN and a few other niche sites for 'information' or 'news'. But I no longer visit cnn or NYT as much any more.

paulie_a 9y ago
Anecdote:. I was at a bar tonight and noticed the tv had the same "breaking news" headline on for three hours. It wasn't breaking news, just news. News that wasn't even that important
- dredmorbius 9y ago
  Mark Blythe: https://youtu.be/TdivPhu-jTQ?t=380 https://youtu.be/TdivPhu-jTQ?t=380

ilitirit 9y ago

The drama of the Internet is that it has promoted the village idiot to the bearer of truth - Umberto Eco, on Social Media

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

cbcoutinho 9y ago

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 been a while so please excuse any inaccuracies - in 1984 the world is controlled by authoritarian governments through fear, misinformation, and endless distractions, whereas in Brave New World the world is controlled by an authoritarian government through mind-numbing pleasure and shallow entertainment. The governments in these books both rely on citizens being reduced to their lowest common denominator. I think people during the cold war could most easily imagine, and thus be most afraid of, a world that resembled 1984. The book I mentioned in the beginning of this post argues the view that we should have actually been more worried about a world more closely resembling Brave New World. Today we are constantly fed a mind-numbing amount (mis)information that we also simultaneously look for because it makes us feel better. Unfortunately, this media barrage also robs us of our attention and ability to critically think about important issues affecting our society. If anyone is interested in reading a book written before the age of social media (published 1985) and exploring these ideas, I highly recommend this one.

bklaasen 9y ago
It's extraordinary how relevant this book still is. Postman was a student of McLuhan, but wrote in a much more accessible style.
weeha 9y ago
I guess this inspired Stuart Mcmillen with this strip: https://therionorteline.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/huxley-vs-orwell.jpg https://therionorteline.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/huxley-v...
zingmars 9y ago
Thanks for the recommendation, I will take a look at it. This kind of reminds me how I felt when I was reading both those books. I had already seen all the memes about 1984 not being an instruction manual, and it left me kind of confused, because the direction the west is moving towards doesn't really resemble what was described in the book (at least, not yet). Then I read Brave New World and it certainly read like something more relevant to our current situation. Both are horrifying stories though, and it pains me that US, a nation that once prided itself for being 'free' has 2 conflicting mainstream ideologies, both of which call for a bigger government in an attempt to oppress the other side.

Quarrelsome 9y ago

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 of print media but maybe together and on average we were always this dumb in the first place but now we just see it better.

daemin 9y ago
So as before you would say 'dumb' things to your inner social circle of friends, with an occasional stranger overhearing. Today you can say those same things online, but instead of it just being your friends it's effectively on the public record and everyone can see and comment on what you said. This reminds me of a story that Clay Shirky told about how one of his students/coworkers wanted to announce the breakup of her engagement. She carefully configured her settings on the FB, then changed her relationship status. But even so everyone knew in real time and she was deluged with questions and messages. The reason both of these situations are so jarring is because everyone instantly sees this information, where as previously it took a lot longer to filter through the social graph.
- asabjorn 9y ago
  People say things now in a social context in real life and then someone takes it out of context to rile up a mob online, making it dumb because it was taken out of context and used against them. As we are all humans most people with the context probably recognize this and are secretly glad they were not the ones targeted, although I doubt most of us want this kind of society. It seems reasonable to believe that the person misrepresenting is often aware of the context and is disingenuous in their representation. And if not I am not sure why we are giving the stage to people with poor comprehension skills and a correspondingly violent temper.
gaius 9y ago
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.

sjcsjc 9y ago

surely, "Social Media Are Making Us Dumber" [tongue firmly in cheek]

julianpye 9y ago

So the singularity is approaching even faster!

sebow 9y ago

It's not actually much about Social Media and the internet in general but the fact that some person/entity dictates the course of discussion, and you obviously can blame the people who follow them but at the end of the day most people like to conform themselves and associate with a group because that's how we evolved, in groups.(or better said tribes) I surely wasn't around when the TV appeared, but i'm pretty sure it wasn't so much about the technology or the time spent on it, but more about the fact that the number between the people who come up with the content and the topics discussed and the people receiving the information is highly disproportionate. The fact that you have NYT say, what in essence is alt-media,that is "making people dumber" it's kind of hypocritical.The article it's just a rage about the simple fact that an academic figure is more edgy than the vast majority. I would rather stop decaying the quality in the selection of topics through politics.

Dowwie 9y ago

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.

markdog12 9y ago
> If I could wave a magic wand, I would introduce friction to sharing media Even better, suffuse everyone with that great skepticism you speak of. Unfortunately, your suggestions are infinitely more practical.
- throwanem 9y ago
  Unfortunately, those suggestions are just as impractical, because maximally incontinent sharing is maximally remunerative to a platform which monetizes user engagement.
  - Dowwie 9y ago
    Yes, they are impractical for those platforms that monetize maximal engagement.

adriand 9y ago

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-reasons-slavery_us_5a566d6be4b08a1f624af02f 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.

smcl 9y ago
I know where you're trying to go with this and your heart is in the right place, but the example is awful and does not help in the slightest. I have a feeling that I'm gonna get "ugh, replies like yours are exactly the problem, smcl!" but to me asking children to come up with some good side of slavery is up there with trying to find the good side of the holocaust. Whether "good" or "bad" is in quotes doesn't really change that it's a stupendously bad way to approach the subject. It might be an intellectually stimulating conversation for some, but if it's a conversation only occurring in hushed tones in coffee shops or in private then I think that's probably for the best.

benkarst 9y ago

We are getting dumber. Social media is simply a mirror.

Allower 9y ago

Speak for yourself. Seems more likely social media is making it more difficult for stupid people to hide.

oliv__ 9y ago

No, you're already dumb and social media is just bringing it out.

DyslexicAtheist 9y ago

I just did what I wanted to do since a very long time: deleted my Facebook company page and my personal profile and added all the facebook domains to my /etc/hosts sinkhole[¹] I can finally breathe again. [¹] https://github.com/jmdugan/blocklists/blob/master/corporations/facebook/all https://github.com/jmdugan/blocklists/blob/master/corporatio...

gallerdude 9y ago

Does anyone have a twitter timeline archiving tool? I get some major FoMO when it comes to not checking twitter.

prepend 9y ago
There are a bunch of twitter to RSS tools. Here’s one I played around with a while ago, https://twitrss.me/ https://twitrss.me/ I actually prefer reading twitter via rss. There’s no missing out, and you can organize by topics, user groups, stuff like that.
- gallerdude 9y ago
  Thanks for the help!

nvr219 9y ago

Why doesn't the opinion piece link to the youtube video it talks about?

debt 9y ago

The other day I started reading a book and fell asleep almost instantly because it was so boring. So instead I started listening to a lecture on YouTube and I fell asleep almost instantly. So then after that I opened that Instagram explore page and was engaged for hours. Social media is definitely making us dumber. It's 15-60-second hits of all the good parts of everything and that's it. No context, no substance, just the good stuff.

jccalhoun 9y ago

I think that using an example of people misinterpreting and then spreading something without having familiarized themselves with the original sources to claim that social media makes us dumber is pretty dumb.

Bromskloss 9y ago

Selection bias? ;-)