The internet allows us to connect to large amounts of people, we can also weed out the groups of people, communities, and content we want to experience. A right winged extremist can choose to only interact and talk to those who agree with his opinions. Instead of being subjected to a broad spectrum of information like we want to believe the internet does, he is only subjecting him self to what makes him feel good to refines his beliefs even if they’re completely wrong or idiotic. In this sense I feel like the masses have huddled up together and started spewing their opinions without a shred of acceptance of anything in opposition. Even when you appeal to these people once you state anything that triggers their beliefs are in question then they lash out at yours. This is the only way they know how to react to opposition since they’re so use to being in a controlled environment where their believes are protected from outside opposition. The internet allows tons of people to start doing this and the result is our current political landscape.
So in conclusion, the internet can make people smarter however the way most people use the internet makes them stupid.
The problem with the internet is that it has all of the information, right or wrong.
Need to prove that vaccines cause autism? No problem, it is on the internet.
Need to prove that vaccines don’t cause autism? No problem, it is on the internet.
Repeat for every subject.
So people, I think naturally, have a confirmation bias. They are drawn to information that confirms what they already believe to be true. So if you believe that vaccines cause autism, you will be drawn to this information; thereby, confirming your belief.
People aren’t really taught much critical thinking or how to evaluate an information source. So when they find a source of information that confirms a bias, even if they were open to evaluating it, they don’t really know how and so they don’t except through the lens of their own belief system.
People have lived very insulated lives since time immemorial. They simply did it via having actual insular communities, with all the people around them sharing their lifestyle and beliefs, rather than the new approach of reaching out across the internet to find virtual communities of like-minded weirdos over the net gathered from disparate locales.
The reason this change looks like it’s causing a drop in intelligence is because it’s much more likely for the people around you to each belong to conflicting communities, and it’s easier to toddle over to the next community over and see what freaks they are compared to your community (which is the perfectly normal one).
Smartphones, on the other hand do make people stupider, by feeding their narcissistic urges and increasing their general stress levels.
Right. The major difference that the internet introduced, for better or worse is this divorcing communities from geographical space. Used to be, if you were into clown scat, you either took that shameful secret to your grave or forever be “that guy” in town, because the only local community was that of “normal” people all (publicly) sharing lifestyles and beliefs.
Now you just join a clown scat forum and happily share homemade videos.
That’s the positive part. The negative part is, it’s also true if you’re a jew-hating, gun lubing conspiracy theorist. Only the videos change.
It may be too early to tell. At the moment it seems like a net benefit to humanity. Sure it helps bad ideas spread quickly, but we don’t blame mass literacy for all of the books on UFOs, or even for Mein Kampf. Access to information generally improves lives, and good ideas tend to win out in the long run.
Then again if the internet ends up allowing some apocalyptic cult to download the genome for a modified super strain of smallpox, we may have to re-evaluate.
There’s no unplugging it anyway, so we’ll just have to wait and see.
For the past 5 years since I have retired I have harbored an obsession with a theory on social media based collaborations. One thing I have noticed that might relate to this thread is that when a diverse group of people come together with a common interest they tend to bond to some degree. This size of this group seems limited to under 100 people for the most part. You might have a web site with 10,000 members but you may only have 3 or 4 core groups that seldom exceed about 100 members usually less for each core group.
Because of the bond they share based on archery or sewing or custom cars they become much more flexible about their core beliefs when discussing issues unrelated to what brought them together. They value the bond in the group to the point where they would rather behave well than risk exile from the core group. It makes for a much more civil discussion.
It can be argued that the instant intellectual gratification brought by the Internet has an impact on the cognitive skills of people.
Don’t think about it, just Google it.
And how is this different than real life? (i.e. before the internet existed.)
A group of 100 car enthusiasts in 1940 also behaved nicely to each other, even if they had different political beliefs.
The problem with the internet is that we’ve come to expect and tolerate people behaving un-nicely.
Before the anonymity of the net, there was no concept of a “flame war”.
