
Social Media: Making Us Dumber? - pratap103
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/11/opinion/social-media-dumber-steven-pinker.html
======
cbcoutinho
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.

~~~
base698
May want to check out "Technopoly" by Postman as well. It's got some of the
same points but goes deeper into technology in general. It opens with a story
from Phaedrus by Plato where a king is arguing with a god over the utility of
writing. The god says it's amazing and allows all knowledge to be stored, etc.
But the king says the god is too enamored with his invention and can't see
downsides like knowledge being decoupled from instruction and loss of memory
since everything is written down.

Lesson of course is all technologies have up sides and down sides, but we
rarely ever discuss the down sides.

~~~
smacktoward
The problem is that the up sides of new technologies are typically immediately
obvious, while the down sides are subtle and can take a very long time to make
themselves evident.

Example: let's make watch faces that glow in the dark by painting them on with
radium-based paint! (Which was a real thing: see
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls))

 _Up side:_ everyone can now read their watches in the dark! Hooray! An
instantly clear improvement.

 _Down side:_ radium is, well, _radioactive_ , so the workers painting the
watch faces slowly start having their bones rot and their jaws fall off. It
takes a decade for the link to be recognized between these symptoms and unsafe
procedures for handling radium-based paint. Nobody really knows how many of
the workers employed handling such paint eventually died from related
illnesses.

------
Quarrelsome
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.

~~~
gaius
_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.

~~~
ritchiea
My interpretation of the original comment isn't that context is key, it's that
the internet amplifies the kind of extremist speech that wouldn't reach very
many people pre-internet. For example: a suburban white supremacist in 1985
might feel isolated and alone, the same person in 2018 can publish their
hatred on Twitter & Medium find like minded bigots on web forums.

~~~
Quarrelsome
exactly that but less so "extremist" more so "common". We've managed to forget
about what the "common" sort of opinion is like. An opinion poll about the
death penalty or immigration is a quick way of seeing that society at large is
somewhat detached from what people assume is the "norm" from the world of
edited media circa 1990 - 2010.

When the internet exploded that "average" was still glued to the TV and nerdy
wasn't cool. Even in the 2000s you still had to run a PC to attach which is
still a bar to hurdle. Today though we now have a generation that has grown up
with internet enabled devices as a default feature in their phones, consoles,
TVs or other formally "dumb" boxes. Now _everyone_ is online and perhaps that
is just what we're seeing here as the bar for internet access has completely
vanished.

~~~
vannevar
If anything, _we_ are the extremists: I suspect that 90% of the readership of
HN was in the top 10% of their high school class, or above. Everything in our
daily lives filters out the voices of the other 90% of the world, because for
the most part, our friends and the friends of our friends resemble us. This is
the social bubble everyone talks about. I just think we consistently
underestimate just how powerful that bubble is at insulating us, until we see
dramatic evidence in politics or the mass media, or we stumble out of it
somewhere online.

~~~
gaius
Indeed. Earlier today I replied to a comment that said

 _Perceiving white males to be hard done by is amusing_

I guess the poster of that never even considered the white males in former
industrial regions. Or worse, considered that they deserved to lose their
livelihoods because of their race and gender being "wrong". It's that kind of
smug attitude that lead directly to Trump and Brexit.

------
asabjorn
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.

~~~
avenius
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.

~~~
Consultant32452
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.

------
afpx
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.

~~~
nwah1
Pinker is a liberal, in almost any sense you could come up with, either by
present standards, or the standards of twenty years ago.

I don't want to seem harsh, but unfortunately it seems warranted. Perhaps you
have a poor familiarity with his work, and with the landscape of political
thought, and intellectual culture in general.

Or perhaps you are the type of increasingly common individual that this piece
is concerned about... an overly tribalistic individual for whom empirical
reality conforms to politics.

~~~
afpx
Feel free to present your argument, which I welcome. I could be wrong and
often am.

However, as an Anthropology major at a top tier university during the 90s, I
can say for a fact that Pinker challenged convention (at my university, at
least) and pushed the humanities toward a view that a person’s attributes were
more the result of biology than social conditions. He also pushed against the
prevailing postmodernist and relativist perspectives, among other things. And,
although I haven’t read some of his recent work, nor kept up with his public
views, I don’t see how you can say that “The better angels” is liberal, given
that it promotes markets and a policing forms of strong government.

Unfortunately, lots of internet content pre-2000, including discussion forums,
has disappeared. So, I’m struggling to link to evidence of discussions
happening at that time.

By the way, your comment is pretty much ad-hominem, and normally I wouldn’t
respond to you. But, because your type of behavior is the actual topic of
conversation, I figured it was worth it. I find it amusing that you believe me
a liberal ...

~~~
nwah1
>Feel free to present your argument, which I welcome.

Sure. You could define a liberal in a number of ways. One possible definition
is someone who is "center-left", generally votes for democrats, supports
public provisioning of education, healthcare, welfare, and so forth.

Pinker posted regularly on Twitter during the elections, generally supporting
Hillary Clinton and opposing Trump.

[https://twitter.com/sapinker/status/793455008939401216](https://twitter.com/sapinker/status/793455008939401216)

In a larger context of liberalism, as opposed to fascism or socialism, again
he comes out as a liberal with fairly consistent support for individual
rights, in both economic and political realms, although regularly modified by
a utilitarian cost-benefit analysis... as is typical of liberals going back to
Bentham and JS Mill.

None of what you said about human nature is at odds with his political,
economic, and social identification as a liberal. It would've been unusual to
find anyone of any era, including the present era, who fully denies the
concept of a human nature.

Are there any traits that distinguish humans from anything else? If so, there
is a human nature.

>I find it amusing that you believe me a liberal ...

I assumed that you were a member of the radical left, and not a liberal.
Anthropology, as a discipline, currently has an overwhelming bias towards this
leaning, moreso than nearly any other discipline.

~~~
wastewaste
You answered to a strawman argument, supporting it even. But its a loosing
game for you, because you submit to a dogmatized interpretation that is easy
to refute saying nothing would be as black and white as implied by the
argument. Parent pretty much implied media presented someone as a strawman,
you concord that someone was exemplary for the reduction of an idea, seemingly
with the intent to discuss it further, while the parent pretty much suggested
to be tired of the discussion.

And you weasel out of the discussion when you suddenly shift to put human
nature as a whole into question, just to then _shift the goal post_ to an
indefinite plurality of 'humans'.

------
dba7dba
This book comes to my mind.

[https://www.amazon.com/How-News-Makes-Dumb-
Information/dp/08...](https://www.amazon.com/How-News-Makes-Dumb-
Information/dp/0830822038)

 _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
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
Mark Blythe: [https://youtu.be/TdivPhu-jTQ?t=380](https://youtu.be/TdivPhu-
jTQ?t=380)

------
adriand
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-
reas...](http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/school-homework-good-reasons-
slavery_us_5a566d6be4b08a1f624af02f)

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
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.

~~~
billfruit
I do agree that 4th grade is too young for such a topic, but perhaps precisely
your reaction is what the parent commenter was speaking about. He made a
meaningful observation, yet people were quick to jump on a passing example
entirely of incidental importance to the point.

~~~
prepend
Actually, I think 3rd and 4th grade is a perfect time for these types of
“easy” moral analyses.

If the goal is to teach kids to think, then you want excerises building
critical thinking. Even kindergarten is a good time to start critical thinking
on hard topics “Why do you think the police shot those people with a hose?” I
remember coming up when taking my 1st grader to the MLK museum.

If the goal is indoctrinate kids until it’s “safe” to understand why things
are evil and wrong like slavery, then by all means wait until later. I’m not
sure what the right age is.

------
ilitirit
_The drama of the Internet is that it has promoted the village idiot to the
bearer of truth_

\- Umberto Eco, on Social Media

------
Dowwie
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
> 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
Unfortunately, those suggestions are just as impractical, because maximally
incontinent sharing is maximally remunerative to a platform which monetizes
user engagement.

~~~
Dowwie
Yes, they are impractical for those platforms that monetize maximal
engagement.

------
DyslexicAtheist
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/corporatio...](https://github.com/jmdugan/blocklists/blob/master/corporations/facebook/all)

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

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

------
CodeWriter23
I’m pretty sure it’s just revealing the dumb, at scale.

~~~
camus2
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.

------
debt
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
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.

------
minikites
>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
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.

------
julianpye
So the singularity is approaching even faster!

------
nvr219
Why doesn't the opinion piece link to the youtube video it talks about?

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

~~~
prepend
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
Thanks for the help!

------
Bromskloss
Selection bias? ;-)

------
sjcsjc
surely, "Social Media Are Making Us Dumber"

[tongue firmly in cheek]

------
nurettin
NYT requires a digital subscription.

~~~
throwanem
...while Twitter and Facebook are free.

~~~
nurettin
... and none of them are good.

