Merry Christmas. Happy birthday. Happy Darwin Day?
In the long list of observed holidays, Darwin Day may seem like a weird one to celebrate. But as the father of evolutionary thought, our buddy Charlie has given us plenty to consider, and changed everything we understand about ourselves and our world.
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While this is a great day to sit back, grab a copy of Origin of Species, and revel in all that humanity has done for science and reason, this post is written to do quite the opposite.
Instead of diving into Darwins discovery of natural selection, Id rathertouch upon how the advent of modern technology has made us dumber. Not in a blatant Darwin Awards aspect, but in a more subtle and possibly more disastrous way.
While the internet has only been around some 20-odd years, its hard to imagine life without it. I live abroad, but am able to stay in touch with friends and family across theglobe. And in a world as vast as ours, the net has given us instant access to a myriad of information otherwise unlikely.
Make no mistake, Im not demonizing the Web, but our dependence on it has a dark side its constant distractions have turned our thoughts into a scattered and superficial mess.
You cant go a minute without checking your textsor see whos favorited your most recent tweet. I, myself, have checked my social media accounts four times while writing this. Yetwe have no idea how we got to this point.
As Roman philosopher Seneca put it: To be everywhere is to be nowhere.
Its not the internet thats to blame, but our own craving for distraction.
When were constantly distracted and interrupted, our brains cant forge the neural connections that give distinctiveness and depth to our thinking.
In an experiment at Stanford University, it was determined that our thoughts become disjointed with increased distractions and multitasking. As such, were much less able to distinguish important information from the trivial stuff.
You can barely navigate the internet without coming across fake news. Not exactly sure when the flair for the dramatic became the norm, but when clickbait titles were no longer shiny and new, publishers had to resort to other creative tactics for traffic. This has led to the new obsession of 100 percent misleading news.
While people are quick to blame the publishers, its the millions of people who cant be bothered to pick up a newspaper or decent online source. Not to mention those who cant tell the difference between Breitbart and The Associated Press.
If you cant name your two US senators, you are not all of a sudden an expert in governmental proceedings. This is just one way lies and conspiracy theories routinely gain credibility. Add a bit of bias to the mix, and youve got the mathematical equation to why any false new story is persuasive.
Thats exactly why fact-checking doesnt work anymore. As Susan Glasser, former editor of Politico, explains Even fact-checking perhaps the most untruthful candidate of our lifetime didnt work; the more news outlets did it, the less the facts resonated.
Not only is fake news damaging to the people its targeted against Pizzagate didnt just stay a funny name to a fake conspiracy, it motivated a lone gunman to enter a restaurant with a loaded weapon.
Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist Eric Kandel wrote that only when we pay close attention to information are we able to associate it meaningfully and systematically with knowledge already well established in memory. Such associations are essential to mastering complex concepts and thinking critically.
The richness of our thoughts, our memories and even our personalities hinges on our ability to focus the mind and sustain concentration.
Unfortunately, we now live in a world where you dont need to think to do anything. Weve become dependent on the internet to collect information instead of looking to ourselves to problem solve. Everything from news to opinions and locations are just a Google search away.
As technology advances and social media algorithms continue to only show things it perceives youll like, you will continue to live in an echo-chamber of your opinion and those that think exactly like you.
Its up to us as a society to keep ourselves informed and educated, not be dependent upon technology to do it for us.
Shh. Here's some distraction
Continued here:
How technology is encouraging society to be stupid - The Next Web