Are we getting stupider?

Fantastic article in Wired by Clive Thompson. It’s only a page and well worth your time.

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/17-02/st_thompson

Clive Thompson on How More Info Leads to Less Knowledge via kwout

Filed under culture, technology : Comments (3) : Jan 24th, 2009 by tadfad

3 Responses to “Are we getting stupider?”

  1. Paul G. Says:
    January 24th, 2009 at 11:34

    This is a good article. It raises some pretty interesting questions, in my opinion. Namely, as the author quotes Manjoo: “if we argue about what a fact means, we’re having a debate. If we argue about what the facts are, it’s agnotological Armageddon, where reality dies screaming.”

    Although I do think that the accumulation of anti-knowledge has been aided by bogus scientific studies, lobbies etc, this statement is problematic. In the most analytic, critical and, even, scientific sense isn’t it always the facts that are constantly in question? And isn’t it very highly unscientific and uncritical to accept that are some sort of unchangeable set of facts governing reality? I’m not saying the Tobacco companies are correct to question fact in the name of profit-margins. But I also think it’s highly uncritical to assume that there are some sort of axioms of fact that underpin our world.

    As evidence, you posted this a while ago: “If there is one message writ large within the annals of anthropology, it is to beware the solid truths of one’s own culture. If we contrast our views with those of others, we find that what we take to be ‘reliable knowledge’ is more properly considered a form of folklore.”

  2. Dan Says:
    January 25th, 2009 at 21:17

    But wait. Isn’t science the recording of observations (facts)? To then ask and question what those observations/facts mean is healthy scientific debate…but to argue about what the observations actually were is to question the scientific method (OR to call out a group, like Tobacco Companies, for failing to perform scientifically sound research).
    It is this unsound research that is the source of misinformation. But with good science (peer reviewed, reproducible, etc.), the facts are never in question…merely what they mean are.

  3. Paul G. Says:
    January 27th, 2009 at 10:24

    True – but that implies that sciences schema of observation adequately describes/charts the natural world, mathematics, the universe. Now, “real, good” science is certainly the best means at achieving such a mapping – and “fake, bad” science is obviously not – but to assume that science provides an exhaustive language of natural descriptions is, in my opinion, fallacious.

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