A society that cannot patiently read long-form texts struggles to make sense of the world in ways that enable wise judgment, empathy across differences, effective policies, technological progress, economic justice, scientific reason, and fact-based truth to prevail over misguided beliefs. Reviving reading comprehension may be among the most urgent priorities for the future of civilisation.

#ScholER #The Book Club 📚 #Digital Wellness 📱🧘 

https://joanwestenberg.medium.com/the-death-of-critical-thinking-will-kill-us-long-before-ai-781fdd23cc7c

The Death of Critical Thinking Will Kill Us Long Before AI.

ScholER

The Book Club 📚

Digital Wellness 📱🧘

A society that cannot patiently read long-form texts struggles to make sense of the world in ways that enable wise judgment, empathy across differences, effective policies, technological progress, economic justice, scientific reason, and fact-based truth to prevail over misguided beliefs. Reviving reading comprehension may be among the most urgent priorities for the future of civilisation.  #ScholER #The Book Club 📚 #Digital Wellness 📱🧘   https://joanwestenberg.medium.com/the-death-of-critical-thinking-will-kill-us-long-before-ai-781fdd23cc7c

Sam Mendoza

Google DeepMind and BioNTech are building AI lab assistants to help plan experiments and predict their outcomes.

https://www.ft.com/content/64b1bb33-095e-4cc5-a911-50df76fa3d1d?accessToken=zwAGI5HcJG4Ikc9ksbszCV5MxdOpEVDfdvo9HQ.MEUCIFWB1GHRWRahvfRRFaj9H8WOY0zQbDQ5sgOrgO6xHUrtAiEAtws3A13Xb1x2Nf6u2kiUczexHbK9WVDosUFqpkUZuqc&sharetype=gift&token=2abb3c07-89e0-4f71-89d5-6ec87a9654ff&ref=platformer.news

Google DeepMind and BioNTech are building AI lab assistants to help plan experiments and predict their outcomes.  https://www.ft.com/content/64b1bb33-095e-4cc5-a911-50df76fa3d1d?accessToken=zwAGI5HcJG4Ikc9ksbszCV5MxdOpEVDfdvo9HQ.MEUCIFWB1GHRWRahvfRRFaj9H8WOY0zQbDQ5sgOrgO6xHUrtAiEAtws3A13Xb1x2Nf6u2kiUczexHbK9WVDosUFqpkUZuqc&sharetype=gift&token=2abb3c07-89e0-4f71-89d5-6ec87a9654ff&ref=platformer.news

Artificial intelligence used to help researchers plan experiments and better predict outcomes

DeepMind and BioNTech build AI lab assistants for scientific research

Jerome Cody

We have handheld devices capable of accessing the sum total of human knowledge, but we use them to watch cat videos.
Go figure.

https://medium.com/free-factor/how-did-a-generation-become-so-stupid-d5bdf62471ab

 #Digital Wellness 📱🧘 #ScholER

We have handheld devices capable of accessing the sum total of human knowledge, but we use them to watch cat videos. Go figure.  https://medium.com/free-factor/how-did-a-generation-become-so-stupid-d5bdf62471ab   #Digital Wellness 📱🧘 #ScholER

How Did a Generation Become So Stupid?

Todd Smith

Every generation seems to believe the new generation(s) are less thoughtful, less informed, etc. But when we look at the data we see one thing very clearly: people everywhere and at every time are basically ignorant and very foolish. Regardless of whether it's gawping at some vacuous nonsense on TikTok or gawping at a wholly distorting "news" report on a supposedly legitimate channel, people always want the most simple ideas possible. This is because the human brain evolved, like the rest of our body, under conditions of scarcity. Hence doing as little thinking as possible was for 99.99% of our evolutionary history highly adaptive.
The real question is: why are a few people not content to remain ignorant and stupid? Our entire modern world has been built by the contributions of a miniscule minority, and so it is worth trying to understand not why most people are empty-headed but why a tiny fraction of a percent are not. As we will never change human biology and thus never see a time when most people are anything other than as they have always been, it is increasingly urgent for us (i) to understand how anomalies occur, and (ii) to understand that in a complex inter-connected world of long causal chains, representative democracy inevitably leads to mindless populism which in turn inevitably leads to catastrophe. We may be too late, in our own brief civilization, to do anything other than look on in horror as the Brexits and Trumps and Le Pens and Melonis and Modis and Erdogans of this world bring disaster down upon the heads of their empty-headed citizens, but it would be rather nice to leave tomorrow's survivors with some ideas on how to avoid repeating our mistakes.

Every generation seems to believe the new generation(s) are less thoughtful, less informed, etc. But when we look at the data we see one thing very clearly: people everywhere and at every time are basically ignorant and very foolish. Regardless of whether it's gawping at some vacuous nonsense on TikTok or gawping at a wholly distorting "news" report on a supposedly legitimate channel, people always want the most simple ideas possible. This is because the human brain evolved, like the rest of our body, under conditions of scarcity. Hence doing as little thinking as possible was for 99.99% of our evolutionary history highly adaptive. The real question is: why are a few people not content to remain ignorant and stupid? Our entire modern world has been built by the contributions of a miniscule minority, and so it is worth trying to understand not why most people are empty-headed but why a tiny fraction of a percent are not. As we will never change human biology and thus never see a time when most people are anything other than as they have always been, it is increasingly urgent for us (i) to understand how anomalies occur, and (ii) to understand that in a complex inter-connected world of long causal chains, representative democracy inevitably leads to mindless populism which in turn inevitably leads to catastrophe. We may be too late, in our own brief civilization, to do anything other than look on in horror as the Brexits and Trumps and Le Pens and Melonis and Modis and Erdogans of this world bring disaster down upon the heads of their empty-headed citizens, but it would be rather nice to leave tomorrow's survivors with some ideas on how to avoid repeating our mistakes.

Nate

I skimmed this and couldn’t agree more. 😂 just kidding. This is a terrific piece. The cognitive dissonance prevalent in society is revealing as is the rise of confirmation bias. When we remove our ability to analyze and critically assess scientific findings, thoughts, or even conflicting opinions, society truly does and will continue to suffer. Throw in the rapid growth of technology and it becomes frightening. Thanks for sharing!!

The death of critical thinking also allows those with more knowledge to manipulate the masses. There's a decided advantage that the business owners and politicians have, if they can make the masses more malleable. But what happens when those same leaders are pulled from the same population which never learns to think deeply... Disaster! It's time that we give intellectual leadership a chance. We used to have "founding fathers" and "statesmen", now we have "politicians". The difference between statesman and politician has the same feel to me as the difference between a cleric and a thief. Politicians have a job. We need people who have a calling.

Sam Mendoza

A group of likeminded people in ScholER are talking about this.