Is the Internet making us stupid?

[Panda]

I was reading about this book called The Shallows.

The Shallows:
http://www.theshallowsbook.com/nicholas ... llows.html

This is one of those speculative books that asks the question, does the internet make us stupid. It says that as we make use of the internet we get into the habit of skimming instead of reading and thinking about things deeply, reflecting, and concentrating. As evidence for this assertion he says that the information technologies that we use reroute our neural pathways and can, therefore, shape who we are.

I doubt that he is right about the internet or using search engines making us stupid. What do you think?

[BaNa]

tl;dr

No the internet is not making us stupid but im pretty sure its making that guy rich.

[Panda]

[dizekat]

I was reading about this book called The Shallows.

The Shallows:
http://www.theshallowsbook.com/nicholas ... llows.html

This is one of those speculative books that asks the question, does the internet make us stupid. It says that as we make use of the internet we get into the habit of skimming instead of reading and thinking about things deeply, reflecting, and concentrating. As evidence for this assertion he says that the information technologies that we use reroute our neural pathways and can, therefore, shape who we are.

lol right, coz we were thinking deeply, reading, reflecting, and concentrating, when watching tv.

I say, thanks to the internet, most people read and think a lot more than before the internet. People spend their time far more actively, having to choose themselves what to watch and read. People write a LOT more than before internet. People read articles on topics they would have never gone to library for. People read - without skimming - more than they did read before, but also skim. Skimming some to find interesting bits to actually read is a far more active thing to do (engages larger areas of brain harder) than just reading through a book page by page like a drone (when done for same length of time of course, skimreading same book would take far less time). If you ever did research for study or job and been skimreading you know it's just plain harder to usefully skimread. I'm sure people think deeply and concentrate for far larger percentage of their free time than before as well.
People's been putting up with badly written pieces of TL;DR in books for ages because you had a limited supply of books which you want to last longer. This is no longer the case and the TL;DR is being skimmed now, which activates more neurons harder than just going through it word by word. edit: i recall computer tomography studies showing it's the case, someone find a link?

I doubt that he is right about the internet or using search engines making us stupid. What do you think?

agreed.

[dizekat]

i mean, seriously, most of us here write in a week far more than average person of our age would of written in several years before internet(but after phone), excluding the school & formal stuff at some jobs.

[bobthedinosaur]

http://searchengineland.com/dr-teena-mo ... ogle-16728

[Hobo Joe]

Like anything, it's the way you use it. Many people (I'd say most people around here) use it for information and learning pretty dominantly, so in that situation it would mostly be beneficial. But of course there are people who will use it in such a way that will simply turn their brain off, much like how many people are with TV.


Basically, if you have an attention span, the internet is the most comprehensive and most accessible repository of information in the entire history of the human race, and you can use it accomplish damn near anything. On the other hand, if you don't have an attention span, the internet will simply exacerbate your problem.

[Machete234]

I think my reading style is really fucked up since I use the internet, it starts with me never reading the titles, because on a webpage you allready know what is there.
And then I try to quickly filter out the information of the text, if I dont succeed I have an urge to stop reading.
This can be a problem when you have to read pages of boring scientific stuff.

But I think the internet is not decreasing the real intelligence but maybe the reading behaviour for some people.

[hoijui]

when i was studying IT, except me, there were 2 guys constantly browsing youtube and similar sites for the most stupid stuff they could find, and 70% of the rest was playing WOW cooperatively. this was the case in like.. 30% of classes. in the breaks, they starting talking about golden shovels that would make them more intelligent and similar stuff.
now of course that is not worse then TV, but you would also not compare food with shit to indicate whether it is still acceptable. you need some self discipline and a certain level of quality as a minimum. it also depends on your friends, your age, how you come in contact with technology, ...
I am sure that it makes a lot of people more stupid then they would be without TV and internet, but also helps a lot to ... be less stupid.

[Jazcash]

Is the Internet making us stupid?

No, but it is making us unhealthy.

[dizekat]

when i was studying IT, except me, there were 2 guys constantly browsing youtube and similar sites for the most stupid stuff they could find, and 70% of the rest was playing WOW cooperatively. this was the case in like.. 30% of classes. in the breaks, they starting talking about golden shovels that would make them more intelligent and similar stuff.
now of course that is not worse then TV, but you would also not compare food with shit to indicate whether it is still acceptable. you need some self discipline and a certain level of quality as a minimum. it also depends on your friends, your age, how you come in contact with technology, ...
I am sure that it makes a lot of people more stupid then they would be without TV and internet, but also helps a lot to ... be less stupid.

lol, do you imagine these guys who play WOW would have been reading Shakespeare or something before tv and internet? (or even pretending to be studying anything for that matter). Or do you want to go as far as 'before alcohol'?. Hows about before writing, surely before writing people have been exercising their memory more and telling eachother all sorts of folk tales passed down generations as spoken words.

i find it highly amusing when young people reference time 50 years or so before they were born as if their time was somehow worse. Look at history btw. Wasn't nazis and world war 2 a sign of complete idiocy on part of germans? You can complain about people watching stupidiest shit on youtube, but don't forget that 'before internet before tv' people could do such amazing feats of deep thought, intelligence, and reflection as electing a total and complete troll as fuhrer and loving him very much and so on and letting a retarded troll control the country.

[hoijui]

or look at it this way:
back then, they were working, learning how to be a farmer for example, and in their free time, did stupid stuff like electing the fuhrer. today, instead of learning how to be a farmer, they play wow, and in their free time, are still capable enough of electing a new fuhrer, and they do it. there is more time in which you can choose what to do (for more people then in the past), and if you choose unwise, you can get yourself more stupid then back then. not necessarily in the intellectual way, but in general.
stupid farmer > stupid wow player

quite some east asian philosophies/religions say something like: there is no healthy mind without a healthy body.

[dizekat]

or look at it this way:
back then, they were working, learning how to be a farmer for example, and in their free time, did stupid stuff like electing the fuhrer. today, instead of learning how to be a farmer, they play wow, and in their free time, are still capable enough of electing a new fuhrer, and they do it. there is more time in which you can choose what to do (for more people then in the past), and if you choose unwise, you can get yourself more stupid then back then. not necessarily in the intellectual way, but in general.
stupid farmer > stupid wow player

quite some east asian philosophies/religions say something like: there is no healthy mind without a healthy body.

the point is that they did utter idiocy in the past (whereas we didn't, thanks god, have WW3 yet, which is even kind of strange), and in their free time, they would have been doing something even more idiotic than playing WoW. Like, getting drunk. (Also, are you now wanting to compare to even earlier time "when nearly everyone was a farmer"?)
If you say that internet is making certain people stupid (and you're comparing to "before TV"), the burden of providing some evidence or argument that those people would of been doing something smarter before TV is actually on you. Whereas you didn't bother to even properly try to imagine "time before TV" (e.g. 1930s).

[Machete234]

Getting drunk is not more idiotic than playing WoW

[Hoi]

But what if you play wow because you're drunk?

[TradeMark]

I would say it doesnt really make people stupider yet, but makes people more impatient now, that can make them stupider though, but does it really matter? its just the next step in our evolution, everything is meant to create networks one way or another: after a few thousands of years of internet, people will start to act like a brain cell: they are fucking dumb and impatient, but together they can create something really awesome by using their impatience as a fuel. imagine they create a game where you need to react fucking fast at something, but this game is actually some development tool to some epic thing, the users might not even know this... they are too stupid to even understand basic thinking, all they do is push a button if theres 3 yellows and 2 blues...

...Or in the future the TV and internet merges together and all we watch is youtube, or should i say youtwitface.com

God damn im lucky to not live that long...

[SinbadEV]

I keep trying to answer this post and then not doing so...

so, random thoughts:

• The Internet makes YOUR MOM Stupid
• The Internet makes ME Smarter
• I've been reading too many books written by atheists about Christians, so I am currently of the opinion that everyone has biases regardless of how "scientific" their world view etc... basically, I guess I'm trying to say you have failed to define "stupid" in a way that I can argue for or against... please define Stupid so I can take a side.

[zwzsg]

Getting drunk is not more idiotic than playing WoW

Prolonged alcoholism physically destroy the brain.

[Panda]

This can be a problem when you have to read pages of boring scientific stuff.

It's good to try and read interesting scientific stuff too. I think that there are cool science topics out there like the fact that someone did a full body transplant on a monkey by removing its head and placing it on another monkey body and it lived. Then there's the whole pheromones are real and humans actually have a sixth sense in which information is gathered about pheromones from the vomeronasal organ in the nose and that people can be affected by it (such as their circadian rhythms can can be changed) but they aren't affected in the same way that deer are affected by pheromones.

Is the Internet making us stupid?

No, but it is making us unhealthy.

I don't think that the internet is making us as unhealthy as poor eating habits is.

Wasn't nazis and world war 2 a sign of complete idiocy on part of germans? You can complain about people watching stupidiest shit on youtube, but don't forget that 'before internet before tv' people could do such amazing feats of deep thought, intelligence, and reflection as electing a total and complete troll as fuhrer and loving him very much and so on and letting a retarded troll control the country.

That doesn't make them more stupid really. They were all really frightened by things like poverty and hunger. Later on, everyone got scared of nuclear wars because scientists thought that something really horrible (much worse than what did happen) would happen if a nuclear bomb was set off. They thought that a bomb could cause a chain reaction in the atmosphere and set the world on fire.

or look at it this way:
back then, they were working, learning how to be a farmer for example, and in their free time, did stupid stuff like electing the fuhrer. today, instead of learning how to be a farmer, they play wow, and in their free time, are still capable enough of electing a new fuhrer, and they do it. there is more time in which you can choose what to do (for more people then in the past), and if you choose unwise, you can get yourself more stupid then back then. not necessarily in the intellectual way, but in general.
stupid farmer > stupid wow player

quite some east asian philosophies/religions say something like: there is no healthy mind without a healthy body.

I think that learning to farm is more useful than playing wow too and that having a healthy body can help a person have a healthy mind because it would help protect the person from delirium and disease, but a person could still catch an illness and have an unhealthy mind while still having a relatively healthy body.

[*] I've been reading too many books written by atheists about Christians, so I am currently of the opinion that everyone has biases regardless of how "scientific" their world view etc... basically, I guess I'm trying to say you have failed to define "stupid" in a way that I can argue for or against... please define Stupid so I can take a side.[/list]

I agree that everyone has biases regardless of how "scientific" their world view is.

You're supposed to give your own definition or opinion of what is stupid related to the information presented about the book.

[KaiserJ]

i don't think it's making us stupid per se. for me, there are two sides of the coin (as always)

there's definitely something going on though where people substitute learned knowledge for the access to knowledge... you guys know what i mean, you ask a question, and instead of thinking about it, the person you've asked immediately powers up the smartphone and googles it

its almost like the internet is a catalyst to take in as much (as most people here would do i warrant, spending hours pulling up pages on the net and soaking up as much information as we can) or as little (google everything, don't check more than one source, skim read) as we want.

so yeah. i think using internet for instant reference can be a bad habit. however reading and learning and expanding your mind via the internet is great