Are We Risking Our Ability to Think?
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- Опубликовано: 2 окт 2024
- The Michael Shermer Show # 355
How humans transfer knowledge through time might affect our ability to think.
With the advent of the internet, any topic we want to know about is instantly available with the touch of a smartphone button. With so much knowledge at our fingertips, what is there left for our brains to do? At a time when we seem to be stripping all value from the idea of knowing things - no need for math, no need for map-reading, no need for memorization - are we risking our ability to think? Simon Winchester takes a deep dive into learning and the human mind, and forces us to ponder what rational humans are becoming.
Shermer and Winchester discuss: how to become a professional writer • ChatGPT, GPT-4, and AI • knowledge as justified true belief • What is truth? • Are we living in a post-truth world? • education, past and present • books and the printing press • the history and future of encyclopedias • museums: repatriating objects taken during colonialism • print and broadcast journalism • internet and knowledge.
Simon Winchester is the acclaimed author of many books, including The Professor and the Madman, The Men Who United the States, The Perfectionists, The Map That Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology, The Man Who Loved China, A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906, Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World, and Krakatoa, most of which were New York Times bestsellers and appeared on numerous best and notable lists. In 2006, Winchester was made an officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) by Her Majesty the Queen. He resides in western Massachusetts. His new book is Knowing What We Know: The Transmission of Knowledge: From Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic.
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Regarding the returning of ancient artefacts to the place of origin.
I disagree that items purchased by the westerners should be returned.
Let's not forget the lion sculptures of Nineveh. The were destroyed in the middle east with high explosives by religious Islamic fanatics. They were destroyed because according to their religious beliefs. A religion that did not come into existence until 1400 years ago. They presumed the right and the justice of destroying artefacts created 4000 years ago.
So no, I do not agree with return these ancient artefacts. They are more likely to survive if they are dispersed through out the world. Remember after a very short period of time these artefacts become the heritage of all of humanity, not just some recently minted religious ideology.
Fortunately I have since discovered that there are about 6 examples in other places around the world that the fanatics will not be able get to destroy. Saved, only because they were removed from their place of origin. Isn't that fortunate. Keep them dispersed.
Agreed🌎☀️💙
Perhaps the lions were not woke enough and, like US statutes, had to be cancelled.
There was some wise advice offered on Brexit, but it was simply dismissed by the Brexiteers as 'project fear'. Those not capable of basic critical thinking, were sadly provided with slogans ( fake news, project fear, had enough of experts etc ) by the Brexiteers to dismiss any evidence they might of otherwise heeded.
so Brexiteers are all stupid according to you - nothing about democracy or sovereignty ok.
A wonderful visit. Thank you for being on the show.
Life a User's Manual - also one of my favourites - worth rereading every few years.
Georges Perec
Hitchens always made sure to say Elgin with a hard g sound. Simon got that right.
Are We Risking Our Ability to Think? ... of course we are .
"Since insight requires independent thought applied to information, the average American [heck, the average modern person],
bloated with the fast food of facts, has grown more informed and more stupid at the same
time."
-Nick Piombino, Contradicta Aphorisms
I think not.
*so sick of thinking.* get rid of it! _JC
Actually ...." Americans' IQ scores are trending in a downward direction. In fact, they've been falling for over a decade. According to a press release, in studying intelligence testing data from 2006 to 2018, Northwestern University researchers noticed that test scores in three out of four “cognitive domains” were going down."
@Madolite The American studies showing the first reversal of the Flynn Effect on record aren't the only ones showing a decline in IQ ... European and British researchers are finding the same IQ drop among all ages and genders in their studies also .... and the same as ours they found Ability scores dropped in three areas ...
Verbal reasoning (logic, vocabulary)
Matrix reasoning (visual problem solving, analogies)
And letter and number series (computational/mathematical).
The only increase they all found is 3D rotation (spatial reasoning)
So the takeaway is Americans and Europeans do fine on visualizing objects but they are getting worse on the important stuff .... IE. We are getting Dumber by the day .
@@madoliteIt's pure Idiocracy here in the US.
@@Raydensheraj Why would intelligence improve? Intelligence is biological. There's no survival or status need to improve your intelligence in the west.
The Flynn effect is self evidently false. The average zoomer is not a super genius compared to early 20th century people. Rising IQ scores are simply due to the fact that IQ tests are heavily biased towards education and abstract categorization. Makes sense, of course academics would devise a measure of intelligence that favours a background in academic subjects. But an IQ test will tell you that a modern 20 year old who can do high school algebra is smarter than a 20 year old from 120 years ago who knew how to be almost entirely self sufficient and maintain a plot of land and everything on it. We've seen how modern youths try to maintain things; remember the pathetic attempt to plant gardens during the CHAZ fiasco? Those are your "hyper geniuses by historical standards."
@@sigiligus The Flynn Effect has been proven to work over and over again .... so stop with the silly right wing politics here .
When IQ studies are done it is ALWAYS given to a huge cross section of society .... young people old people the educated and uneducated ... so your silly anti education idea that IQ Studies are given to only people in higher education is just proof you dont know what you are talking about ... and Flynn clearly explained that the normal and expected rise in IQ for each generation could stop for a bunch of reasons ....
And that's all that has happened here .... we are seeing a reversal of the Flynn Effect coming from environmental reasons ... IE if you take a society that for centuries have relied on learning the skills they need negotiate their personal environment themselves and replace that with computers and cellphones that do all that work and thinking for them of course you will see a decline in Logic and reasoning skills ..... so it's no wonder that kids in Seattle and elsewhere who grew up living in a world of fantasy ,video games and cell phones are not going to understand how to plant a garden ... and also in the 1800's people living in big cities did'nt know how to plant a garden either ... so your silly Republican talking points are ridiculous either way.
They can't cancel us all...and so it goes.
1:22:30 because it’s a process
The most healthy type of power I think is having a skill and discipline in a certain thing. Now that power is being taken away because people won't need to build those skills anymore because they'll be no match.
Democratisation, I'm grateful for the Altman empire and it's providing of free housing, food and medical to aid me in consuming ai movies and do VR artificial work to help me feel needed.
Wisdom is of the essence, plenty needs to be thought out and truly so. I think a society ought to have informed citizens in order to make informed decisions, but, yet again one cannot force a will or decisions unto a free democratic society. The only choice is to vote wisely, thank you Michael Shermer and Simon Winchester.
'knowledge' discussion very interesting, I wonder what is the future of libraries? What will they look like in 100 years?
Google may make use of roads, but the roads are built on taxes on incomes and sales from money Google earned. And if government limited itself to roads, sewers, clean fresh water, secure borders, courts and parks, we'd all enjoy an actually free and good limited government, not the empire of lies, war, theft, extortion, bribery and violence.
The solution will never come through keep maintaining your faked imaginary irrational realm rather through facing your bitter reality in hope to correct it someday!
Amen + women.
There are many advantages of mentality in many Western countries and other fatal flaws! For example, the ability to listen to understand what is happening first, rather than letting your irrational feelings out first. But because this was not built on deep understanding, but rather on experiences, this led to it being just a tool. But the ability to listen is the first step, not the whole way. The advantage may be used to maintain illusions rather than rebuild to be stronger and better.
@@VaughanMcCue human can’t understand apes‘ language!
but it’s Human, irrational apes and the faked hidden ancient gods of the irrational apes (that’s the upshot of the whole story on planet of the apes).
They can’t recognise what a process is !
17:00
Interesting story. Thank you for sharing
There were 7 Comments when I started watching this and there are still 7 Comments as I finish watching it. The Title: Are We Risking Our Ability to Think? Given the comments, I agree.
I don't think I should comment.
The destructive irrational meanness impedes pure human intelligence for sure.
The destructive irrational meanness impedes pure human thinking for sure, they have to get rid of their destructive irrational meanness firstly, then they can start to look for the cause of degradation of thinking,….etc
that will never happen without get ridding of their destructive irrational meanness!
DIM thinking ( destructive irrational meanness )
thx
The next big thing is IPv6 end-to-end security.
We laugh at Bishop Ussher's conclusion. But in his way, he was scientific in approach. He looked for reliable data, analyzed it, and came to a conclusion that, within his assumptions about Biblical inerrancy etc., was perfectly reasonable. To refute him, his data source had to be shown unreliable. Some still don't think they are!
Versions of Wikipedia written today will also seem comical in a hundred years.
What makes you say so?
His gut feeling, that's what.@@josephpostma1787
Are they twins?
Thank you
Most stolen artifacts should be returned to its original countries/owners. But all should be replicated and replace the returned items. Yes, the original items may be destroyed by their owners. We must get past the idea that the originals have intrinsic value. They don't since it is all abstract anyway and , ergo, can and is transferable.
Are we losing our ability to think? Seems so.
Face your bitter reality first of all (there’s no other solution)!
AI is very important but it will never become conscious!
that has a reason, the irrationals will never be able to comprehend.
there is other approach to that, but just to think about that right now is useless.
Ai Freedumb for all!!
When are we gonna talk about the real problem in America 🇺🇸 The Federal Reserve.
I had to go look up the President of Ireland after the mention. He is absolutely my new favorite person.
He has nothing valuable!
an elderly storyteller regurgitate what others have said! technology itself is not behind the lack of value in current thinking but it’s in the mentality of thieves, irrationality, the destructive irrational meanness, illusions,…. etc.
what could all that has to do with thinking!
It’s all about mind! what could paper books add?! Book in itself cannot think!
look at human precious valuable thoughts, they are so concise and valuable because they are the result-of human thinking process, they are unbreakable because they are the result of human thinking (passed through a process that includes ……) they can write many books only out of one concise human sentence .
that accent!
Its amazing how someone can have brilliant insights but be so off on something. This guy really thinks Greek philosophers heads were empty compared to modern academics? Modern people dont possess knowledge on everything. Experts focus on one or a few main things. Its true technology threatens to weaken our mental skills.
I do not think he said those philosophers of old were cognitively behind todays academics.
@josephpostma1787 oh no I'm not saying he said Greek philosophers had lower iq's or something. That's absurd but he is inferring Greek philosophers & educated people from that era minds were less cluttered ie containe less information & I don't think that's true. Most experts master one field today. I believe it was the same back then. Just because overall society know more stuff doesn't mean our experts posses all of that knowledge on their skulls. It's one reason Psychologist misunderstand evolutionary biology & vica versa with biologist..just my take
@@HughEMC "he is inferring Greek philosophers & educated people from that era minds were less cluttered ie containe less information & I don't think that's true."
I can see this actually being true because we have a better understanding of how trees and brains work, so now today our brains (or maybe rather our phones?) are cluttered with more of this information than those of an earlier age. This is not a slight against the past, just an extrapolation from the evolution of scientific knowledge.
This is not to say that the philos of old were dumb or inarticulate (Quite the opposite) just, that is some respects we know more than they did, and I sure the opposite is true in other aspects of knowledge.
& I think that's somewhat true.