Question:
Has our access to information outpaced our ability to rationalize it?
?
2010-12-13 12:56:18 UTC
Looking at questions on this site and other web sites it seems that for every issue people have mainly polarized with little hope of finding common ground. Is the situation getting worse as we gain access to information? Does the fast transfer of facts and ideas lead to stronger conformation bias? It seems people can't weigh the benefits of both sides of an argument and will step outside it completely if they can't 'choose a side'. It's depressing to look at political postings to watch people 'outsling' each other. In a medium where there is no time to scrutinize the facts how do we become more rational when debating an issue, and what can we expect from others?
Four answers:
I am Natasha's complete lack of surprise
2010-12-13 14:53:52 UTC
There is time, or at least that's what I thought the point to innocent before proven guilty provided. I thought that we had chosen to recognize social contracts through which we created these sociological structures that were supposed to both protect special interest and protect others with opposing special interests (as an American...but I may be delusional eh). That's all a government is supposed to provide, an infrastructure through which we can express ourselves as individuals. When one special interest chooses to subjugate information to its will and decide what others can know is when the sociological system becomes unstable.



We don't actually need sites like WikiLeaks to pay attention and try to hear both sides....see the polarizations and read the truth between the lines, BUT WE DO NEED TO DEMAND THE INFORMATION...otherwise we end up with the kind of mainstream media circus we currently see. It's possible to understand reality and given honest, transparent legal scrutinizing of facts...in time we can come to an answer where we all balance each other out. That's all societies are, not utopias but created systems in which to protect the one thing they were created to endow with power and protect to begin with....human life...and not some human life but all human life.



Right now our governments (all governments) have such intimate ties to big business that big business literally has a say over where the most massive amount of redistributed wealth the world has ever seen is used and in whose interest it's used for. My government is not trustworthy..and not in an, its evil and all people are evil lets all kill each other kind of way.....but in a very reasonable way....men pursue their own interests but men can't be the judges of their own interest without undermining the very system that made their actions possible to begin with. Simple, reality...sociological structures are not there to protect established power, but to provide an infrastructure...the fact that governments keep creating their own interests really needs to be addressed...rationally...now.



I support this petition and Avaaz's position on WikiLeaks because they are not saying he is innocent of anything...or guilty...but that the extra-judicial intimidation needs to stop and that things should be pursued correctly...according to how you would choose to be dealt with by those who oppose your point of view.



Also...learning about political reality is not a fun thing some people can choose to do...though it does seem like a circus now I guess....but it is a RESPONSIBILITY. What happened to that as well? Jesus...it's like a land of ******* cyborgs just popped up around me and starting chanting...death to information...we shouldn't know anything....burn the books....there is no responsibility when living in a society.....traitors....all before anyone knows anything...it's freaking me out....



To the U.S. and other governments and corporations involved in the crackdown on WikiLeaks:

We call on you to stop the crackdown on WikiLeaks and its partners immediately. We urge you to respect democratic principles and laws of freedom of expression and freedom of the press. If WikiLeaks and the journalists it works with have violated any laws they should be pursued in the courts with due process. They should not be subjected to an extra-judicial campaign of intimidation.



http://www.avaaz.org/en/wikileaks_petition/?slideshow
Move on
2010-12-13 21:09:35 UTC
Great question. If you take your question for face value it is easy to answer with a simple yes. To look at it more closely, what is the difference if we get too much info that we can't absorb it and it makes no impression on us or we don't get the info at all. Access to info in through the roof and we believe that it is this inundation of all this info that is immobilizing us. It is not. It is just as before and we must take what we can and do with it which best suits our desires. What does come from the access to all this info is the "feeling" that we should be able to make better decisions with all this info.
CogitoErgoCogitoSum
2010-12-13 21:09:24 UTC
In response to your header question, Id like to point out that no one can ever learn all the information that exists, even without rationalizing it. If you tossed in rationalizing then, well, its far too much still. And that is if we quit discovering new things as a society. The question of pace is moot, since the shear quantity of information is too much for any one person to learn in a lifetime anyway.



One of the biggest problems with the internet is not the lack of information, its the lack of accessibility. Information isnt organized. Search results turn up false information, superfluous sites and pages (you ever see that Bing.com commercial?), etc. And the stuff you can find is redundant. Nothing is ever explained on the internet in simple terms to allow for rationalizing: you either find trivial facts written in expert-vocabulary, or expert facts too advanced for the layman to understand, or you find the exceptionally trivial facts which only waste your time. Sites exist where your only options are rereading garbage you already knew when you were five, and reading new facts you cant understand because the language is too complicated. There are sites out there written in such of a technical manner, that you'd already have to be an expert in the field to understand it - which begs the question why the page was even written in the first place: experts wouldnt need it and laymen cant understand it - and you have no recourse, no option to rectify the problem. Often times, when youre self-educating, you cant find a concise list of topics or words that are pertinent to research - I have found myself giving up on research simply because I didnt have a starting point, a single word to look up with which to begin my research. And above all, no one is taking advantage of the databasing and organization technologies that are being developed. Accessibility is further hindered by the profit scheme. You need to buy an account, or be an enrolled student, so on so forth.



Other problems exist, too. Too many sites (like math education, for example) are not well structured for education. Sometimes they dont provide proofs, sometimes they only provide examples. Few teach conceptually and most focus on practical application instead of the abstract. Few pages provide links/lists to necessary prerequisites. Sometimes proofs are circular (simply because its simple and they hope no one will catch on). Sometimes they are written in overly complicated language (which is fine if your a number theorist trying to understand addition from a new perspective, but when youre a five year old trying to learn addition its quite a different story - such pages are not segregated [wikipedia] although they should be). Sometimes youre expected to possess certain knowledge, or worse yet: consequential knowledge. Just look at the layout and its no wonder a child cant learn something as simple as math.



Math is absolute, its objective, and its conceptual (no memorizing required). People like the "subjective" too much, like Shakespeare or debate class. Why? Because they could be wrong and obscure that fact with rhetoric and no one will be the wiser. And that is the problem with everything else. People push and they preach, they are guilty of fallacy after fallacy. And for the most part people are either too bigoted to change for a convincing argument, or too stupid to see truth staring them in the face.



I see a problem in our society. People are just barely smart enough to rationalize whatever they will... but too stupid to know when they are wrong. Is the situation of polarity getting worse? Yes, I would have to say so... for reasons I just stated. Too much information, too little comprehension and too little humility. The human intellectual capacity to rationalize (and form prejudices, just the same) coupled with too little will to further ones knowledge to the aim of undermining those prejudices and rationales. We choose to learn barely enough to provide evidence to convince ourselves of exactly what we already wanted to believe. We seek proof of what we (want to) believe, and not of what we do not want to believe. If we took more time trying to argue in favor of our counter-position, we might siphon through some of the garbage and actually arrive at truth one day.
jo
2010-12-13 21:02:05 UTC
But this was true even in ancient and medieval societies, where the great mass of individuals could barely understand the elite in their pyramids and castles and cathedrals, or even their own people with their intrigues and gossip and petty crime.


This content was originally posted on Y! Answers, a Q&A website that shut down in 2021.
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