Technology and human nature
“The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking.”
—Albert Einstein
“The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking.”
—Albert Einstein
“We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom.”
—E. O. Wilson
I'm struck by this point made by Josh Faga in his article Starving for Wisdom:
It used to be the case that we had to make up our mind about something. But, the advent of modern mediums has been so successful at packaging intellectual positions into digestible vitamins that they have essentially “made up our minds” for us.
We don't make up our minds at all. Instead, we are presented a pre-packaged intellectual position that the medium we consume it over conveniently places into our minds for us; a process not too dissimilar from placing a CD into a CD player. Then, also not too dissimilar from a CD player, when in the appropriate situations, we are conditioned to push a button and “play back” the opinion that was burned on the CD.
To complete the feedback loop, whenever we 'play the songs' on our CD players, we are rewarded by those that have the same CD. We regurgitate the opinions and information we consume to the group of people that have also consumed it and receive our reward for having successfully consumed and spit back what we have 'learned'. This process is at the bottom of our ideologically possessed and polarized political landscape. We are educating, organizing, and rewarding ourselves for simply putting a CD in a CD player and pressing play.
I pay for YouTube Premium, but I find YouTube so effective at directing my attention that I've completely disabled the app on my phone. As an alternative, I've painstakingly set up Firefox Beta with Unhook, an add-on that removes YouTube's most addictive components. (It feels wrong to call them features.) When I'm using my phone, I only watch YouTube through this browser.
I'm struck that even paying customers are subject to addictive, engagement-driven designs that serve to increase ad impressions, despite the fact that they see no ads. Does YouTube, or any other company for that matter, care when their paying customers want their product to be less addictive?
edit (2026-01-26): You no longer need Firefox Beta to install Unhook. It now works fine on the normal version of Firefox for Android.
In a recent podcast, Cal Newport shared his view that the internet is best when it's decentralized, disorganized, and weird. Life was simpler when content from crazy people actually looked crazy, with green text, yellow backgrounds, wacky mouse pointers, ugly scrollbars, and bald eagle GIFs polluting the page.
I think he's right.
The thoughts webring is old-school, low-tech, and scatter-brained. It's sometimes nauseating, occasionally delightful, and definitely weird. I love it.
On the Internet, nobody knows you're just making stuff up. For that matter, nobody knows if you're a literal child.
If we knew the true identities of people who post on Reddit and Twitter, I think we'd be amazed at how confident and persuasive children can be.
I've been guilty of what I criticize in social media. Among other things, I was never as smart or as clever as my Facebook notifications made me believe. It was all a mirage.
“Never proclaim yourself a philosopher, nor make much talk among the ignorant about your principles, but show them by actions. Thus, at an entertainment, do not discourse how people ought to eat, but eat as you ought… For sheep do not hastily throw up the grass to show the shepherds how much they have eaten, but, inwardly digesting their food, they produce it outwardly in wool and milk.”
—The Enchiridion of Epictetus
The irony of this post is not lost on me. This micro-blog exists to communicate my ideas.
At the same time, I've adopted this approach in other contexts, on other topics that are very important to me. Boasting and moral posturing can be satisfying, but they don't achieve much. In some cases, they can even be counter-productive, turning reasonable people away from ideas and causes that we care about. There is a fine line between grandstanding and judging others, and as I've written previously, I don't know anyone who has genuinely changed their mind as a result of being scolded and judged.
It's unfortunate that social media encourages grandstanding when it can be so harmful. Why are we so angry, resentful, and divided? Perhaps we should follow the kudos.
In 2008, Michael Pollan coined the following phrase as a simple summary of his nutritional advice:
Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
Maybe we need equally simple advice for this new, “social” (actually, profoudnly antisocial) world we live in. Maybe it should be something like:
Use the web. Not too much. Mostly learn from experts.