How you use tools. How you choose your identity. How we're divided. How you understand information. How you focus (or not). How you handle disorder. How to avoid "cognitive hollowing".
When politicians start talking about large groups of their fellow Americans as ‘enemies,’ it’s time for a quiet stir of alertness.
Polarizing people is a good way to win an election, and also a good way to wreck a country.
-Molly Ivins
I sometimes wonder who used the apocryphal Chinese curse “may you live in interesting times” on us. Times have been too interesting for too long. A stretch of boring might be very welcome.
On the other hand, 9 Corgis are never boring, and that’s what’s underfoot this weekend as we have a guest visiting with her pack. “Interesting” in a much better way, for sure, and even a bit of an antidote for everything else.
Take care,
1. “This is about our relationship with tools.”
It was never about AI (we are not our tools) – Eric Markowitz – (Big Think)
You may be getting tired of seeing sentiments like this one, but it’s important:
The printing press was going to destroy the church. The locomotive was going to destroy the human body. Electricity was going to destroy sleep. The assembly line was going to destroy craftsmanship. The internet was going to destroy truth.
In each case it’s not the tool, it’s how we use the tool that makes all the difference. And rarely did the doomerism of the past actually come to pass. Even “the internet destroying the truth”, which sounds like something easy to pile into, is really only a tiny part of the internet’s impact.
Markowitz is making a case for the long term view over short term profits, which is, of course, not what Wall Street rewards. Nonetheless, it’s those who have focused on long term goals that have most succeeded. AI, used improperly, is a shortcut, a way to make things happen more quickly in service of those short term results. A more lasting approach is along the lines of “This is a tool, and I will decide how it serves us”.
Do this: Consider how you use your tools.
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2. “What used to be a political preference is now a personal identity”
The Great Sexual Divergence – Tom Greene – (Wit & Wisdom)
Greene focuses mostly on the growing division between the sexes and how that’s impacting society as a whole. Of course it’s amplified by social and other media.
Content aimed at men emphasized national security, crime, gun rights, and national identity. Content aimed at women emphasized reproductive rights, education, healthcare, and immigration. The more users engaged on the social platforms, the more the platforms fed their biases.
Greene takes it as a sign of a larger problem, though.
The widening gender gap, then, may not be the disease. It may be a symptom of something deeper: the erosion of shared spaces where men and women once built common lives despite their differences.
Do this: Get together with people in person more often.
3. “We are not divided by accident; we are distracted on purpose.”
The most radical act in an age of outrage is to play – Zander Phelps – (The Next Web)
The authors argument is the play is an antidote to the chronic stress we’re all feeling, and even though might consider it trivial in light of everything happening around us, it remains important.
… play expands our adaptive capacity. Fear contracts it.
He also puts into words something I think concerns many of us:
A brain conditioned to expect only curated digital rewards can struggle with ambiguity, frustration, and disagreement, skills that develop only through challenging lived experiences.
In other words, play — particularly among the young — is an important preparation for life in general.
Do this: Play.
4. “How seriously should I take this?”
The Skill That Stands Between Us and Panic – Hana Lee Goldin, MLIS – (Card Catalog)
An excellent discussion of information literacy, why it matters, and what it means.
Tracing a source, reading a primary document, checking scope, and restoring missing context are individual actions, but the cumulative effect is a shift in how we orient ourselves to unsettling information. Instead of absorbing the emotional charge of a headline and reacting from that charge, we develop the capacity to evaluate what we’re looking at before deciding how to respond.
Here’s the problem: while that’s all absolutely valid and even encouraging, it leaves me asking “who’s really going to take the time to do all that these days?”. And yet, “do all that” we must.
Do this: Do all that. Please.
5. “If you checked your postal mailbox 77 times a day, your family would stage an intervention.”
The Counterintuitive Way To Get Better At Anything – Eric Barker – (Barking Up the Wrong Tree)
There are several good suggestions here, but the counterintuitive number one is simply single-tasking. I found this observation interesting:
… we become accustomed to a certain cadence of interruption. Once that happens, even if we remove the distractors, we “self-interrupt” with intrusive thoughts to maintain our usual rhythm.
Even if we successfully single-task, it takes time for our brain to become accustomed to it and not provide a continuous stream of interruptions of its own making.
Do this: One thing at a time.
6. “Our very existence is a fight against disorder.”
The Inner Compass: Cultivating the Courage to Trust Yourself – Lawrence Yeo – (ebook)
That statement feels profound. Our lives, in many ways, are a constant battle against entropy and disorder.
Our minds are distracted, our calendars are full, and our bodies are stressed. Life is a continuous chain of solving problems, which is why it feels more like a challenging hike than a casual stroll.
Much of this is quite normal; we’re constantly solving problems that arise every day. But in many ways society seems to be positioned such that we’re fighting an ever increasing amount of disorder.
It’s exhausting.
Do this: Choose your battles. Not all disorder needs to be addressed, and not all disorder needs to be addressed immediately.
7. “Relying on AI too much leads to ‘cognitive hollowing’.”
Why AI Is Like A Premium Rate Sex Hotline – Annie Scott – (Wankery Watch)
“Cognitive hollowing” is a fascinating new term to me. It essentially encompasses the skills that atrophy as we outsource more of our thought processes to AI.
But the problem lies in the extent of cognitive off-loading that AI makes possible – e.g. reasoning, thinking, researching, creating. Because outsourcing this means we stop using the muscles to do this work ourselves. And that causes the muscles to atrophy in the same way your legs would if you just sat in bed all day everyday. We are quitting the mental gym without even realising it.
After noticing this in herself, Scott’s approach was to go cold turkey. While that’s certainly valid, I struggle with leaving such a powerful tool behind completely. I would hope we could, like any tool, learn to use it wisely, while continuing to go to the “mental gym”.
Do this: Exercise your brain.
What I’m reading now
- Platform Decay – Martha Wells
- The Science of Storytelling: Why Stories Make Us Human and How to Tell Them Better – Will Storr
- The Way of Kings: Book One of the Stormlight Archive – Brandon Sanderson
- The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke – (Audio)
- The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark – Carl Sagan
My Reading List – everything I’ve read since 2021.
My Sources Page – the common sources I scan/read regularly.
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Leo,
There is a HUGE problem in trusting what I read/see/follow on the internet. Some folks I know are simply not trusting any national news, e.g., ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MS-NOW, and Fox as examples. So, I think that folks are simply disengaging from the “news” or just staying in their silos. With AI being able to produce and provide “fake” content that looks so real, the problem may get a lot worse.
Very true. All I can say is that awareness, information literacy, and the willingness to not blindly accept anything regardless of the source is what’s needed. Unfortunately it’s more work than people are willing to invest, it seems.