I don't like the "guns don't kill people..." argument and comparison. Yes, everything is a tool and ultimately that's down to how we use it but given humans are humans the existence of some tools are positive, some aren't. The "guns don't..." argument handwaves around the issue of whether having a particular tool is a net gain or loss.
Yes, there are upsides to it, I'm not denying that, some of them very good indeed. The good is very good. However I do have concerns that it might all be rather damaging to social fabric.
On the human knowledge at your fingertip, even that has pluses and minuses. The pluses are immediately obvious but the downsides somewhat more insidious - that's why I made my point about trivialising knowledge, letting us take it for granted, and thus appreciate it less. That's why the library used to be such a wonderful place, I think it struck a good balance between easy access and not losing the appreciation.
edit to add: Might be an interested concept for a bit of sci-fi - what if you had access to that knowledge straight from inside your head, completely blurring the lines between what you recall and what you can get access to externally, to the point where you might not even be sure which is which?
Has the internet hurt us rather than helped us?
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Darth Wedgius
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Re: Has the internet hurt us rather than helped us?
It's let us create echo chambers at a level that used to require people go to monasteries or have a lot of money.
There are left-leaning news sources I won't go to because viewing them is supporting them, and I have found their signal-to-noise ratio far too low to bother with. I know there are people on the opposite side of the aisle who do the same kind of thing.
I've always said I block people who I find to be incapable of or unwilling to argue rationally, but that's only half-true. I block them for that if I also disagree with them; both conditions must be true, but that moves the opinions I hear generally rightward. That's something I have to think about, and if it makes me go to the trouble of actually thinking then it just might be important. There are many on the left who will block just because they find someone's views abhorrent, so what they see moves generally leftward.
There are a lot of people who believe that Trump without a doubt colluded with Russia, and will repeat it as fact. There are a lot of people who believe without a doubt that Obama wasn't born an American, and will repeat it as fact. Why not? If everybody they talk about these things with agree with them, it's not that hard to have an extreme opinion. There are people who believe that airplanes are spraying chemicals to sterilize us or that the earth is flat, too.
I think this has been supported by people who value outrage as a badge of honor on one side, and a streak of anti-intellectualism on the other, with both sides devaluing objectivity as less "authentic" compared to someone's feelings.
On the other hand, when a government wants to censor something it's found that to be more difficult than before, so that's one echo chamber that is more difficult to keep going. Even the Black Death was a mixed bag.
There are left-leaning news sources I won't go to because viewing them is supporting them, and I have found their signal-to-noise ratio far too low to bother with. I know there are people on the opposite side of the aisle who do the same kind of thing.
I've always said I block people who I find to be incapable of or unwilling to argue rationally, but that's only half-true. I block them for that if I also disagree with them; both conditions must be true, but that moves the opinions I hear generally rightward. That's something I have to think about, and if it makes me go to the trouble of actually thinking then it just might be important. There are many on the left who will block just because they find someone's views abhorrent, so what they see moves generally leftward.
There are a lot of people who believe that Trump without a doubt colluded with Russia, and will repeat it as fact. There are a lot of people who believe without a doubt that Obama wasn't born an American, and will repeat it as fact. Why not? If everybody they talk about these things with agree with them, it's not that hard to have an extreme opinion. There are people who believe that airplanes are spraying chemicals to sterilize us or that the earth is flat, too.
I think this has been supported by people who value outrage as a badge of honor on one side, and a streak of anti-intellectualism on the other, with both sides devaluing objectivity as less "authentic" compared to someone's feelings.
On the other hand, when a government wants to censor something it's found that to be more difficult than before, so that's one echo chamber that is more difficult to keep going. Even the Black Death was a mixed bag.
