We use the internet for many things, one of which may be the aim of being reasonably well-informed. Well - it's worth a try isn't it? Yet as always, human judgment has a role to play in being well-informed. Suppose we edit a quote from old Kant –
…the faculty of judgment is a special talent which cannot be taught, but must be practised. This is what constitutes our so-called mother-wit, the absence of which cannot be remedied by
Immanuel Kant - The Critique of Pure Reason (1781)
It is easy enough to take this further. If we use the internet to be well-informed, the obvious question arises - well-informed about what? Fashionable nonsense? Inside or outside the nonsense? To be well-informed is not a worthwhile end in itself. To be well-informed within a misleading consensus such as the orthodox climate narrative is to be misinformed at best.
In our digital age there is another dimension to being misinformed. Misinformed drones swarm through internet media, adding their misinformed mites to their favoured consensus. This may develop into many millions of mites so that even the most absurd consensus becomes socially impregnable. As we know – we’ve seen it.
Where does that take us? Perhaps towards Kant’s mother-wit. Towards scepticism outside the consensus but grounded in what already works and what we already know.
This in turn brings out a digital age problem - scepticism does not grow as vigorously as consensus. It does not swarm through internet media in the same way. The internet seems to hamper the role of sceptics whenever they try to prick the balloons of digital absurdity. But we knew that.
10 comments:
Humans are predispositioned, by and large, to go along to get along, form consensuses, troop behaviour and larger flock behaviour.
I noticed a skein of geese flying overhead the other day and every few seconds one would honk, apparently to inform the rest of the skein of their position and state of tiredness. It is supposed that flying in a skein saves energy.
Humans form 'skein's too. Political groups, hobby groups, family groups, heritage groups etc. We try all sorts of ways to satisfy our desire for consensus. We even have media pundits and politicians to honk occasionally to keep us together.
And then along comes the internet which enables a whole new system of honking through social media - a very powerful system that reaches more people very quickly but also so quickly that false honking is not exposed. Arguably this can lead to polarisation into rival skeins - each with a figurehead honker at the front.
Flocking internet.
I've been thinking about this since I was in my late teens, when I bridled rather, hearing people say that they read newspapers and watched television to be kept well informed citizens. This leads one to consider how we know what we know and how reliable are the sources of our knowledge? Further if we know things that have been communicated to us in good faith, might they be amended or revised in the light of new information. Is the new information qualitative or quantitative? How comprehensive or all encompassing can the description of a subject be? I have tried to make my personal 'beliefs' or 'understandings' based on my observations and intellect, rather than ideology of left or right. It's not always easy but I'm aided by my Elephant memory, or so I think?
DJ - we saw skeins of honking geese flying overhead in Norfolk last week. I do like the term 'false honking', well worth nicking that one.
Tammly - it still surprises me that intelligent people take TV news as gospel and look no further. As if they don't think they need to devote more time to being informed.
“The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination. Few media of creation are so flexible, so easy to polish and rework, so readily capable of realizing grand conceptual structures.
Yet the program construct, unlike the poets words, is real in the sense that it moves and works, producing visible outputs separate from the construct itself. It prints results, draws pictures, produces sounds, moves arms. The magic of myth and legend has come true in our time. One types the correct incantation on a keyboard, and a display screen comes to life, showing things that never were nor could be.”
Frederick P. Brooks Jr. The Mythical Man-Month 1975
We are becoming trapped in that virtual world,
djc - interesting quote from interesting times - just after microprocessors were developed. I wonder if Brooks foresaw the development of the micro-computer?
Brooks was the project manager who oversaw the development of the IBM 360 operating system design. Mythical Man-Month is the result of that experience and what he learned from it. In my opinion essential reading on any computing book list.
Another quote
An architect's first work is apt to be spare and clean. He knows he doesn't know what he's doing, so he does it carefully and with great restraint.
As he designs the first work, frill after frill and embellishment after embellishment occur to him. These get stored away to be used "next time".
This second is the most dangerous system a man ever designs.[…]
The general tendency is to over-design the second system, using all the ideas and frill that were cautiously sidetracked on the first one.
djc - sounds like an interesting read. Years ago, I read a book about the development of one of the early mini-computers. I'm not sure which company it was, may have been DEC. I don't recall the title of the book either, but it was an interesting story about the intense pressures to design and build new machines as rapidly as possible for a new market.
Tracy Kidder. The Soul of a New Machine. 1981 ? The company was Data General, founded by engineers formerly at DEC
djc - that's it! Probably still a good read even though it's all ancient history now.
A lot of books I was happy to dispose of once I retired, but I keep a few 'classics', the above two included.
Bookmarked long ago, a quote from The Soul of a New Machine:
" Now, one day back at Data General, his weariness focused on the logic analyser and the small catastrophes that come from trying to build a machine that operates in billionths of a second. On this occasion, he went away from the basement and left this note on his terminal:
I'm going to a commune in Vermont and will deal with no unit of time shorter than a season."
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