Computers Make You Stupid

When the amount of information available exceeds the amount a single person is able to grab (and it clearly does), the information needs to be digested.

This is what journalists do today. The bad thing about a number of journalists however, is that they are just as clueless as the rest of us, if not even more clueless..

In adittion, the scientific community is wary of talking to journalists, possibly because of this cluelessness.

This is where the challenge resides. When publishing research, more of it should be made available in "Reader's Digest" versions, making it possible to grab the concepts of the theory.

Einstein was mentioned earlier in this discussion. When he published his theory of relativity, he published it in two versions; one for the scientific community, and one "popular" version which people with Examen Artium (high school) could understand.

And according to him, it would not be possible to even get near the speed of light, because the energy required to achieve this speed for any mass greater than nothing would be enormous.

> When the amount of information available exceeds the amount a single person is able to grab (and it clearly does), the information needs to be digested.
>
> This is what journalists do today. The bad thing about a number of journalists however, is that they are just as clueless as the rest of us, if not even more clueless..

Or perhaps just good scientists whith the inclination to popularize complex subjects?

The problem with information overload today is that it isn't possible to even find the good abstracts of long publications. Everything is lost in the big sea on the Internet (as that is the source where most of us have equal opportunity to find information, as opposed to peer-review publications which can become very expensive).

Therfore the need is for good writers with an understanding of what they write and a structure to store the good stuff where it is easily found.

I do belive you are talking out of your ass.
Well, however you look at it, humans are, and will probably for ever be, the one living thing, the most intelligent lifeform from this planet; that has never been tampled with (at least to my knowlegde).

But of course.. Gentic technology might change all this, and we should mension AI. It might not be so far into the future as we might think. Autopilots in planes are already quite real. Some say the next generation of figtherplanes might have no pilot, since, the human mass cannot cope with the extreme G's in the fighters, as they fly faster, and faster..

In Hackers, the movie, Eugene Belford alias The Plague (the bad-ass hacker), explains for the board about how their ships are connected through GPS, and totally depend on them, so that a virus planted in their system, will also affect their ships...

But, it must be said, one single human mind today, cannot be an expert at all fields.

But seriously, is it necessary?

Three hundred years ago, knowing how to write made you and educated person. Today, not knowing how to write makes you an idiot. So what do I wish to say. Humans today have a lot of technology. We can talk about our technology for hours. Still. Religion these days. Yes, what about it. I feel religion is a dying therm. That religion itself is dying out.

Threehundred years ago, mankind spent there time thinking about how heaven was, and how to make their god proud of them, or willing to take this pure human souls under their roofs.

Today mankind spends their time thinking about, how the hell can I talk to a human, 30.000 kilometers away..

What are your point exactly? Do you feel that people today are less moral or devout than people was before?

Did you know that there was a higher violent crime rate in Bergen in the middle ages than there is today? Do you from that conclude that people have become less violent? People are people, regardless of the day and age, and where they live.

GPS is not a communications system, as the film would have you to believe. Instead, it is just an array of satellites which sends out coded information about who they are and what time they have. The GPS receiver then calculates (with the knowledge of Einstein's relativity theory, I might add, because the clocks in the satellites run at a different speed than those on earth) the position based on the position of the satellites and the time at the different satellites.

When it comes to depiction of knowledge Hollywood is notoriously bad. I bet they couldn't even make a movie about making movies without making horrible factual mistakes.

When it comes to mankind, I guesstimate that about 20 to 30 percent of the world's population have access to modern communications technology. Do you feel that your opinion: "Today mankind spends their time thinking about, how the hell can I talk to a human, 30.000 kilometers away." is in any way accurate? Most people have enough with their own lives and local problems.

Single people create theories, that only they might understand. So, if someone else tries to understand, he will fail. Simply because, he is incompetent. If we view Stephen Hawking under one, I think I've heard somewhere that he is the best mathematician, ever.. He sits in a wheelchair. It ain't no secret. His brain is almost primarly aimed to do math. 1000 years ago he would not have survived. He has calculated some theories that no other mammal could, but he is almost like a dead person regarding to everything else..

What do you mean by morale? Where have I reffered to that? If you mean religion, yes. In Norway it is statistics that actually 87% of the people are devouted christians. Is this correct?

Statistics aren't truth.

Another thing, the truth. I know that GPS stands for global positioning system, but the truth, what it is, how it works, I have no goddam clue. What the movie Hackers says to me, is a picture. A picture of how idyllic hacking is. How it works. I know it isn't like that.

Ever played Delta Force. If you have, you'll probably know what I mean by that tension, but do I think that war feals like that. I mean, I know howto seperate imagination from the truth. Though I wish I lived in Middle-Earth.

Regarding to Einstein's theories. Not that I am an expert in any way. This is something I've taken from some serious magazines (not remembering the name). Einstein's theories says that if you travel faster than light, you travel in time...
Now how is that possible. Is time something? I guess you can say that this is true, regarding to how you phrase it, but, onestly, that seems pretty far out for me, I mean, moving faster than light, means masses are moving faster than light-

The headline that started this discussion: Computers make you stupid
I really can't find any evidence supporting a statment like that. Not even if it was changed into technology makes you stupid, or evolution makes you stupid.
Now, today, you'll need more than capability to write and know where and what is written in the bible to be a teacher in school.


* Two hundred years ago, people layed their lifes in the hands of god.
* A hundred years ago, people layed their lifes in the hands of the community.
* Forty years ago, people layed their lifes in the hands of smaller groups.
* Twenty years ago, people started doing as they self pleased, we still do..

God does not matter anymore in our daily lifes, not for the average norvegian human, that is my guess. Whatever the people before me has decided, amongst other thing, that I cannot be the prime minister of Norway, because I am not a member of the church.. This actually has little influence on my morning to night life, and I belive that fewer and fewer do pray before they go to bed.



Quote:
|Do you feel that your opinion: "Today mankind spends their |time thinking about, how the hell can I talk to a human, |30.000 kilometers away." is in any way accurate? Most people | have enough with their own lives and local problems.

Then I guess me and my best friends are extremly special, since, if you take a circle, place it over a small place called Stathelle in Norway, we will be living in the same circle, though this circle is only three hundred meters in diameter. We are three buddies that often discuss the meaning of life etc.

> Another thing, the truth. I know that GPS stands for global positioning system, but the truth, what it is, how it works, I have no goddam clue. What the movie Hackers says to me, is a picture. A picture of how idyllic hacking is. How it works. I know it isn't like that.
>

A device that uses GPS works by simply knowing the position (longitude/latitude) of three other satellites. Then using a process known as trilateration the devices does some simple math to figure out where on the planet it is. I *highly* recommend the site www.howstuffworks.com if you want to learn more cool stuff about how this and other things work.

Lots of interesting topics here...

I wouldn't believe that 87% percent of the Norwegian population (or in any other western industrialized country) were devoted Christians (or of any other religion). But, it is quite likely that some 80% believe in the existence of a god or some other kind of supernatural being(s). Then I guess some 15% don't really have an opinion, and maybe 5% are atheists. Real atheists is something I rarely see, most are some kind of agnostics. (They believe there could be a god, but they don't claim to know.) Personally, I think atheists are arrogant. You'd have to know a whole lot about the universe to be able to state that there could not possibly be a god. Atheists don't know this, they claim to know it, and thus, atheism is as much a religion as anything else.

You are of course right that most western people don't let their religion, if any, affect their daily lives as much as before.

Regarding physics:
Any travel could be regarded as a travel in time, since your speed affects your personal time.
I believe Einstein stated that matter can not travel AT the speed of light. It might be able to travel faster. Hawking has said that, given Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and Feynman's sum over histories theory, a particle can travel faster than light, but it is very unlikely to happen. Thus, when it happens, it is only over a short distance.
Hawking is cool. =)


> The headline that started this discussion: Computers make you stupid

What I meant was that technology makes you stupid, relatively speaking. Meaning we know less about the tools we use today, than people knew about the tools they used 200 years ago.


> * Twenty years ago, people started doing as they self pleased, we still do..

THAT is a highly questionable statement that could keep a wannabe philosopher like me busy for days.
By the way, you don't have to be member of the church to become prime minister in Norway as far as I know, but I believe 2/3 of your government would have to be. And the king must be a Christian.
Ah, those strange Norwegian people.

Mr. Lye has stated the problem very well. So what is the solution? What are our alternatives? Where do we go from here?

> Mr. Lye has stated the problem very well. So what is the solution? What are our alternatives? Where do we go from here?
>
Right on. I'll be the first to admit it's far easier to bitch about and complain, than to suggest anything useful. But you gotta admit the problem exists, before it can be fixed...

What really is the problem?

Is it a problem that we are creating technology thats far more intelligent than ourselves?

It doesn't have to be intelligent, it is enough of a problem that only a small part of the population know how things work.