> [snip gargantuan amount of haystack info].
>
> Questions:
> IS knowledge comprehension?
> IS knowledge problem solving?
> IS knowledge intelligence?
>
> It's like your posts at times, ha...there's so much info that the brain
> starts to shut down, it cannot process it all...at least not efficiently.
> Instead of clarity, all one might come away with is a muddled confusion.
>
> Ever see the Jay Leno skits where he questions young people on the streets
> about everday questions 'everyone' SHOULD know? Ok, hardly a scientific
> survey, ha...but if these kids are any example of today's learnedness, all
> this internet storehouse of information apparently is not reaching their
> brains.
>
The Spotlight fallacy is committed when a person uncritically assumes
that all members or cases of a certain class or type are like those
that receive the most attention or coverage in the media. This line of
reasoning is fallacious since the mere fact that someone or something
attracts the most attention or coverage in the media does not mean
that it automatically represents the whole population. For example,
suppose a mass murderer from Old Town, Maine received a great deal of
attention in the media. It would hardly follow that everyone from the
town is a mass murderer.
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/spotlight.html
> And here's another danger of the internet...the Brett Cahills who are
> politically charged to invoke false information if only it serves their
> political agenda. And of course, the immense garbage the internet picks
> up.
> 'Garbage in, Garbage out', was an old computer addage. Wiki is rife with
> opinions, political bias, and misinformation. It can be useful of course,
> but only to those minds already somewhat taught how to think for
> themselves...and not coming here to the internet to learn of a new
> dependence.
I have my opinions and I just believe that all this txt-ing and html
based reality is a step up from "dumb-asses" from our generations. In
our generations many of the dumb don't even read or write very well.
The current generation that are interacting on the internet are
writing, composing, experimenting with txtual grammar, and it should
seem obvious that these kids are much smarter than our generations
already. Maybe if the internet somehow magically disappeared your
argument would make sense. Someday we will connect this stuff right to
our brains and comprehension, problem solving and intelligence will be
like seeing and hearing.
Maybe this is like the IQ controversy itself, we are judging these
kids by some standards in a pre-internet entire-library in the hand
world, where people had to do what is now a click away. Its like
comparing cultures and the IQ test needs to add things about the
particular culture being studied. I believe the mellennials are miles
ahead of us and eat and breath what we used to struggle to gain.
I agree with you intrinsically...but refrain from total embrace of the idea
because of experience. I went back to school in the early 90's and found
kids to be different from when I originally attended in the early 70's.
Intelligent? Sure. But...they were subdued. I remember kids challenging
the teachers, raising hands with robust energy. The mind was like a
plaything and kids liked to play with it; it was engendered in the college
culture at the time. Fast forward several decades and a lot of social
change, and I no long saw this robustness, this vitalness. It is like kids
were 'guarded'. Instead of simply speaking one's mind, it was
like...well...I sensed a 'fearfulness' that one might say something 'wrong'.
I am quite convinced it had to do with civil rights, multiculturism, and
political correctness. These movements are cruxed at our universities where
they have expanded outward into the society at large. On campus, there is a
definite 'vogue'...a hegemony that is accepted...and IMHO, much of it
contrived and not rationally arrived at through sincere probing. In other
words, the situation has become entirely POLITICAL...and the campus no
longer a free thing, but a weighstation for processing minds with the
accepted political agendas.
Kids sense all this deep down...we all do. We know...again deep within,
things simply are awry. Truth is not being spoken and we now exist under
prescribed thought that is a tortured disgrace really to free and open
discourse. I haven't got a handle on all of it, but I really do think this
is stabbing in the right direction.
Yes, our kids are smarter in some ways...if the sheer amount of information
available is any guage. But I think they are also dumber in that they have
not been taught a certain rugged individualism where all things are
questioned to allow 'thinking for one's self'.
I think Obama is a prime 'spectacle' of what is going on. Rock stars are
not rationally thought out, but fantasy images..mirages on the desert.
Kids...and WE in general, have been sold a bill of goods that is simply not
reality.
