The WELL: inkwell.vue.447: Clay Johnson - The Information Diet

#18: Jon Lebkowsky (jonl) Mon 30 Jul 12 21:34

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 21:34:00 PDT

What's the connection between the idea of an information "diet," or reduced consumption, and this idea of synthesis? [Read entire topic]

#17: Administrivia (jonl) Mon 30 Jul 12 21:26

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 21:26:00 PDT

Short url for this discussion is http://goo.gl/aH3zo. If you're not a member of the WELL and you want to post a comment or question, go to the bottom of the page and look for the link that says "Submit a comment or question." [Read entire topic]

#16: cjoh (clayjohnson) Mon 30 Jul 12 11:28

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 11:28:00 PDT

@jonl democracy depends on the synthesis of ideas. We need to be able to hold cognitive dissonance, and resolve it in order to work. Synthesis now though is less achievable than its ever been because no matter what crazy thought that enters our head, there's a minor media outlet out there willing to profit from confirming our beliefs and making us feel good about being "right".

When we hear we're right, our brain may (I stress *may* because the science here is still a bit sketchy) undergo physiological changes. Hebb's Law of neuroscience states that neurons that fire together wire together -- and just like your body "adapts" to irregular insulin levels when you chow down on a lot of sugar, your body may make physiological changes when it seeks out and finds information you agree with. Thus making it all the harder -- from a level that you cannot really control -- to change your mind or see alternative solutions.

Note that synthesis is not the same thing as compromise. Compromise means if you say the world is flat, and I say the world is round, we compromise and say it's a half-sphere. Compromise means that you and I are enemies and I'm going to win my argument and you're going to lose it. Synthesis means we're both on the same side, and we're both seeking out the truth, and we'll rigorously test our theories until we figure out the shape of the Earth -- which is indeed closer to a sphere, but actually an oblate spheroid. [Read entire topic]

#15: John Payne (satyr) Mon 30 Jul 12 06:52

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 06:52:00 PDT

> We industrialized our agricultural firms, consolidating them into > multinational, billion dollar publicly traded corporations. As a > result, they no longer have nutritional responsibility, they have > fiduciary responsibility. And that fiduciary responsibility makes > them not create healthy calories, but cheap, popular ones.

That's the most succinct explanation of what's going on in the 'food' industry that I've ever seen. Thanks! [Read entire topic]

#14: Jon Lebkowsky (jonl) Thu 26 Jul 12 12:50

Thu, 26 Jul 2012 12:50:00 PDT

There was more I wanted to include in that last question, which was posted on the fly. The book gets into how confirmation bias plays out in the Internet age, and I was asking how the Internet amplifies the problem of confirmation bias. It would also be good to know how confirmation bias, heuristics, and cognitive dissonance work together, and how bias is leveraged by media: "Giving people what they want is far more profitable than giving them the facts." How does this affect journalism and media, and what's the relevance for (tired word, battered and maligned) democracy? [Read entire topic]

#13: Ted Newcomb (tcn) Thu 26 Jul 12 10:06

Thu, 26 Jul 2012 10:06:00 PDT

Glad to have you with us Clay. You get pretty deep in cognitive studies. Can you expand a bit on how our brains are changing as we integrate digital into our informational diets? [Read entire topic]

#12: Jon Lebkowsky (jonl) Wed 25 Jul 12 19:32

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 19:32:00 PDT

Is there something about the Internet that is more conducive to confirmation bias? [Read entire topic]

#11: cjoh (clayjohnson) Wed 25 Jul 12 08:06

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 08:06:00 PDT

@jonl confirmation bias is seeking what we want to hear rather than what's the truth. We have a bias for what we already believe, and we *uncontrollably* seek that out through no real active choice of our own. In that way, it's a lot like training our pallets to like certain kinds of food: eat a lot of sugar, and you'll find yourself training your tastebuds developing a sweet-tooth for you.

We're wired for this kind of bias because it's been key to our evolutionary survival: human beings are communal creatures -- and it makes sense that we're more wired for tribalism than we are for truth. [Read entire topic]

#10: cjoh (clayjohnson) Wed 25 Jul 12 07:44

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 07:44:00 PDT

@satyr: Indeed about a third of the book delves into this. We industrialized our agricultural firms, consolidating them into multinational, billion dollar publicly traded corporations. As a result, they no longer have nutritional responsibility, they have fiduciary responsibility. And that fiduciary responsibility makes them not create healthy calories, but cheap, popular ones.

We've done the same with our media companies -- they're owned by multinational corporations with a legal fiducuary responsibility to maximize the wealth of their shareholders. And as a result, they provide us with cheap, popular information not information that we need to hear to be active participants in society and democracy. They're telling us what we want to hear, not what we need to hear.

The parallels run deep in the book: comparing what happened to farmers in the last half of the last century to what's happening to journalists today, comparing factory farms and content farms, and so on. [Read entire topic]

#9: Jon Lebkowsky (jonl) Tue 24 Jul 12 19:10

Tue, 24 Jul 2012 19:10:00 PDT

I don't think it would be a strain. Feel free to go down that path. The analogy is more about diet, but industrial food production is related to the abundance, and the misuse, of food.

Clay, in the book you talk about "confirmation bias" and it's relation to belief. Could you explain how confirmation bias works, and its implications? [Read entire topic]