Things are getting really nasty here, people. Is there a more reasonable tone that you can take to discuss your differences on this?
Julie
Julie Hankinson
Cataloger
Benjamin Franklin Institute of Boston
-----Original Message-----
From: Alexander Johannesen <alexander.johannesen_at_GMAIL.COM>
To: NGC4LIB <NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU>
Sent: Wed, Oct 9, 2013 2:28 am
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] The Return of Cards?
john g marr <jmarr_at_unm.edu> wrote:
Ignoring the semantic debate possibilities over the ambiguous word
"revolution" itself, I disagree.
That's fine; you are allowed to have a wrong opinion.
> Taking only the political definition to
task, the problem with revolutions is that they are operationally
destructive, not constructive. It is what happens after the revolution that
determines whether "good" will or will not result.
Sorry, but that's called "moving the goal-post", ie. you're selecting
he semantics *for* me rather than trying to clear them. I think it's
airly obvious that I judge "revolutions" on more complex notions of
re, during and post events. I even said they are good even if the
ethods are not. It's called progress, even if it means the revolution
appened for all the wrong reasons and had terrible results. I still
eem them good; any breakup of established patterns of fundamentals
re good, even if I by that don't mean good for the people involved at
he time.
> Participatory social
evolution works better in the long run (e.g. RDA?).
RDA is considered a good thing? I thought it was too little,
aaaaaaaay too late?
>>> Yes, but humans are getting poorer at designing their particular
>> queries.
>
> Based on what?
Observation of the emotional manipulation of an increasing proportion of
humans that is making them incapable of critical thinking to obtain accurate
information.
You are not being specific again. Your observations, I take it? Or do
ou have any research to back you up? I'm one of those who don't buy
he whole "the world is going in direction X" in terms of human
ehaviour, like the world is today a more violent place than "the good
l' days" or today people are less social than before or today people
re trapped in the wheels of commercialism unlike before, and so on. I
hink cultures change, and certainly the technology and means of
ommunicating the various means of human culture, but I don't think
uman behaviour and social patterns are that different. I want some
esearch to back up such big statements that "increasing proportion of
he population" does X or Y. Based on what?
> Take for example the prominene of, the legislator mentioned in,
and the comments made about, the article "Arizona lawmaker refers to Obama
as 'De Fuhrer' on Facebook" in today's news. Note the cause AND effect
relationships involved.
And no prince of France have in the past made a snide remarks in
riting about William the Conqueror, the bastard king, as a raging
unatic? You have to cover a lot of historic ground in order to make
our point, so I wouldn't be sure about it.
>> Humans should not adopt to what query engines can understand, it's the
> engines that need to be better at understanding what the humans want.
It's the media and marketers (and Mark Zuckerberg) that are good at
"understanding what humans *want*", and that's done us a lot of good (not).
Again; based on what?
> I'd prefer query engines that understand what people NEED-- knowledge, not
just stimulation.
A need is a subjective thing; thinking you can figure that out is ignorant.
>> What's so special about us?
The uniquely human capacity to perform critical thinking rather than
predation, blind obedience, or purely instinctual or emotional behaviors.
Critical thinking, eh? I'm reminded of a survey of philosophers of
thics recently done whether they acted more ethical than other
eople. Quite the contrary. Critical thinking is one of those things
hat sounds brilliant on paper and when you say it out loud, but in
ractice is littered with problems. Sure, we should strive towards it,
ut I see more human folly than serious practitioners. It's a utopian
ream, an ideal; I'd be careful holding it up as the shining sword
hat makes us "better" than animals.
> Information overload is a form of over-stimulation.
No, it's not. Information overload just means too much information.
ver-stimulation means emotional responses to the stimulus of
nformation. Maybe a subtle distinction, but the equivocating is
rong.
>> How is neuroplasticity suppose to fix the problem of information overload?
The problem isn't the concept of information overload, it's
neurophysiological overload itself. Neuroplasticity simply allows for the
restructuring of brains subject to overload.
No, it means the adaptability of the brain, and not specifically about
nformation nor overload.
> Train humans to control
overstimulation (both cause and effect) and engage in practical critical
thinking, and the "overload" problem no longer exists.
Have you got this training? Is it available? Can we see it?
> Rather than trying to avoid presenting "information overload", assist
people in dealing with the mental process of overstimulation.
I'm sure the ideal of education all the people in the world is fine on
aper, but in practice it's a hopeless endeavour. Most of the time
e're lucky to get a modicum of the population above high-school
evels. And you want to train them further in some mental ability
rogram? You must be extremely well funded. :)
>> There's a bell curve in there that you have to pay attention to long
> before you get to grade anything as competence levels
Let's not grade anything.* Instead, let's create information environments
that neutralize the causes and effects of overstimulation and instill
critical thinking.
Like?
> *I take that back. "Grading" levels of certain human behaviors (not people)
can be used as instructional tools. Consider, for example, challenging
potential consumers of information to recognize absence of empathy,
misdirection, glibness, self-obsessive speech, manipulative rhetoric,
unprovable hypotheses, logical inconsistencies and particularly entire
matrices of "unforeseen consequences" and "possible hidden agendas."
How many thousands of models of the mind and grading of mental
apacities have we come up with so far? Are they ... correct? Or
seful when scrutinized?
>> at which point you're going down a route of empirical data matching models
> of human cognition which, as Karen pointed out, is a muddled thing.
We've got supercomputers that should be programmable to sort out the
constantly incoming data on all aspects of cognitive competence and
dissonance.
How would that work? What models? How to do this parsing? Who's paying
or it? Who's programming this?
> The problems are: (1) we are not applying the "scientific
method" to social problems (especially in government);
I agree with this one.
> (2) we are not
feeding all the data into computers (for comparison see "When astronomers
met computer science");
A bit harder to see how this would work, but ok; as long as we're
alking about data, the more the merrier.
> (3) we are not using computers to interrelate every
bit of *possibly* relevant data coming from different directions
(specializations);
I've argued for semantic modelling and AI driven by librarians for
ears, so yes, with you there.
> (4) we tend to employ doubt before we employ confidence;
How does that trouble us?
> (5) there really are human predatory forces at work that would interfere
with all of the above SOLELY to protect and enhance their positions of power
and control, and we are not dealing with that issue directly.
The problem is whether you actually can or not. Only governmental
overnance can put a dent in that, and we are currently seeing how
fficient the US government is when push comes to show. Not sure other
overnments fare better (although I've never heard of them shutting
own; that's a new crazy one for me)
> On that last point, we could program computers to identify *effectively*
predatory behaviors on the part of humans and causes of those behaviors
along with vulnerabilities to them (as the information becomes available).
Then you must define what those patterns are. The power of this is in
he model and in the people creating it, and not in how right it might
e. Aren't you just shifting the problem from one domain into another?
>> I'm assuming you mean training your mental capabilities to deal with
> what is presented, as opposed to present something that require no [mental
> capabilities :) ]
Don't forget: "The medium [message] IS the massage."
That's library-speak for the status quo without sounding like there's
revolution in need of happening.
> "Cogito ergo sum." No cogito, no sum.
I thought AI was solving that problem ...
egards,
Alex
Received on Wed Oct 09 2013 - 13:22:53 EDT