I believe it's called a "pissing contest" and the rest of us should just
hit delete. At this point, the information content of the posts is
nearing zero.
kc
On 10/9/13 10:22 AM, Julie Hankinson wrote:
> 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
--
Karen Coyle
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet
Received on Wed Oct 09 2013 - 14:23:01 EDT