Slashdot Mirror
Google 'Makes People Think They Are Smarter Than They Are'
HughPickens.com writes Karen Knapton reports at The Telegraph that according to a study at Yale University, because they have the world's knowledge at their fingertips, search engines like Google or Yahoo make people think they are smarter than they actually are giving people a 'widely inaccurate' view of their own intelligence that can lead to over-confidence when making decisions. In a series of experiments, participants who had searched for information on the internet believed they were far more knowledgeable about a subject that those who had learned by normal routes, such as reading a book or talking to a tutor. Internet users also believed their brains were sharper. "The Internet is such a powerful environment, where you can enter any question, and you basically have access to the world's knowledge at your fingertips," says lead researcher Matthew Fisher. "It becomes easier to confuse your own knowledge with this external source. When people are truly on their own, they may be wildly inaccurate about how much they know and how dependent they are on the Internet." In the tests searching for answers online leads to an illusion such that externally accessible information is conflated with knowledge "in the head" (PDF). This holds true even when controlling for time, content, and search autonomy during the task. "The Internet is an enormous benefit in countless ways, but there may be some trade-offs that aren't immediately obvious and this may be one of them," concludes Fisher. "Accurate personal knowledge is difficult to achieve, and the Internet may be making that task even harder."
Because, before Google, everyone thought they were dumb.
Being smart and/or intelligent isn't the same as knowing a lot of facts. Google can help you keep a lot of facts at your fingertips. The smart part (or intelligent part) is being able to learn about complex things, applying things you already know to new situations, etc.
Google may ruin a game of Trivial Pursuit (or bar trivia or whatever) but it isn't a substitute for doing a good job planning a process, designing a machine, etc.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
"I'm armed with Google and have a Masters Degree in speed reading." <--- Every internet know it all
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
How is this news? Do Yalies suffer from the Dunning-Kruger effect?
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
http://tinyurl.com/nxxqv6w
The internet, where anyone is 5 minutes of research away from being an expert, usually by managing to confirm whatever 'common sense' belief they had going in.
Granted, offline you also have people who take old misconceptions or simplifications, and will fight tooth and nail against anyone about them, even actual experts, but the internet seems to have really amplified the process. It probably does not help that over the last few decades we have REALLY devalued actual expertise on topics. The people most likely to get their ideas repeated are pop versions of their field, people who can create accessible and pandering content rather than dry but actually correct publications.
So, in fact, you are smarter when you can use the Internet as a reference.
Holy crap. someone should get Captain Obvious up here on the double to point out that water is wet.
Reading a web page doesn't make you an expert.
I'm pretty sure this is common knowledge, but I guess common knowledge is purely anecdotal until someone does a study and confirms it. Which, is it'self common knowledge. :-P
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Define "smarter". Natural intelligence + easily accessible and disposable facts does not make one more or less intelligent. The problem is the old school definition of intelligence was tested through the ability to recount facts. It was not a reliable indicator of the level of intelligence of an individual. Whether gathered from a book or a search, facts are not always useful without the ability to understand, interpret, and deduce what is not represented by the facts.
I would think that 'wildly inaccurate' describes it better.
It also makes arguing on the internet more interesting. Even if you are wrong you can find some source on the internet to back it up.
[citation needed]
It isn't about how smart you are it is about what you can accomplish.
Before the Internet, we said the same things about people who relied on books for knowledge.
Also, xkcd.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
How is it not your own knowledge after you've internalized it? Just because you searched for it on google or some other search engine as opposed to a book doesn't make it somehow not information you've retained. This is the stupidest thing I've heard in a long time.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
So... if I go to a Library and spend a few days reading and cross referencing things I'm a studious person
But if I use the internet to do the same thing I'm a delusional moron
OK
People always think they're smarter than they other... other people that is... I'm infallible.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
The article seems to conflate content knowledge with being smart.
I would argue that raw analytical skills are much more important than content knowledge. Being able to regurgitate information is only marginally useful, and its most important value is that you're equipped with a framework and a lens through which to examine problems.
However, absent analytical capabilities, your ability to use your knowledge and past experiences to solve problems is severely limited.
Google makes people think they are knowledgeable, which is not necessarily the same as being "smart".
Water is wet, the Pope is Catholic, and bears do their business in the woods.
It sounds like intelligence is being used as a proxy for subject matter knowledge, and is being wrongly compared to research skills. Being smart enough to do research rather than throw your arms up in the air and saying "it can't be done" is an important feature of emotional intelligence. I think what the article means to say is that people think they are experts when they aren't. Too bad people writing about "intelligence" don't know how to write about it effectively.
Knowledge is a continuing process. Obviously some stuff like lower level mathematics and science is set in stone. You still have to continuously check and rate your sources. Anyone who has any type of decent education will understand that the Internet isn't the only source available to a research/learner.
But it can't do a task it doesn't already know how to do.
A human child will have far fewer facts that the computer at easy hand - but can figure out how to do anything, if given enough time. While some things may take years, most will be learn-able very quickly.
Intelligence does not depend on the facts you know, but instead on the skills you have that let you learn new things.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Given the limitless potential of humans, shouldn't it be the case that human will eventually figure out how to make a computers as intelligent as other humans?
Reminds me of that scene:
Will: See, the sad thing about a guy like you is, in 50 years you're gonna start doin' some thinkin' on your own and you're going to come up with the fact that there are two certainties in life: one, don't do that, and two, you dropped 150 grand on a f****in education you could have got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library!
In this case its Google, not the Library, but you get my drift....although I also firmly do believe that there is no tradeoff for actual real world experience.You can't just "Google" everything.
"The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination." - Albert Einstein
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Read some random Youtube comments for a few mintes--you'll feel like a fucking genius!
Olig XKCD.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I certainly think this is true in the sense that inaccuracies can get repeated so widely and so quickly on the internet, that even moderately intelligent people accept the inaccuracies as fact when, if they would just think for a little bit, they would realize that they are complete fiction. I call this being "Google smart".
Proverbs 21:19
Yale professors' ideas of being knowledgeable in a subject come from their experience lecturing students.
I've been getting paid to do programming for almost 30 years. Google has changed programming such that you no longer have to memorize the useless trivia that college professors lecture about.
I program in three programming languages on a daily basis, JavaScript, PHP, and Perl. Some days I barely touch Perl. But the difference between my programming style today and 15 years ago is that I never use books. I don't memorize the exact syntax or idioms of any language. Anything that I can find within 5 minutes on Google I don't bother to learn anymore.
As a result I can focus on improving my ability to program as a generalist, and I'm very good at what I do. If you asked me to write a bit of non-trivial code in anything but pseudo-code, I would very likely not get the syntax exactly right (unless you asked me to write it in C, which I learned before the days of Google).
Google allows us to not be smart at things that are a waste of our time to learn in the first place. We can have a much more broad knowledge of many subjects and use Google to drill down on specifics, rather than having the type of knowledge that professors crave, being completely pigeon-holed into one speciality where you have all of the trivial detail memorized.
Can I rattle off every type of tree structure, and tell you what tree is good for what problem? No. In the days of Google, that type of knowledge is useless. You ought to know when you need to use a tree structure of some sort and you can spend an hour or two making that determination, or if the decision is critical you can spend a day on it. Effectively, those weeks or months we spent in computer science/computer engineering classes learning all of these very specific attributes of data structures were a waste.
To generalize, consider everything you can easily find with Google to be part of your knowledge. Memorizing it would be a complete waste of time. But that very waste of time seems to be what these professors were measuring (and valuing!)
"It becomes easier to confuse your own knowledge with this external source."
As you move up the education food chain, its not about what you know but being able to cite about what others have discovered. In other words, no one cares what you think you know, i.e., your opinion. They care about you being able to prove what you know by referencing external sources of value.
I lightly skimmed TFA, and it appears they are concerned with how well we explain/use what we have found as an answer on the internet.
I think this is an oversimplification. I use to read books on various computer languages and could program in them sufficiently before the internet (yes I’m that old). Now I don’t learn languages as deeply for various infrequently used constructs, but look them up as needed.
Now here is the thing -- once I have used a quickly found piece of knowledge on the internet, I then nearly as quickly discard it. Does it matter as long as I applied the knowledge as needed? I might research a topic, come to some insight, then discard the steps of coming to the insight, because I realize I could recreate my steps again more efficiently should the need arise than commit volumes of information to memory. What I now remember is not the facts, but the steps needed to find the facts.
It may be that in areas where I lack expertise I assign a probability that should the need arise I could get some answer. Is that the same as overestimating my knowledge? This probability assignment includes shades of gray and that realization that a search might return wildly different answers from various sources, for instance if I’m looking up something on foreign policy decisions. This last example actually forces me to keep my knowledge more fluid. I constantly reevaluate my positions as new information comes to light, instead of defending to the death my old hard won knowledge and opinions.
Yes there may be some detrimental effects to relying on the internet augment our intelligence, say for those that have to write technical manuals for instance. But there are also benefits to be had. Sort of like JIT (Just in Time) manufacturing, we now have JIT knowledge.
Letter To Iran
Facts? It doesn't even do that. It puts a lot of random noise at your fingertips, only a small proportion of which are factually accurate and not biased by the interpretation de jour.
The signal to noise ratio of search engines is nothing short of appalling, and it's made even worse in cases like Google by their deliberate skewing of results to reflect their vested interest, ie. advertising. The web exhibits swarm behavior, always reflecting the majority direction even when the majority are lemmings running straight at a precipice. It makes the majority of search results of very poor quality, and is generally unsafe as a source of factual information. Readers who are already well informed can often separate the facts from the nonsense in this torrent of noise, but uninformed beginners stand no chance at all.
It makes me shudder when I read advice given to newbies that their first port of call should be to "Google it". That should be their last port of call, when all else fails. The first port of call should be to objective authority in the subject area of interest, not to the erratic ramblings of the crowd which through lack of a thorough background spends much of its time virally spreading misinterpretations or even outright falsehoods.
"The researchers also believe that an inflated sense of personal knowledge also could be dangerous in the political realm or other areas involving high-stakes decisions."
This is essentially how U.S. politics already works, at least at the federal level. Lawmakers rely on staff council, lobbyists and popular opinion on most critical, technical subjects like stem cell research, assisted suicide, and net neutrality. The understanding they are given is at a topical level only. for the vast majority of them and yet they go out and vote our future anyway. It's not exactly their fault, as there a few if any alive who could possess the breadth of knowledge required to intelligently vote on every subject but what you hope for are politicians who are smart enough to know what they don't know and honest enough to cast a vote they think is best for all their constituents.
Expanding Our Intelligence Without Limit Ray Kurzweil https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I reconnected with a friend after a prolonged period apart, and as I talked about the Internet and the opportunities for success it's created for the individual, his wife agreed with me and spoke about how she was making in the low 4 figures per month and would soon get to 5. I thought that very interesting considering my initial impressions of her from long ago when she began dating my buddy, so I was intrigued that she'd done like me, learned coding and marketing and had created a successful business. Then I finally figured out her business was spam blogging sites, where she'd learned to game Google and start making some decent money from Internet advertising. Of course this was right before Google made a change to their search algorithm to prevent just such bogus sites from being listed and the money disappeared and she basically went off the deep end for a while. Felt bad for her as I knew Google was making the change that would destroy her income, but I couldn't say anything as she felt like she was some kind of a genius, when the facts are she's somewhat cunning and likely did not figure how to it herself.
Did you ever wake up in the morning, with a Zombie Woof behind your eyes? -- FZ
I don't even trust Google that much, to take it's results as authoritative when making important decisions. If you do, then you are a fool.
Are you a GoogleGenius, do you know where you get your information all the time. Do you know how to check a site's credentials? Do you use Google to do >90% of your work? You may be a Google Genius.
If this was true, I wouldn't be Googling stuff for everyone... truth is, most people don't understand what they see when they use the Internet. You have to have a broad education to make use of all the facts one comes across, and to correctly sort and interrelate them all toward your goal. Thinking is hard to teach. No repeatable steps, and the best thinkers often don't know how or why they are so good at thinking...
Intelligence != Knowledge
I had a computer as smart as you included in my radio shack 100 in 1 kit.
As smart as which other humans?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
There is a story that Einstein when asked his phone number couldn't remember it. When asked how someone as smart as he didn't know his own phone number, he said he never used it and he could look it up in a phone book if he needed it. He saved his brain for important information.
The impact of the internet is that it is much less important than people retain knowledge than that they know how to find and process it to solve problems. People who use the internet think they are smarter because they are smarter. They have more information available and they can use their mental energy to process it, rather than to memorize it. Of course much of our education system is still focused on people memorizing answers for a test rather than teaching them how to think. So "smart" people are the ones who are good at memorization.
We're all "cyborgs" when it comes to search. But, that's the whole point.
I doubt I could program at even 1/10th the speed without EITHER the Internet, or about three-six large books (a language book, an OS API book, and then whatever I'm actually working on). Does this mean I'm not really a coder? Or does it just mean that asking a blacksmith to work without fire is dumb?
We're pretty smart.
Dilute! Dilute! OK!
Fucking American idiots.
It's "far more...THAN", not "that". How can you not know what those two words mean?
My dad thinks that he is smarter than the doctors because he reads medical doctors. He tries to diagnose muscle pains, low heart rate, stomach aches and other illnesses using Web MD and other online websites. I am not kidding. I'm like, dad, at least call your doctor and schedule an appointment. One time, he gout a stomach ache and thought it was food poisoning. It turned out to be something else that I forgot. You have health insurance and the doctor's office is two miles away. I guess he is too proud to see a doctor who is 30 years younger than he is. My dad thought my mom had some kidney stones. Yeah, my dad is playing doctor by reading online articles and diagnosing the illness incorrectly. But my mom's doctor said that my mom had indigestion or something like that.
But I digress.
Google actually does make you smarter. It increases your information processing speed. Which is one of the components of intelligence. It doesn't improve every component of intelligence. It doesn't increase your chunking capacity or short-term memory or top-level cache, will. But it certainly increases your ability to analyze larger volumes of information. So let's say it increases your L2 cache and RAM, but not your L1 cache. It's still an increase in cognitive performance. So... your conclusion that you are smarter because you use Google is not baseless.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
I prefer the Outer Limits version version better
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stream_of_Consciousness_%28The_Outer_Limits%29
Over-confident users + clueless bosses + exaggerated expectations of software capabilities due to marketing = What?
... a quick search on Google shows that... uh...
We are Google. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your technological and biological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile.
I prefer the Outer Limits version better
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stream_of_Consciousness_%28The_Outer_Limits%29
Without the almighty Google to guide us in our everyday life, we will falter and be led astray, fumbling blindly in the absence of readily available knowledge.
Suborbital [spaceflight] is the special olympics of spaceflight. - Rei
Try switching nouns - consider this possibility. Given the limitless potential of humans, don't you think it is possible for a human to eventually create a bicycle capable of reaching the moon?
Yes, we reached the moon - but with a rocket, not a bicycle. Bicycles are too limited, it took a much better vehicle to reach the moon.
Some day we may create something that is as intelligent as humans. But it will be much more similar to a human than a computer is - to the point where calling it a computer would be like calling a rocket ship a bicycle.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
So we can't say we weren't warned.
You thought the Singularity would be about replacing you. It isn't. We will augment you. Welcome to the brave new world where your intelligence lives in both wetware and silicone.
Doesn't bother me one bit if someone looks the facts up and presents that as part of their argument or statement. I'm just delighted to not be engaged by BS. I like to learn, too. Further, I suspect that the very act of looking something up, when that actually happens, is educational at least to some extent to the one doing the looking. In other words, I think it does make us smarter. It's certainly smarter behavior. Also, I outright question the need to know everything in specific, when you are both correct and informed on the generalities, and know how to look up, and how to comprehend, the specifics. That's not stupidity or ignorance. That's power.
With the quoted remark in mind, it becomes even more difficult to accept the ignorance that anti-vaxxers, both of the rabid extreme positions taken on the warming question, the "Obamacare is destroying Murica" pushers, the anti-gays, those on both the far left and the far right extremes, the "constitution is a living document" bewildered, the superstitious, the homeopaths, the "quartz crystals boost your immune system" loonies, Fox news watchers, etc.
All that knowledge out there, so very easy to get to in easily digestible form thanks to powerful search engines and a huge variety of presentations, plenty of verifiable facts to counter the endless waves of ignorance, deceit, and agitprop... and yet...
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I'm not sure remembering the atomic weight of any specific element is useful day to day. Nor the Capitol cities of every State in the world. Hard facts aside, I wonder if the study accounts for knowledge that is constantly changing. Having near immediate access to current data trumps recalling something you learned from a book a few years ago. This assumes, of course, you know how to find accurate data on the web, which is akin to knowing which book and page to turn.
A person may have superior logical ability but poor ability to recall.
Google makes it easier to recall facts for which you only remember "pointers" to. Then you can exercise logic on them.
You can also have someone with a huge memory who is illogical and irrational.
They are independent skills.
Having a good memory helps an intelligent person when they can't access their notes, the internet, reference books, etc. It's great for trivia and for solving problem quicker.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
... it's knowing where to find them. Google is just a starting point, as is Wikipedia. Smart is absorbing this information, filtering and processing it and building a semantic model in your head useful for solving a problem at hand. Smart isn't necessarily loading your brain up with trivia in the hopes that it will come in handy some day.
Have gnu, will travel.
Internet: great at [sharing] ideas, terrible at sorting through them with applied logic and set reduction.
Is a preteen boy smart when he can memorize 40,000 digits of pi? Or is he really dumb for having directed his energy in such a stupid direction? Should we feel dumb the first time we see the word 'omphaloskepsis'? As many here have said- knowing stuff isn't the same as being smart.
New members of Mensa (the hi IQ society) often want to explore what intelligence really means. Experienced members are tired of that discussion and just want another beer. IQ tests don't satisfy everyone's idea of intelligence but we have nothing better yet.
Note that the internet won't help you when the test asks "Which object is most different from the other three?" It won't help you match puzzle shapes. Neither Wolfram nor your religious order can help you with logic problems typical of intelligence tests Neither Google nor Wikipedia are of much, if any, help with IQ tests.
So these newbie discussions in Mensa are usually fruitless. One point sometimes arises that may satisfy some people. Humans are different from other animals in their survival equipment. We have no claws or fighting teeth or camouflage. We are weak, flabby creatures but we are smarter than others. You could say that our individual ability to survive and thrive is a measure of our intelligence. How well you achieve your life goals is your measuring stick.
...omphaloskepsis often...
Direct quote from "The View" regarding her quack beliefs on vaccines and autism: "The University of Google is where I got my degree from."
You have the humor of a really old and uninteresting person.
No. People are limitless, but computers are not.
Try switching nouns - consider this possibility. Given the limitless potential of humans, don't you think it is possible for a human to eventually create a bicycle capable of reaching the moon?
Yes, it is simple to reach the moon on a bike. Build one big enough and then ride the crankshaft/tire up. It's not an optimal solution, but neither is a rocket vs a pair of space elevators and, to over simplify, a net on the receiving end.
Yes, we reached the moon - but with a rocket, not a bicycle. Bicycles are too limited, it took a much better vehicle to reach the moon.
Some day we may create something that is as intelligent as humans. But it will be much more similar to a human than a computer is - to the point where calling it a computer would be like calling a rocket ship a bicycle.
Rockets are not better vehicles than bikes. They are loud, dangerous and expensive. A bike is much easier, simpler and cheaper for most trips, and you can generally use the same bike to get back. I can fold my bike in half and carry it on a train, or stick it under my desk.
Also, the original "computers" were humans, so your terminology and etymological basis for your assertions is off if you want to talk about long term trends:
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=computer
computer (n.) 1640s, "one who calculates," agent noun from compute (v.).
But, as an otherwise bad movie pointed out, there is a difference between knowledge and wisdom.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
No. People are limitless, but computers are not.
Do you have any evidence to support this?
Try switching nouns - consider this possibility. Given the limitless potential of humans, don't you think it is possible for a human to eventually create a bicycle capable of reaching the moon?
This is a semantic argument. That's because a bicycle has an implicit definition (i.e. lating for 2 circles). A bicycle is a vehicle, a car is a vehicle, and a saturn 5 rocket is a vehicle. Why do people talk about flying cars and not flying bicycles? Because a car doesn't imply wheels, but a bicycle does. It is certainly possible for a "car" to go to the moon. If we have a personal vehicle that can one day go to the moon, and it is similar in size and shape to a traditional car, I don't think anybody will have trouble calling it a "space car".
Some day we may create something that is as intelligent as humans. But it will be much more similar to a human than a computer is - to the point where calling it a computer would be like calling a rocket ship a bicycle.
I think you have a very narrow view of what "computation" is. If one day we have machines that are as intelligent as humans, and they are still made of the same stuff as they are now (i.e. transistors), but just in more advanced configurations, and you don't want to call them computers anymore, I can't stop you. I will say that everything from modern laptops, to calculators, to AIs, to biological brains fit pretty firmly in the realm of "computing machines" according to the experts in field of computer science.
If you win your semantic argument, and nobody (even computer scientists) in the future wants to call AIs computers, all it will mean is that the profound philosophical question "can computers be intelligent?" will be turned into a trivial question with a trivial answer of "No, because computers are defined to be non-intelligent"
Saying "Computers will never be intelligent, because I've defined computers as non-intelligent things", is a meaningless statement.
...by making your friends dumber than they look.
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
Never memorize what you can look up
Don't use Google or read... from the way they talk they seem to think they are really smart. I have to bite my tongue constantly... you know that is an urban legend... and so on
One involves the use of information, and the capacity to learn quickly, the other involves the recall of information. Einstein was smart. Billy Quizboy is knowledgeable. Search engines let everyone be Billy Quizboys. Applying that recalled knowledge correctly (especially in new ways) is what separates a smart Billy Quizboy from the pack.
Al Gore invented the Internet. Then he won a Nobel Prize for inventing Global Warming. See a trend here?
I run in to this situation all the time. I go on the Internet to find a solution or information on a problem I'm having and I find nothing, or at least nothing helpful. It's actually very frustrating.
I have learned that if I reach the point where I actually need to seek help from others then it's unlikely that someone else has done any better than me. I have to solve these problems all by myself.
Going to college makes people think they are smarter than they are.
I guess if you are using Google to cheat then this "research" matters, but for all the people getting things done it is a waste of time.
Lets consider a science fiction hypothetical: If, in the not too distant future, it becomes possible to augment your memory with a neural storage appliance capable of storing terabytes of compressed data with millisecond seek and load times, are users of said appliance considered 'smarter' or 'more intelligent'? I think the question is up for debate, and that debate hinges on how one defines intelligence.
Is it the mere collection and recall of facts? We are surrounded by facts all day. We are (to paraphrase Jung) drowning in facts. But facts don't do much on their own. They just sort of sit there, immutable but subject to replacement by another more 'factual' fact. Suppose I have access to the entire contents of two graduate courses in mathematics and physics from world-renowned institutions. Can I out-do Hawking, Pauli ,or Heisenberg? I think not.
Is it skill? Surgeons are quite the skillful bunch, as are sculptors, heavy crane operators, and characters played by Liam Neeson.
Is it the ability to solve problems? Close, perhaps. Of course, we are easily outdone in many problem domains by machines, and our share will only shrink with time.
"I/he/she/it" is smart. When we say this we usually mean that the entity in question exhibits behavior that we consider 'smart'. It solves practical and theoretical problems, it improvises effectively in novel situations, it uses its collection of facts, coupled with experience, to determine the best course of action, it considers the consequences of its own actions and feeds them back into the decision making process. It can create.
So do we take a reductionist view and try to define 'intelligence' by vaguely-quantifiable types and sub-types, or do we take a behavioral/holistic view and define intelligence as the ability turn a melange of facts, experience, skill, and intuition into useful and novel behaviors?
-RP
Given the 90+% Bullsh*t Rule of the internet, all this study shows is that Google makes it easier to look up bullsh*t.
any more (or anyone for that matter).
What matters is how knowledgeable the cyborg comprised of me + net is.
There are two kinds of cases where it still does matter how well I can do on my own.
1. Where time is of the essence and I don't have time to hyper-learn.
2. When I have passed the "Warning: You are leaving the twitterverse" signs on the dirt track off the highway.
What's important in most cases today is how effective cyborg-me is at systematically formulating good questions then systematically acquiring, integrating, evaluating, and using knowledge.
Stop thinking what matters is how good a human individual is at doing something/knowing something. That doesn't matter that much anymore, and will matter less in the near future. I like maintaining my celestial navigation skills, but it's really just for nostalgic reasons.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Though smartness could be conflated with access to information, it's how you connect thedots that is smart. How those dots are obtained are secondary. Having someone form a cogent argument is way better than having a screaming match about how each person hasbetter looking pants. Metaphorically speaking.
As someone who's writing a non-fiction history book I wonder if this effects what I'm doing. I use google and the net a lot and find many little nuggets of information tucked away that I would have missed. A very significant thing though is the deeper I get, the more I realize how much information is not online. Vast quantities of historical old paper have not been digitized. Seriously, most of human knowledge is not available to me when I look for it.
If, as this article argues, individuals think they're smarter because they consult the net, I wonder if research (and researchers) and their books and work published using the net may also suffer from this? Are researchers (perhaps including the writers of this article, hmm?) stupider when they rely on google for their writing.
Google gives me a wide but shallow feeling while doing research. It takes a great deal of extra work to pull the tiny nuggets from google and find the actual paper sources that take you to yet new things. The internet is a nice start, but to get anything of quality you have to go deeper. And of course the collating and analysis and arguments don't come from the search-bar, that's still human. But if we look online and stop at what I now think of as just the seed of a topic, we miss the eventual mass of data that isn't there yet.
So, is internet research going to produce dumber research, and dumber researchers? Maybe more information will become available (can I add: damn you extended copyright, jailor of so much monetarily valueless culture.) But if a researcher thinks a quick search makes them more of an expert, should we all doubt their findings even more?
(Dumb/clever closer: "Google that question.")
"Ruthlessly pursuing the idea that the accordion is just another instrument."
I initially thought this was about the Google workforce
"The Internet is such a powerful environment, where you can enter any question, and you basically have access to the world's knowledge at your fingertips,"
No, not exactly. First, it's not the 'Internet', it's the search engines that give you that power. Secondly, just do a simple test and try 3-4 search engines to look for something more deep than names of celebrities and see what you get, if you don't submit the right query string. Nowadays some search engines are fairly good in 'guessing' what you mean, but most are a crapload of bonkers.
My point is no, Google doesn't make 'People Think They Are Smarter Than They Are', it's the smartass people who make themselves think they are smarter because they can eventually find something they are looking for.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
I had a computer as smart as you included in my radio shack 100 in 1 kit.
As smart as which other humans?
The darkies?
I have said that for years.
Logically impossible.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
and they don't need google to fuel their delusions