Work and Talk: Shh, it's a library

Coming from a client meeting, my wife asked me to drop into the library to pick up a few books she needs for her thesis work. I am not much of a reader these days but once upon a time spent a lot of my childhood in libraries as I was an avid reader. Libraries used to be a place of knowledge and silence.

This place sounds much like a zoo as kids hanging out here after school (not with books) are chatting away as if it is a McDonald's. What happened?

A friend who is a fair bit younger than me asked a question the other day that had a pretty logical answer if one took the time to think a little. They hadn't taken that time but instead asked looking for the answer to be provided.

This is likely a generational and technological difference since they had never really had the need to think much, the answers were always at their fingertips a search engine away. The problem of course is that a search engine can only return information and answers it knows which means it is unable to problem solve.

Problem solving is something we as humans are meant to be capable of but the 'able' part is based on potential which requires practice. Having the answers available at all times means that there is very little stretching of the mental faculties required to train cognitive ability.

These days people can go through their entire experience being right without having to ever having to develop their own answer. Thought via proxy.

This leads to reliance on the information available and the increasing necessity to trust it because of a decreasing ability to question it critically. Critical thinking isn't criticising, it is objectively evaluating information quality and forming a judgement upon it.

Without this skill, we become prone to information slavery where our masters are the creators and dispensers of information, authorities. And without better tools nor the cognitive ability to question the need let alone make new tools, we must trust that the information we get is correct.

They say power corrupts but this is not necessarily true. We each have agendas and incentives and we will naturally be biased to fulfil what we see as important. What gets corrupted isn't the person but the information presented and without enough critical thought, it can't be thoroughly questioned nor can better options be developed. So eventually, all we have is a corrupted system with information designed to satisfy some while leveraging others for gain.

The more we rely on information provided, the less we think about what information is actually relevant and the lower our creative ability becomes to solve the problems we actually face. Instead, we end up just consuming what is served indiscriminately.

Find a quiet place and think about it. These days, that might not be a library.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]
_{(posted from phone)}