We’re constantly being told the Interweb is actually making us stupider but is that trew (sic)?
Your cheap, (and trust me, it IS cheap) smartphone or Mac (that isn’t cheap, I know) now gives you access to more information that you could ever achieve in every lifetime, let alone yours. We have access to facts (whatever they are), opinions and statistics and documented evidence, in text, audio, video and written in blood!
So, what’s the problem?
Well, we as humans, simply can’t take onboard so much information… and, you might have guessed by this being an article on here, we utilise a number of shortcuts (heuristics we call them) to filter out and select what we THINK is the most valuable.
And guess what? We’re not doing a great job of it. Why? We’ve lost the ability to think critically, our psychology simply isn’t keeping up.
Critical thinking is defined as, ‘the process of actively and objectively analysing information, evaluating evidence, and questioning assumptions to make a reasoned judgment or decision. It involves using logic and reason to understand situations from different perspectives, identify potential flaws in arguments, and draw well-supported conclusions’.
Well, that’s a skill we’re simply losing, and with the advent of AI, we’re getting poorer at it, and quickly.
