Soup forgot his password Posted August 17, 2012 Author Share Posted August 17, 2012 I disagree that "the single purpose of the hammer, which defines the hammer...is that a hammer can put nails into a wall". I think what actually defines a hammer is common purpose and not single purpose. Thinking about it this way is more inclusive to how we actually use a hammer and still allows for the distinction between a hammer, my skull and a rock. That’s fine. We can agree that the lexical definition of a hammer is “a tool consisting of a solid head, usually of metal, set crosswise on a handle, used for beating metals, driving nails, etc.” That’s all the consensus we need. If you permit that’s a dictionary definition for a hammer then I can move onto my next point. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on this one. Seems to me like you are overstating things here. I dunno if I need to point this out or not, but this is you just saying, “Well I disagree without providing any logical or intelligible reason except wanting to disagree.” I dunno what else to say except, “alright then. “ And move on. If you want to know the supreme role technological advancement has always had in society you can start with the technology that started civilization, agriculture. Just move forward through history from there. You give a list of things (eternity, religion, and god—also capitalism, individualism, liberty, fairness) and call them metaphors, but are they all metaphors? Of all these responses I’m giving THIS one is the important one. I'm going to dedicate my next post to this. I am interested in epistemology but I didn't mean to give you the impression that it was only in the context of religion. I never said you gave me the impression you were only into religious epistemology. I said you were into epistemology AT LEAST in the context of religion. One statement I noticed from you was "Researching on the internet may seem faster than researching in a library but the information you end up with when you use the internet is so inferior to book learning that its truly a waste of fucking time." and this is so blatantly incorrect that I wanted to comment in this thread. Ok now lets see how you proved my claim to be “blatantly incorrect.” I let you know there is a ton of good information I find on the internet thru google. You asked me what kind and I gave you one example, but there are lots more we don't even need to bother getting into (meaning I've successfully searched for things many times over). Just because you think Google search results are good doesn’t mean the library isn’t better—I mean vastly better. I'm not talking about personal experience, although I agree with the findings. I'm talking about historical facts, scientific research into brain function, human behaviors and the way people process information. I think I would be sure to never slip up here and to always keep distinction between how we actually "know" things internally vs. the way we come to find new things externally. That's sloppy but it's open to critique and revision. I do not understand what this means or how you went from what I said to this, which probably means you don’t understand what I meant by “technology as epistemology.” If I need to explain this let me know. Really? The post before the post you quoted. Ok so I got the context, but your response still said I’m either a troll or I don’t know what I’m talking about. Whichever way you look at it you were presumptuous and, like you said, that’s bad. I don’t really care to continue this so moving on? I know you aren't saying using computers directly causes cancer. So it's not just like a warning on cigarette label. In other words, you don't have to tell us what it's like you can just tell us what it is. It’s exactly like a warning label on a cigarette box. “We’re not saying don’t smoke, but here’s some irrefutable facts.” Still don’t like it? Lets just go back to this then, Can you answer my question? How many people you listed above come to the conclusion we should stop using computers? Can I tell you how many of the authors above said stop using computers? Nope. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Soup forgot his password Posted August 17, 2012 Author Share Posted August 17, 2012 You give a list of things (eternity, religion, and god—also capitalism, individualism, liberty, fairness) and call them metaphors, but are they all metaphors? I’m sorry I mixed terms. Metaphor wasn’t what I meant. These are all concepts, ideas, things that only exist in the abstraction of language. Our understanding of them and our relationship to them is only as deep as the media-metaphor through which they are conveyed. An abstract concept like "politics" is understood differently when it is conveyed visually through television, typographically through books, or the jumbled mess that is the computer. Now this is an idea that comes from Neil Postman so to avoid future responses of “well I just don’t agree with you” I’m just going to post the fucking text. Neil Postman the Medium Is the Metaphor (about half-way through) In studying the Bible as a young man, I found intimations of the idea that forms of media favor particular kinds of content and therefore are capable of taking command of a culture. I refer specifically to the Decalogue, the Second Commandment of which prohibits the Israelites from making concrete images of anything. "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water beneath the earth." I wondered then, as so many others have, as to why the God of these people would have included instructions on how they were to symbolize, or not symbolize, their experience. It is a strange injunction to include as part of an ethical system unless its author assumed a connection between forms of human communication and the quality of a culture. We may hazard a guess that a people who are being asked to embrace an abstract, universal deity would be rendered unfit to do so by the habit of drawing pictures or making statues or depicting their ideas in any concrete, icono-graphic forms. the God of the Jews was to exist in the Word and through the Word, an unprecedented conception requiring the highest order of abstract thinking. Iconography thus became blasphemy so that a new kind of God could enter a culture. People like ourselves who are in the process of converting their culture from word-centered to image-centered might profit by reflecting on this Mosaic injunction. But even if I am wrong in these conjectures, it is, I believe, a wise and particularly relevant supposition that the media of communication available to a culture are a dominant influence on the formation of the culture's intellectual and social preoccupations. Speech, of course, is the primal and indispensable medium. It made us human, keeps us human, and in fact defines what human means. This is not to say that if there were no other means of communication all humans would find it equally convenient to speak about the same things in the same way. We know enough about language to understand that variations in the structures of languages will result in variations in what may be called "world view." How people think about time and space, and about things and processes, will be greatly influenced by the grammatical features of their language. We dare not suppose therefore that all human minds are unanimous in understanding how the world is put together. But how much more divergence there is in world view among different cultures can be imagined when we consider the great number and variety of tools for conversation that go beyond speech. For although culture is a creation of speech, it is recreated anew by every medium of communication--from painting to hieroglyphs to the alphabet to television. Each medium, like language itself, makes possible a unique mode of discourse by providing a new orientation for thought, for expression, for sensibility. Which, of course, is what McLuhan meant in saying the medium is the message. His aphorism, however, is in need of amendment because, as it stands, it may lead one to confuse a message with a metaphor. A message denotes a specific, concrete statement about the world. But the forms of our media, including the symbols through which they permit conversation, do not make such statements. They are rather like metaphors, working by unobtrusive but powerful implication to enforce their special definitions of reality. Whether we are experiencing the world through the lens of speech or the printed word or the television camera, our media-metaphors classify the world for us, sequence it, frame it, enlarge it, reduce it, color it, argue a case for what the world is like. As Ernst Cassirer remarked: Physical reality seems to recede in proportion as man's symbolic activity advances. Instead of dealing with the things themselves man is in a sense constantly conversing with himself. He has so enveloped himself in linguistic forms, in artistic images, in mythical symbols or religious rites that he cannot see or know anything except by the interposition of [an] artificial medium. What is peculiar about such interpositions of media is that their role in directing what we will see or know is so rarely noticed. A person who reads a book or who watches television or who glances at his watch is not usually interested in how his mind is organized and controlled by these events, still less in what idea of the world is suggested by a book, television, or a watch. But there are men and women who have noticed these things, especially in our own times. Lewis Mumford, for example, has been one of our great noticers. He is not the sort of a man who looks at a clock merely to see what time it is. Not that he lacks interest in the content of clocks, which is of concern to everyone from moment to moment, but he is far more interested in how a clock creates the idea of "moment to moment." He attends to the philosophy of clocks, to clocks as metaphor, about which our education has had little to say and clock makers nothing at all. "the clock," Mumford has concluded, "is a piece of power machinery whose 'product' is seconds and minutes." In manufacturing such a product, the clock has the effect of disassociating time from human events and thus nourishes the belief in an independent world of mathematically measurable sequences. Moment to moment, it turns out, is not God's conception, or nature's. It is man conversing with himself about and through a piece of machinery he created. In Mumford's great book Technics and Civilization, he shows how, beginning in the fourteenth century, the clock made us into time-keepers, and then time-savers, and now time-servers. In the process, we have learned irreverence toward the sun and the seasons, for in a world made up of seconds and minutes, the authority of nature is superseded. Indeed, as Mumford points out, with the invention of the clock, Eternity ceased to serve as the measure and focus of human events. And thus, though few would have imagined the connection, the inexorable ticking of the clock may have had more to do with the weakening of God's supremacy than all the treatises produced by the phi- losophers of the Enlightenment; that is to' say, the clock introduced a new form of conversation between man and God, in which God appears to have been the loser. Perhaps Moses should have included another Commandment: Thou shalt not make mechanical representations of time. That the alphabet introduced a new form of conversation between man and man is by now a commonplace among scholars. To be able to see one's utterances rather than only to hear them is no small matter, though our education, once again, has had little to say about this. Nonetheless, it is clear that phonetic writing created a new conception of knowledge, as well as a new sense of intelligence, of audience and of posterity, all of which Plato recognized at an early stage in the development of texts. "No man of intelligence," he wrote in his Seventh Letter, "will venture to express his philosophical views in language, especially not in language that is unchangeable, which is true of that which is set down in written characters." This notwithstanding, he wrote voluminously and understood better than anyone else that the setting down of views in written characters would be the beginning of philosophy, not its end. Philosophy cannot exist without criticism, and writing makes it possible and convenient to subject thought to a continuous and concentrated scrutiny. Writing freezes speech and in so doing gives birth to the grammarian, the logician, the rhetorician, the historian, the scientist--all those who must hold language before them so that they can see what it means, where it errs, and where it is leading. Plato knew all of this, which means that he knew that writing would bring about a perceptual revolution: a shift from the ear to the eye as an organ of language processing. Indeed, there is a legend that to encourage such a shift Plato insisted that his students study geometry before entering his Academy. If true, it was a sound idea, for as the great literary critic Northrop Frye has remarked, "the written word is far more powerful than simply a reminder: it re-creates the past in the present, and gives us, not the familiar remembered thing, but the glittering intensity of the summoned-up hallucination." 3 All that Plato surmised about the consequences of writing is now well understood by anthropologists, especially those who have studied cultures in which speech is the only source of complex conversation. Anthropologists know that the written word, as Northrop Frye meant to suggest, is not merely an echo of a speaking voice. It is another kind of voice altogether, a conjurer's trick of the first order. It must certainly have appeared that way to those who invented it, and that is why we should not be surprised that the Egyptian god Thoth, who is alleged to have brought writing to the King Thamus, was also the god of magic. People like ourselves may see nothing wondrous in writing, but our anthropologists know how strange and magical it appears to a purely oral people--a conversation with no one and yet with everyone. What could be stranger than the silence one encounters when addressing a question to a text? What could be more metaphysically puzzling than addressing an unseen audience, as every writer of books must do? And correcting oneself because one knows that an unknown reader will disapprove or misunderstand? I bring all of this up because what my book is about is how our own tribe is undergoing a vast and trembling shift from the magic of writing to the magic of electronics. What I mean to point out here is that the introduction into a culture of a technique such as writing or a clock is not merely an extension of man's power to bind time but a transformation of his way of thinking--and, of course, of the content of his culture. And that is what I mean to say by calling a medium a metaphor. We are told in school, quite correctly, that a metaphor suggests what a thing is like by comparing it to something else. And by the power of its suggestion, it so fixes a conception in our minds that we cannot imagine the one thing without the other: Light is a wave; language, a tree; God, a wise and venerable man; the mind, a dark cavern illuminated by knowledge. And if these metaphors no longer serve us, we must, in the nature of the matter, find others that will. Light is a particle; language, a river; God (as Bertrand Russell proclaimed), a differential equation; the mind, a garden that yearns to be cultivated. But our media-metaphors are not so explicit or so vivid as these, and they are far more complex. In understanding their metaphorical function, we must take into account the symbolic forms of their information, the source of their information, the quantity and speed of their information, the context in which their information is experienced. Thus, it takes some digging to get at them, to grasp, for example, that a clock recreates time as an independent, mathematically precise sequence; that writing recreates the mind as a tablet on which experience is written; that the telegraph recreates news as a commodity. And yet, such digging becomes easier if we start from the assumption that in every tool we create, an idea is embedded that goes beyond the function of the thing itself. It has been pointed out, for example, that the invention of eyeglasses in the twelfth century not only made it possible to improve defective vision but suggested the idea that human beings need not accept as final either the endowments of nature or the ravages of time. Eyeglasses refuted the belief that anatomy is destiny by putting forward the idea that our bodies as well as our minds are improvable. I do not think it goes too far to say that there is a link between the invention of eyeglasses in the twelfth century and gene-splitting research in the twentieth. Even such an instrument as the microscope, hardly a tool of everyday use, had embedded within it a quite astonishing idea, not about biology but about psychology. By revealing a world hitherto hidden from view, the microscope suggested a possibility about the structure of the mind. If things are not what they seem, if microbes lurk, unseen, on and under our skin, if the invisible controls the visible, then is it not possible that ids and egos and superegos also lurk somewhere unseen? What else is psychoanalysis but a microscope of the mind? Where do our notions of mind come from if not from metaphors generated by our tools? What does it mean to say that someone has an IQ of 126? There are no numbers in people's heads. Intelligence does not have quantity or magnitude, except as we believe that it does. And why do we believe that it does? Because we have tools that imply that this is what the mind is like. Indeed, our tools for thought suggest to us what our bodies are like, as when someone refers to her "biological clock," or when we talk of our "genetic codes," or when we read someone's face like a book, or when our facial expressions telegraph our intentions. When Galileo remarked that the language of nature is written in mathematics, he meant it only as a metaphor. Nature itself does not speak. Neither do our minds or our bodies or, more to the point of this book, our bodies politic. Our conversations about nature and about ourselves are conducted in whatever "languages" we find it possible and convenient to employ. We do not see nature or intelligence or human motivation or ideology as "it" is but only as our languages are. And our languages are our media. Our media are our metaphors. Our metaphors create the content of our culture. 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dignan Posted August 17, 2012 Share Posted August 17, 2012 "Claim: Books allow for deeper concentration, contemplation, and memorization than any other format. Warrant: The claim is evident through scientific research Support:..... here:" Seems like you could just use claim and support to get the point across. I think this claim you made is not supported by what you supplied. (please don't take that as an invitation to post even more long passages.) The passage you provided makes use of research by Gary Small, but that research does not support your claim. The findings by Small are that computer searches generate more activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. But I want to you pay attention to the way Small compares things: "The researchers found that when people search the Net they exhibit a very different pattern of brain activity than they do when they read book-like text." Here there's a clear distinction being made between searching the Net and reading book-like text. Then Small says: "The good news here is that Web surfing, because it engages so many brain functions, may help keep older people’s minds sharp." Again, so far, I don't see this as support for your claim: Books allow for deeper concentration, contemplation, and memorization than any other format. I'm not done but it's time to go to work. I know at the end of the passage Carr makes the claim:" Try reading a book while doing a crossword puzzle; that’s the intellectual environment of the Internet" but I think he moves too fast here. There's nothing here to support that we are always doing these two things at once. Carr just asserts that. Now if you would have said: "Claim: Searching the Net and reading book-like text cause activity in different parts of the brain. Warrant: The claim is evident through scientific research Support:..... here:" Then I would think your claim would get stronger support by the passage you quoted. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Soup forgot his password Posted August 17, 2012 Author Share Posted August 17, 2012 Excuse the choppinss of this post, im on an iphone again. To me anything under 10000 words is a short passage. If youre going to only read the first four paragraphs and assume a response based on those 4 paragraphs can somehow be intelligible youre going to have a hard time with future posts. The prefrontal cortex is related to decision making, as in deciding if theres something to click on and if you should click on it. You can completely lose your prefrontal cortex in a car accident and stil retain memory, speech and motorskills. Its an unimportant part to reading, and remains largely inactive during book reading, comprehension, or assigning information to long term memory. The activation of the prefrontal cortex is a sign that the brain is distracted by reading online, and has a harder time retaining anything it reads. if you continue to read past the fourth paragraph he explains why what you just posted is wrong and goes on to show why reading online is inferior to books if your aim is to understand and retain information. If what you want is to exercise the prefrontal cortex there are many other non-reading activities you can do. Thats the point, most of what your brain is doing while reading online isnt reading. Carr pus it like this. "using the Net may, as Gary Small suggests, exercise the brain the way solving crossword puzzles does. But such intensive exercise, when it becomes our primary mode of thought, can impede deep learning and thinking. Try reading a book while doing a crossword puzzle; that’s the intellectual environment of the Internet" Furthermore your inability to read anything of length is not supporting your case. Also i need to point out that the passage is supported by eleven articles, not just one. I had already posted them under the passage. And finally claims, warrants, and support are not subjective terms that you or i can redefine when we want to. They are identifiabe components to any argument. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dignan Posted August 17, 2012 Share Posted August 17, 2012 Soup, let's try and stay on this one topic of your claim in post #62 and your support for that claim. Here is your claim: "Books allow for deeper concentration, contemplation, and memorization than any other format." Then you posted a passage from The Shallows. Now staying within the context of what you said in post #62 can you please show me in clean, clear, and crisp examples of support for your claim: "Books allow for deeper concentration, contemplation, and memorization than any other format." A couple of simple and hopefully non controversial examples of what I'm asking of you are as follows: Example A Claim #1, Soup is a mortal Support #1, Soup is a man Support #2, All men are mortal Example B Claim #2, Soup is 6 feet tall Support #1, Soup is a man Support #2, All men are mortal Now both claim #1 and claim #2 can both be true claims. However, only claim #1 follows from both support #1 and #2, whereas claim #2 receives no support. Hopefully this question isn't asking too much and I think your answer will help me understand you more clearly. Again, please try and stay within the passage you quoted in post #62 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Soup forgot his password Posted August 17, 2012 Author Share Posted August 17, 2012 Cool, now you're bringing up Socrates and syllogisms. I like that logic and understanding logical fallacies is becoming part of crossfire instead of things going off the rails. That said my entire post was on point and supports my claim multiple times. You chose to read only the first four paragraphs, which is where the misunderstanding comes from—not some logical fallacy. I completely support you referencing your freshman english textbook but if you want to refute something you have to read the whole thing. If you do choose to read the whole text and find a logical fallacy, feel free to point it out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dignan Posted August 17, 2012 Share Posted August 17, 2012 Soup, I did read the whole thing. And I said earlier that I didn't think your claim was supported by your quote. Is it too hard to ask you to show clear support for your claim? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Soup forgot his password Posted August 18, 2012 Author Share Posted August 18, 2012 Soup, I did read the whole thing. And I said earlier that I didn't think your claim was supported by your quote. Claim: The article I posted does NOT support your claim that "Books allow for deeper concentration, contemplation, and memorization than any other format." Qualifier: The passage I provided makes use of research by Gary Small Support:The findings by Small are that computer searches generate more activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Support: Garry Small says, "The good news here is that Web surfing, because it engages so many brain functions, may help keep older people’s minds sharp." Warrant: You don't see this as support for your claim: Books allow for deeper concentration, contemplation, and memorization REFUTATION (which was already made in #66) The prefrontal cortex is related to decision making, as in deciding if theres something to click on and if you should click on it. You can completely lose your prefrontal cortex in a car accident and stil retain memory, speech and motorskills. Its an unimportant part to reading, and remains largely inactive during book reading, comprehension, or assigning information to long term memory. The activation of the prefrontal cortex is a sign that the brain is distracted by reading online, and has a harder time retaining anything it reads. if you continue to read past the fourth paragraph he explains why what you just posted is wrong and goes on to show why reading online is inferior to books if your aim is to understand and retain information. If what you want is to exercise the prefrontal cortex there are many other non-reading activities you can do. Thats the point, most of what your brain is doing while reading online isnt reading. Carr puts it like this. "using the Net may, as Gary Small suggests, exercise the brain the way solving crossword puzzles does. But such intensive exercise, when it becomes our primary mode of thought, can impede deep learning and thinking. Try reading a book while doing a crossword puzzle; that’s the intellectual environment of the Internet" Furthermore your inability to read anything of length is not supporting your case. Also i need to point out that the passage is supported by eleven articles, not just one. I had already posted them under the passage. And finally claims, warrants, and support are not subjective terms that you or i can redefine when we want to. They are identifiabe components to any argument. REBUTTAL: I'm not staying on topic of my claim in post #62 and my support for that claim. Support: Recitation of how to form a logical argument using claims and supprot. Support: ? Support: ? Qualifier: ? Warrant: ? Was this an intelligible rebuttal with a warranted claim and qualified support? No. Now we've circled back around to you. Claim: I don't think your claim was supported by your quote. Support: None Support: None Support: none I shouldnt have explain to you how this works. Is it too hard to ask you to show clear support for your claim? I dont know, is it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dignan Posted August 18, 2012 Share Posted August 18, 2012 Soup, let's try and stay on this one topic of your claim in post #62 and your support for that claim. Here is your claim: "Books allow for deeper concentration, contemplation, and memorization than any other format." Then you posted a passage from The Shallows. Now staying within the context of what you said in post #62 can you please show me in clean, clear, and crisp examples of support for your claim: "Books allow for deeper concentration, contemplation, and memorization than any other format." A couple of simple and hopefully non controversial examples of what I'm asking of you are as follows: Example A Claim #1, Soup is a mortal Support #1, Soup is a man Support #2, All men are mortal Example B Claim #2, Soup is 6 feet tall Support #1, Soup is a man Support #2, All men are mortal Now both claim #1 and claim #2 can both be true claims. However, only claim #1 follows from both support #1 and #2, whereas claim #2 receives no support. Hopefully this question isn't asking too much and I think your answer will help me understand you more clearly. Again, please try and stay within the passage you quoted in post #62 Soup, what I'm asking here of you is simple. Please show me in a clear way how the passage you say supports your claim actually supports your claim. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Soup forgot his password Posted August 18, 2012 Author Share Posted August 18, 2012 I've already qualified the support in fucking #66. Why are you stuck on this? "using the Net may, as Gary Small suggests, exercise the brain the way solving crossword puzzles does. But such intensive exercise, when it becomes our primary mode of thought, can impede deep learning and thinking. Try reading a book while doing a crossword puzzle; that’s the intellectual environment of the Internet" This article supports my claim because the entire article is about the distractive nature of the internet, which inhibits concentration, contemplation, and memorization. I've said this NUMEROUS times already. You don't have to like my answer—we're not interested in likes or dislikes—but if you want to refute the statement you must provide your own support for your own claim. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dignan Posted August 18, 2012 Share Posted August 18, 2012 Soup, I'm very sorry for my ignorance here. I'm sure you have a very strong case. Can you please give your "evident thru scientific research support" (your words, post #62)? Maybe it would be easier for me if you could number each "support" in order and identify for me all the relevant connecting language. Also, could you please use exact quotes, it wouldn't be much support if you had to change Carr's quote to suite your claim. I want to be able to see each step you make in order. I'm not refuting you, I'm trying to understand you. I apologize for having to ask you this four times in a row. Seriously, you can take your time, I'm not going anywhere. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Soup forgot his password Posted August 18, 2012 Author Share Posted August 18, 2012 Can you please give your "evident thru scientific research support" (your words, post #62)? 7. Gary Small and Gigi Vorgan, iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind (New York: Collins, 2008), 1. 8. G. W. Small, T. D. Moody, P. Siddarth, and S. Y. Bookheimer, “Your Brain on Google: Patterns of Cerebral Activation during Internet Searching,” American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 17, no. 2 (February 2009): 116–26. See also Rachel Champeau, “UCLA Study Finds That Searching the Internet Increases Brain Function,” UCLA Newsroom, October 14, 2008, http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/ucla-study-finds-that-searching-64348.aspx. 9. Small and Vorgan, iBrain, 16–17. 10. Maryanne Wolf, interview with the author, March 28, 2008. 11. Steven Johnson, Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today’s Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter(New York: Riverhead Books, 2005), 19. 12. John Sweller, Instructional Design in Technical Areas(Camberwell, Australia: Australian Council for Educational Research, 1999), 4. 13. Ibid., 7. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid., 11. 16. Ibid., 4–5. For a broad review of current thinking on the limits of working memory, see Nelson Cowan, Working Memory Capacity (New York: Psychology Press, 2005). 17. Klingberg, Overflowing Brain, 39 and 72–75. 18. Sweller, Instructional Design, 22./QUOTE] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dignan Posted August 18, 2012 Share Posted August 18, 2012 That actually gave me a chuckle, thanks. However what I'm after is seeing how you support your claim: "Books allow for deeper concentration, contemplation, and memorization than any other format." Asking now a fifth time. No rush. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Soup forgot his password Posted August 18, 2012 Author Share Posted August 18, 2012 Im laughing at how long it's taking you to get this. You've lectured me twice already on the rules of logic so I assume you understand the rules of debate. I actually answer the questions you ask when you ask them. If you dont like the answers, come up with better questions. That's the only advice i can give. "Can you tell me how many authors have said we should stop using computers?" Nope. "Can you show support for your claim?" Here's a whole passage that makes the same claim. "That doesn't support your claim." That wasn't a question. "Can you show support for your claim?" I already did "Can you qualify the support you've given?" Yes I can and then I did. "Can I give my "evident thru scientific research support"?" First of all "evident thru scientific research support" isnt even a noun, so no I can't give it. Second if what you meant was "How is this scientific research?" Well heres a list of scientific research that i already gave. Bonus video, Lecture by Gary Small, your brain on Google: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/living-faster/where-are-we-headed/your-brain-on-google.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dignan Posted August 18, 2012 Share Posted August 18, 2012 Soup, let's try and stay on this one topic of your claim in post #62 and your support for that claim. Here is your claim: "Books allow for deeper concentration, contemplation, and memorization than any other format." Then you posted a passage from The Shallows. Now staying within the context of what you said in post #62 can you please show me in clean, clear, and crisp examples of support for your claim: "Books allow for deeper concentration, contemplation, and memorization than any other format." A couple of simple and hopefully non controversial examples of what I'm asking of you are as follows: Example A Claim #1, Soup is a mortal Support #1, Soup is a man Support #2, All men are mortal Example B Claim #2, Soup is 6 feet tall Support #1, Soup is a man Support #2, All men are mortal Now both claim #1 and claim #2 can both be true claims. However, only claim #1 follows from both support #1 and #2, whereas claim #2 receives no support. Hopefully this question isn't asking too much and I think your answer will help me understand you more clearly. Again, please try and stay within the passage you quoted in post #62 Sixth times a charm? Anyways, let stay on one topic. And I'm sorry, when I said, "Can you please give your "evident thru scientific research support" (your words, post #62)?" I put the quotation after the word support and it should have been placed after the word research. Let me fix it for you. Can you please give your "evident thru scientific research" (your words, post #62) support? I don't want to hear someone else show the support for your claim. I want to see you show support for your claim using the passage in post #62 And it was kinda cute that on post #74 you listed footnotes as scientific support. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Soup forgot his password Posted August 18, 2012 Author Share Posted August 18, 2012 Let me fix it for you. Can you please give your "evident thru scientific research" (your words, post #62) support? Already did. If you dont like an answer you receive don't get to demand I give a different one. Ask a better question. I don't want to hear someone else show the support for your claim. I want to see you show support for your claim using the passage in post #62 You dont want me to support my argument with harvard published papers and a pretty fucking extensive list of research papers to go along with it. Well, again, too bad. Let's move on. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dignan Posted August 18, 2012 Share Posted August 18, 2012 I'm just trying to stick what what you said in post #62 which was along the lines of: "Claim: Books allow for deeper concentration, contemplation, and memorization than any other format. Warrant: The claim is evident through scientific research Support: Not given at the time because this is the internet and I don't feel like qualifying things unless someone asks me to, but here:" Then you proceeded to post twelve paragraphs along with footnotes. All I'm asking is for you to break it down for me in numbered supports that follow to your claim. Or if you prefer you can say, after reflection, that you overstated your claim. Also, that looking back now, that you no longer can detect any cumulative support for your claim in the passage you quoted. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Soup forgot his password Posted August 18, 2012 Author Share Posted August 18, 2012 Ok great. You disagree. If you have nothing to more to add to the article I posted we'll have to move on. I'm not going to give you cliffnotes so you dont have to read you lazy fuck. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dignan Posted August 18, 2012 Share Posted August 18, 2012 I don't see any reason to have to move on. I'm not asking for cliffnotes and while I may be a lazy fuck I've read that Carr passage many times now. 8th time now asking you to make your case. It's ok to make mistakes. Take a day, write it down on a piece of paper a few times and then maybe post it. It could be good. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Soup forgot his password Posted August 18, 2012 Author Share Posted August 18, 2012 It could be, but it doesn't need it. You're trolling. The answer for that stands as it is. If you disagree then you disagree. Cool? Moving on. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dignan Posted August 18, 2012 Share Posted August 18, 2012 You made the claim. You could have picked anything in the entire world to support it and you cherry picked that Carr passage for a reason. You saw something in that passage and I would like to see it too. 9th time, make your case. Or just say why you don't want to try. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UPS! Posted August 18, 2012 Share Posted August 18, 2012 Hey Soup, if you're fucking thread is about not using computers, why don't you lead by example? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Soup forgot his password Posted August 18, 2012 Author Share Posted August 18, 2012 Why would I leave when i can sit here and watch the suicide of American ideology? Freedom, individualism, rationalism... what do these terms mean on the internet? How absurd can we go with them? Look at you taking advantage of this superficial sense of validation from this false sense of "community" this bulletin board has created for you. Humans are civic creatures yet we can't tell the difference between real and fake citizenship. Or maybe we can tell the difference, but when it's so hard in real life to not be a coward, introduce ourselves to our neighbors, rejoin a REAL geographic community, it's just easier to play pretend and go for the lowest hanging fruit. You feel empowered on a messageboard by design. You type a few words into a text box and the bulletin board system generates a post visually equivalent to everybody else's. To you this is an improvement to your other life because here you feel a level of acceptance. Here you're not judged on physical appearance or intelligence. There's only one rule of anonymity: be as indifferent and uncaring as possible. Show any passion for anything and expect the wrath of Anonymous to wipe you from the internet. Make sure you're not the target by just going along with what everyone else is doing. Chimpanzees can be trained to perform the same trick. Lock a bunch of chimps in a cell, put a ladder in the cell and on top of the ladder place a banana. If one monkey goes for the banana, turn a firehose on the entire cell. Soon the monkeys will stop going for the banana. Take out one of the chimps and bring in an uninitiated new chimp. Watch him go for the banana. Watch every other chimp beat the piss out of him before he goes for it. One at a time, replace each original chimp with a new uninitiated one. Soon you have a bunch of chimps that have never even felt a firehose, but if one chimp goes for the banana they still beat him up. That's you Cunt. You're as intelligent and self aware as those chimpanzees. Your'e little Baby Bear in the three bears, lapping up his milk, trying to sit up at the table with the rest of the three bears, just trying to fit in like a tiny, feeble, cowardly homunculus without a fucking clue why you even bother. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dignan Posted August 18, 2012 Share Posted August 18, 2012 Soup-Lion, (I think we've bonded a bit now so I feel like I can say this. You've moved from Soup-Dogg to Soup-Lion). No reason to lash out at Cunt_Eastwood, he's simply referring back to your first post where you said, "from now until 2013 I plan on trying to unplug myself." Anyways, you're getting off topic. I'm still interested in seeing your claim supported by your Carr passage (post #62) in a clear way. You're not helping so I've decided to try and help you help me. In post #72 you posted a hint to your thought process. I'm going to try and put it in a clear, easy to read form and see where it actually supports your claim. In post #62 you said this.. "Claim: What I want readers to believe' Support: What I will use to support the claim Warrant: A general principle that explains why I think me evidence is accurate, and relevant to your claim." Here's your claim: Books allow for deeper concentration, contemplation, and memorization than any other format Your warrant: The claim is evident through scientific research Your support from post #72: "using the Net may, as Gary Small suggests, exercise the brain the way solving crossword puzzles does. But such intensive exercise, when it becomes our primary mode of thought, can impede deep learning and thinking. Try reading a book while doing a crossword puzzle; that’s the intellectual environment of the Internet" I'm going to experiment and change the order up in hopes of seeing what you see. Warrant: The claim is evident through scientific research Support #1: "using the Net may, as Gary Small suggests, exercise the brain the way solving crossword puzzles does. But such intensive exercise, when it becomes our primary mode of thought, can impede deep learning and thinking. Try reading a book while doing a crossword puzzle; that’s the intellectual environment of the Internet" Claim: Books allow for deeper concentration, contemplation, and memorization than any other format Putting it in this way helps me see that your claim is very different than what you said was support, and seemingly doesn't follow in any way. Carr doesn't even mention concentration, contemplation, or memorization. Another important note is Gary Smalls actual findings in the passage you privided, "...researchers found that when people search the Net they exhibit a very different pattern of brain activity than they do when they read book-like text. Book readers have a lot of activity in regions associated with language, memory, and visual processing, but they don’t display much activity in the prefrontal regions associated with decision making and problem solving. Experienced Net users, by contrast, display extensive activity across all those brain regions when they scan and search Web pages. The good news here is that Web surfing, because it engages so many brain functions, may help keep older people’s minds sharp. Searching and browsing seem to “exercise” the brain in a way similar to solving crossword puzzles, says Small." Please pay attention to the distinction Smalls makes here between searching the Net and reading book-like text, "when people search the Net they exhibit a very different pattern of brain activity than they do when they read book-like text." In your support, Carr only mentions Small's research results of when people are searching the Net. Carr does not say reading actual books is better in any way than reading book-like text. I think that is something you may be reading into the text and not getting form the text, but maybe I'm wrong. Again, that twelve paragraph passage is a critique of Net surfing and not of reading book-like text. Seems to me there are some large gaps between your support and your claim. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UPS! Posted August 18, 2012 Share Posted August 18, 2012 Why would I leave when i can sit here and watch the suicide of American ideology? Freedom, individualism, rationalism... what do these terms mean on the internet? How absurd can we go with them? Look at you taking advantage of this superficial sense of validation from this false sense of "community" this bulletin board has created for you. Humans are civic creatures yet we can't tell the difference between real and fake citizenship. Or maybe we can tell the difference, but when it's so hard in real life to not be a coward, introduce ourselves to our neighbors, rejoin a REAL geographic community, it's just easier to play pretend and go for the lowest hanging fruit. You feel empowered on a messageboard by design. You type a few words into a text box and the bulletin board system generates a post visually equivalent to everybody else's. To you this is an improvement to your other life because here you feel a level of acceptance. Here you're not judged on physical appearance or intelligence. There's only one rule of anonymity: be as indifferent and uncaring as possible. Show any passion for anything and expect the wrath of Anonymous to wipe you from the internet. Make sure you're not the target by just going along with what everyone else is doing. Chimpanzees can be trained to perform the same trick. Lock a bunch of chimps in a cell, put a ladder in the cell and on top of the ladder place a banana. If one monkey goes for the banana, turn a firehose on the entire cell. Soon the monkeys will stop going for the banana. Take out one of the chimps and bring in an uninitiated new chimp. Watch him go for the banana. Watch every other chimp beat the piss out of him before he goes for it. One at a time, replace each original chimp with a new uninitiated one. Soon you have a bunch of chimps that have never even felt a firehose, but if one chimp goes for the banana they still beat him up. That's you Cunt. You're as intelligent and self aware as those chimpanzees. Your'e little Baby Bear in the three bears, lapping up his milk, trying to sit up at the table with the rest of the three bears, just trying to fit in like a tiny, feeble, cowardly homunculus without a fucking clue why you even bother. I'd say you're just wasting your time, but I know outside of the internet you have absolutely nothing going on. In the time it took you to write all of that garbage I guarentee you I accomplished than you did throughout the day Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Soup forgot his password Posted August 18, 2012 Author Share Posted August 18, 2012 Ok, prove it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shai Posted August 21, 2012 Share Posted August 21, 2012 Like drugs, computers are tools, or a means to an end. The best idea is to use them with a clear intent, and not idly fuck around with them just because you can. Most people take the fact that they carry the equivalent of a supercomputer from the mid 90s in their pocket for granted...and that is not a good thing. Every new form of stimulation has a learning curve. A good example is when a "new" street drug comes out- you don't hear about the 90% of the user base who can hit it one time and quit it...you hear about people getting so beamed up that they do the most retarded shit, then turn around and say "Oh, but it was bath salts/crack/PCP that made me do it." To that I say BULLSHIT. If you can't recognize your own limits, that was a problem from the jump....and computers are no different. I'm not sure if I answered the question correctly, but I think I more or less explained why I probably won't stop using computers any time soon. I started off using BBSes in the late 80s then moved onto the internet, and so far it hasn't been a detriment to my life...the only problem I've been encountering lately is not being able to retain information I read online as well as if I were to read it from a book. That could just be part of getting old. Or it could be because I'm bombarded by so much more side-stimuli using the modern web as compared to when I was using text browsers like Lynx in the early-mid 90s. Anyone who hasn't read "Snow Crash" by Neal Stephenson should do so. Even though it was written 20 years ago, it still raises a lot of relevant points regarding infomation and the web. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spambot5000 Posted August 21, 2012 Share Posted August 21, 2012 Fuggedaboudit.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Soup forgot his password Posted August 21, 2012 Author Share Posted August 21, 2012 To that I say BULLSHIT. If you can't recognize your own limits, that was a problem from the jump....and computers are no different. . It's not just knowing when to stop, you also have to be able to. There are biological and social limits to things. The problem with the computer and technology in general is that technology has superceded ALL ideology. There is nobody saying how much technology use is too much. Secondly, even if there was a reachable limit to computer/technology use, either socially or physically, your argument assumes you have the willpower to change your behavior whenever you want. Drug addicts, like all human beings, need the assistance of a support group to help them lock in good or bad behaviors. If everyone thinks that computer usage is in no way detrimental, then there is no support group to help people stop using computers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shai Posted August 21, 2012 Share Posted August 21, 2012 Semi-related- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dopamine_receptor_D4 I think we're still figuring out how to integrate technology that allows us to be in constant contact with each other into our lives without being trivial or obsessive. How long that will take is another matter of conjecture. Then again, with some people it's always something. We all know the person who gets inordinately bent out of shape over gossip/drama in general- now their medium has spread to email, IM, FB, text, forum posts, blog posts, Youtube comments...it's what spoils having a smart phone for me. I recently acquired an iPhone, but haven't hooked it up because a) it does what I need it to do over wifi adequately, and b) I simply don't want to be that connected. For the same reasons, I also don't think technology has replaced ideology. It's simply another medium to get the message out...how it's used is up to the people with the message, and if you look at past patterns of behavior it's not hard to see who's going to do what with it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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