Are we entering the Post-Cognitive Age?

sandhill larry

sandhill larry

Well-Known Member
Our brains are changing because of the new tools. It's not good or bad, it just is. Just like in the years after Gutenberg made the printing press, people lost the skill of memorizing long texts. Somehow we will muddle through this.

{I did not read all nine pages of this thread}

DiogenesTheWiser said:
Historians divide historical time period into ages. Perhaps you've heard of the "stone age" or "iron age." The "Dark Ages" refer to European backwardness after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. More recently, in America, there was the Gilded Age when capitalism seemed to run amok and a time in which business owners routinely purchased politicians, including presidents.

Even more recently was the Atomic Age, ushered in by American use of the atomic bomb to end WWII. It was characterized by a time of experimentation in nuclear power and use of atomic diplomacy by the world's chief nuke weapons holders.

In the 1990s, after the Internet had been opened to commercial use, Time Magazine and others called the coming age the Information Age. Others have termed it the Internet Age or the Digital Age.

I'm calling it the Post-Cognitive Age, ushered in by smart technology in which machines think for us. When I google something, google anticipates my search terms--that's smart tech in the works. When I'm streaming videos on Netflix, there's nothing on until I pick something in my list--a list generated for me by the wizards at Netflix. More and more in the Post-Cognitive Age, we are seeing automation. If you go to the local mall trash restaurants, for example, like Chillis, Applebees, O'Charley's, Ruby Tuesdays, etc.--all crappy restaurants--you're more likely to be waited on by a "device"--a tablet. It contains pictures of what's available to eat, drink.

More and more, our thinking is being replaced by the work of computers, either the big desktop kinds, or the smaller ones that fit into our pockets (or strap onto our wrists). With the fast availability of information, we don't have to think as much as we used to.

New tech has a way of weaving its way into our lives and affecting us in the business and political worlds. I think Trump is a direct effect of the Post-Cognitive Age. With all this information at our fingertips, and with the corresponding reluctance to have to think about things, people accept buzzwords and catch-phrases all the more easily, like MAGA, and the "best blacks" and the "best women..." And more and more Americans identify with a politician who, like them, says that "thinking is bad" and that he "loves the poorly educated."

When historians, if they exist, 100 or 150 years from now look back on our society at this current time, I think they'd be unable to ignore the evidence that people today don't want to think and are gradually ceding that human activity to machines. This will continue to have great effects on our society, tearing down old institutions and erecting new ones.

Years ago, I kinda saw the writing on the wall and I left higher education forever. There's really no need for higher ed any more. All info can be attained through our devices. We can learn how to build a dam by reading about it online. We can take out somebody's appendix by reading enough Wikipedia pages. Really, all that people need to learn to be safe in the Post-Cognitive Age is basic literacy, typing, and coding.

Eventually, we might even think past society altogether.

To sum up the range of humans' importance on thinking, Rene Descartes, one of the greatest of all Western philosophers, and without whose thought our computer revolution could not have occurred, claimed in 1644 "I think, therefore I am." It seems that nowadays, the opposite is more apt. "I don't have to hink, therefore I am."
Click to expand...
 
Chunky Stool

Chunky Stool

Well-Known Member
DiogenesTheWiser said:
So this is what I've been writing about on this thread--how social media and message board users misrepresent the opinions of others because they're more and more incapable of thinking about the meaning of words. If you were to actually read my posts on this thread instead of just following the fecal freak stool guy's unsubstantiated opinions, then you'd see that your statement quoted above cannot be found in any of my posts.

I've been arguing that humanity is entering, or we're at the inception of, a new age. Historians classify human ages in history based on the tools humans have used. For example, very early humans who figured out how to shape stones into tools were part of the Stone Age. Later in human history, during the 1800s when many countries began relying on steam power and other engines to mass produce items was called the Industrial Age. More recently, humans' reliance on nuclear power and defense has been called the Nuclear Age.

I'm saying that based on our tools--smart tech and other forms of automation--is rendering human thought obsolete. I am not saying I'm smarter than anyone, and as far as I go, I'm part of the post-cognitive age myself. We all are, whether we're Americans or Chinese or Canadians.

So I'll repeat my major claim again--technology has advanced to the point that human beings now have a choice--to think or not to think (because tech devices think for us). Given that choice, most humans (not all), will go for the latter choice--to not think. This post-cognition among humans groups can be readily seen in the present day--and I'm arguing that thought will become less and less, fewer and further between as long as tech continues its advances.

So here's what I'm seeing as evidence of the post-cognitive age:
1) automation, especially in countries that mass produce things. Automation means that the human worker at such manufacturing centers merely monitors machines that does the work--machines apply the plans or blueprints instead of a human having to think to do the same.
2) smart tech such as tablets, smart phones, apps: many of these are increasing taking the thought component out of using them. My phone, for example, tells me how long it'll take for me to get home, or two work. It knows where I'm going, and I don't have to think about how long it'll take me.
- apps too take the thinking component out of human activity, for example my directions app. Previously, whenever I needed directions to get somewhere, I had to memorize them, which requires cognition. Nowadays, if I plug in the address, Siri tells me how to get there, and I don't have to think.
- websites as well do the thinking for us. Here's probably a bad example, but the last time you were watching TV and you see an actor, and you know you saw the same actor in another movie. Instead of thinking about it, you just go to IMDB and it displays all the movies and programs the actor has appeared in and thinking is rendered obsolete.
3) Internet technology is an amazing tool for knowledge dissemination, but given the choice to use it for enhancing knowledge and its by-product, cognition, most human beings today choose to use the internet for entertainment purposes. Here are some of those entertainment choices:
a. porn
b. social media & forums (where people don't think about what others write, but instead offer either unsubstantiated opinions about what was written or who did the writing, or just insult the writer)
c. sports
4) lack of debate: back in the old days, when people shared ideas with one another, usually a discussion or debate would ensue. Today, whether on television or online, there's little discussion and debate. Since these things require cognition to do them and to follow a discussion or debate, people instead opt to shout down opponents, offer insults, etc. Politicians just offer slogans. News just repeats sound bytes, unless the "news" program is a shout show, then it offers only shouts.
5) education in crisis: just about everything one needs to know about culture, society, and how to live can be accessed online, yet educational centers, whether higher ed or charter schools or whathaveyou, are locked into the old ways of doing things. Why does anyone need to learn arithmetic when machines can compute numbers for us? Why would anyone need a history class when all histories of anything can be found at a moment's notice online?
-- another element here is the growing disdain and disparagement of those who are educated. More and more, most people view the educated as "pompous." When the educated write, more and more folks see that as "grandstanding." Instead of thinking about what educated people are saying, people just dismiss it because there's less and less patience for intelligence and people using their inherent cognitive tools.
6) de-evolution of language: more and more, we'll see language devolve into strings of emojis. If you know a youngster, say under 18 years of age, this is already occurring among them. Language requires thought, and if language devolves to a series of pictograms, then cognition suffers as a result.
7) dichotomous thinking replaces real cognition: This affects us in multiple ways. When something is wrong with one of our devices, whether the computer itself or the app--the quickest possible solution is to turn it off and then back on again and see if that fixes it. Instead of diagnosing what the problem may be, we just shut it off and turn it back on. Or close the program and reopen it. Or more broadly, it seems that humans are growing overly skeptical of inductive reasoning, which relies on viewing evidence to see if something is likely the case. More and more humans think that deduction can give us Truth on every aspect of the human experience.
-- dichotomies are either/or kind of thinking. For example, "you're either with us or against us." Things are either true or untrue, factual or fictitious, black or white--there aren't any gray areas, or at least humans are becoming ever more reluctant to acknowledge that things in the human experience can exist in those gray areas. When we fail to explore gray areas of our knowledge or of our experience, we are ceasing cognition.
8) Reactionary politics: coupled with humans increasing inability to debate and consider viewpoints of others, more and more societies are dealing with newfound power of reactionary forces. Many right wing regimes have taken over Western nations built on their knee-jerk reactions to issues. Instead of forming coalitions, seeking out data sets, and commissioning studies, reactionary political figures merely react to what's going on. So the Washington Post publishes a story about possible wrongdoing, and the regime just dismisses it as "fake news." This is the approach for many of the issue that bedevil our societies. Immigrants--just get rid of them; people without health insurance--just let them die; enemies overseas are doing things--just bomb them into oblivion; weed is legal in certain places--let's crackdown on it; jobs are vanishing--let's deport people. I could go on and on with that.

So these are some of the main areas where I see that we've entered or at the onset of a post-cognitive age. And this is an important issue because when humanity ceases to think, then there's not much separating us from animal life. in fact, what distinguishes humanity from animals is our cognitive abilities.

Now I'm not saying that I'm right. All of this is a gray area where inductive reasoning is more applicable. I'm instead making an argument for something that I see going on in my society, and I'm attempting to offer an explanation--or at least I'm acknowledging that our technology is quickly altering not just our human values, but core elements of our humanity: thinking. And nowhere in this post or any others are any claims made by me that I'm smarter than anyone or that using tech makes you dumb.

To reiterate my major claim, I'm merely saying that tech advances are providing humans with a choice, to think or not to think and too many people are choosing the latter. Feel free to disagree with me, that is fine, but I'd prefer you tell me why I'm wrong because an insult or a misrepresentation doesn't get us anywhere and instead just underscores my argument that more and more folks would rather not have to think.
Click to expand...
LOL
Have you ever touched a female breast?

Yeah, I didn't think so.

You should try it; even if you have to pay a professional.

I feel so sorry for you.
What a complete waste of skin...
 
ttystikk

ttystikk

Well-Known Member
DiogenesTheWiser said:
True.

But here's the rub. Back in the old days, one had to really think and plan out food for the winter, how many plants to grow and of what variety, and one had to take in the possibility of crop failure. One also had to leave some land fallow while other land would be put into cultivation. Even poor agricultural producers of the late 1800s had to think, and they had a few tools to help them out such as almanacs.

Fast forward to our present age when most people are not farmers. Most people in America work in service industry jobs, where thinking is not only not necessary, but discouraged by management. And the work is so undignified, that the typical worker would probably not want to think about the boring repetitive tasks that they must complete every day for a handful of dimes.

So as our technology takes us into a new era, thinking will be more and more an activity of the upper classes--those with leisure time--while service industry workers have to put together three, four jobs for the most part to make ends meet. Working upwards of 70 hours a week leaves less and less time for cognitive capabilities.
Click to expand...
Part of this has more to do with income and wealth inequality than cognitive issues, which are economic social problems.

Of course, it takes people who can think critically to effectively advance social justice causes.
 
ttystikk

ttystikk

Well-Known Member
DiogenesTheWiser said:
How am I defending my ego?

Let me reiterate, I'm not arguing about myself, my character, my intelligence. You misconstrue my argument. It's not about me, it's about us: humans.
Click to expand...
Or at least, modern humans with all of our survival needs taken care of to the point where we can choose what to do with most of our time.
 
ttystikk

ttystikk

Well-Known Member
Chunky Stool said:
A special THANK YOU to the person who helped identify @ttystikk (AKA ddipstikk).
Couldn't have done it without ya!


* - @ttystikk reported as multiple account puppet master.
Click to expand...
Where's all my other accounts? I had one for a short while, lost the password and I've been on this one ever since- some 6 years now.

I'm not a bot, sock, mod, troll or crusader.

I'm just me.

Deal with it. bongsmilie
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top