Computers change who I am, for example they make me remember better and be more punctual. Probably indeed my smartphone messes with my ability to hold sustained attention.
But this article. it feels like one of those “why so complicated” ones. Why “our consciousness is partly in a machine”. It’s all just a matter of definitions. For example advocates of EMT and non-advocates probably just differ in some definition. It feels so unimportant. Other than that, nice read.
Ie “use it or loose it” kind of vibe.
That’s why one of the possible threats of AI is if one would “forget” how to reason. Or even worse: brain rewires itself to never being able to reason again.
Then again, for me personally it’s a very low probability in our lifetime: ie no that kind of earth-shattering changes of either real AI or, say, nuclear fusion in this century.
However I would love to see long-term studies of someone really smart start only watching tictoc, reels and shorts (and doing nothing else). With brain scanning and what have you.
> That’s why one of the possible threats of AI is if one would “forget” how to reason. Or even worse: brain rewires itself to never being able to reason again.
The "WALL-E/Idiocracy"-ification of humanity. It won't get so bad that we lose our ability to reason, but we're definitely losing something. Perhaps it's just our inevitable evolution.
> modern smartphones are better understood as external to, but symbiotic with, our minds, and, sometimes even parasitic on us, rather than as cognitive extensions
“Symbiotic with, and sometimes parasitic.” It feels like the symbiotic bit is more on point overall.
It is precisely the fever dream experience of a parasitic host as the fiend sucks the life from it.
At this point I’m pretty convinced that social media is a net negative for humanity with little redeeming quality.
There was a time when it did connect people, like you could meet people or find old friends, but that was long ago deprioritized or even stripped away. Now it’s just a pure chum feed that serves up either brain rot trash or political fear and rage bait.
TV was always full of crap but it also gave rise to great shows, to art and lasting culture. It was a medium of mixed value. Social media doesn’t even have that going for it unless some day people celebrate the great Pepe memes. Everything it creates is disposable low effort trash. Nothing worth keeping. You could delete it all and everyone would forget a week later.
I guess I use some slacks and discords and a few lists but that’s about it.
It does all that by it self? Of course not. This thing is not autonomous. Every app that _fill your head_ was your choice to install, signup and OPEN every time. It's like saying drugs are parasites. Of course they aren't. Your choices made you addicted to the thing. What happened to agency? Everyone is now a slave of social media apps?
always almost never quite right
1) The abstract appears to be an opinion piece; I don't know how they do things in philosophical journals but I would hope for a dryer standard.
2) Nature is really messy - it'd make sense if parts of our bodys were actually parasites. The immune system, gut flora, skin mites are all obvious places where foreign hostile bodies might colonise then integrate into humanity over time. If an addition has any benefits evolutionary pressure will eventually cause it to become symbiotic.
3) Humans are by design easy to manipulate. We're social animals built to group up behind leaders and do what they say. There are brutal social hierarchies where low status humans live relatively unpleasant lives because high-status humans think that is reasonable. We're not built to unthinkingly optimise out own personal outcomes of make all the decisions ourselves. Humans being manipulated is not, in and of itself, a hint that things are going wrong.
4) "It is not plausible for a part of the cognitive system to be designed to thwart the goals and desires of the user in the way a smartphone is" - it absolutely is, the #1 enemy of most people is their own mind. It leads them to do wildly stupid things. There are people who spend their entire lives working to overcome their own cognitive systems to achieve peace and happiness.
Eldar_•3h ago