Why Deep Thinking is Dying (Ft. Eli Pariser and Neil Postman)

From Algorithms to Apathetic people, what I’ve learned from my current Reads

Here’s a try at a voiceover using my iPads audio recorder, it isn’t perfect, but let me know if you’d like me to continue doing these! (And if you have suggestions to improve these ‘-.-)

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Welcome to ‘Stories and States’! I’m Bakhtawar and I write about what I’m consuming and connect it to what’s happening in the world while I do it.

This is a post from my series ‘Enlightenment from Literature’ where I share what I learn so you can benefit from it too.

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On to the Post…

My summer started 19 days ago, and all things considered, I’ve slowly been making my way through my summer reading list. In today’s post from Enlightenment from Literature, the series of posts where I reflect over what I am reading, I want to discuss some interesting things that kept popping up in my head as I made my way through 1. The Filter Bubble: What The Internet is Hiding From You by Eli Pariser, and 2. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman.

It is no secret that most content that pops up on our gadgets today is meticulously chosen through our use of the internet and the data that results from it. That is to say that the things you clicked at the very beginning of acquiring your gadget/credentials were stored to formulate your personal preference which could then be used by other sites on the World Wide Web to help you come in contact with the things relevant to you.

When put like this, the algorithmic nature of the internet sounds helpful. It makes it easier, and so, enticing. We can almost say, in terms of The Filter Bubble, that we have acquired an intelligent agent that helps us navigate the infinite amount of information and possibilities residing just a few taps away on our phone. Truth be told, I cant say that this is not helpful. Without it, the internet would not seem half as intuitive as it is today.

So then why am I writing this?

1. While the algorithm has made navigation of the internet easy for us, it has enclosed us into echo chambers that limit our use of critical thought.

2. I want to investigate our progression and norms to understand how our perception and habits have been affected.

3. I want to evaluate the above two points and seek solutions to counter this and exercise the traits that make me a better person.

Some Backstory…

As a student pursuing my Psychology degree, I am often at odds with what academia has become. It is no joke that universities have become a vessel for corporate training. These institutions have left behind the fostering of a love for academics the way it is made out to be. Even scholarship opportunities try to gauge the success you can bring in the workplace, forgetting their purpose of academic accessibility and brilliance. We no longer hear of environments like those in Vienna where Freud would have his coffee in cafes where the greatest minds went to relax and chat about their knowledge-seeking endeavours on their breaks.

But this is a topic for another day; the point here is that while those systemic issues exist, there is also an internal problem today.

Natalie Wexler

wrote a post called The College Kids are not Alright, where she discusses an ineptitude for reading in the newer students. I can testify: they absolutely loathe having to understand and read academic texts. While that is an alarming problem on the rise, I’d like to highlight something I recently encountered in my previous semester that is arguably more pressing.

A teacher taught us an entire course using ChatGPT. Yep, you heard/read that right. She would copy-paste the book into the AI chatbot, ask it to summarise it, and then teach it to us as is. When exams came around, and students had written answers from the book, she could not verify and refused to mark answers not written from her slides (which were the chatGPT summaries). What I’m trying to bring to the table here is: it isn’t just the students that are having trouble, at least where I am situated. Having to put up with group projects where students were being this reckless with AI was one thing; seeing a teacher do this was an entirely different story. This was the first time I almost considered dropping out a little too seriously.

The questions that kept popping in my mind were, why is it that we can’t employ our thinking and reading capabilities? Why was it so hard for students to come up with things on their own, and move away from the generic AI-generated choices? And more recently: why the fuck am I using ChatGPT to brainstorm a stupid little title for this post?

All of this influenced the things I was mulling over when I was reading both the books we are about to discuss. Fortunately, they fit right in.

Where did the Deep Thinking Go?

Detour, but a book I’m reading currently about Freud and Halsted highlighted the environment around Freud when he was getting his medical education In Vienna. It emphasised the thriving academic enthusiasm, and of meet-up spots where artists and scientists mingled, conversed, and inspired each other. Similarly, a course I just took on the history of psychology portrays a similar image. The people of the past had no corporate agenda to the extent we do now. They simply found stimulation through their surroundings and through fulfilment that did not depend on the Internet like it does today.

Our way of life today has been engineered based on relevance. This relevance is not an objective truth, but instead based on a mix of popular and individual preference. The accumulation of human knowledge has always been employed to better human life but I wonder if at some point betterment simply became ease. Life has never been easier, and yet the environment that these great minds had is seldom found in today’s fast-paced atmosphere.

Where did that go? Does our ease and preference cling a little too much to hedonism?

A People are not Dumb, They are Made So

Both The Filter Bubble, and Amusing Ourselves to Death, emphasise how we went from using the newspaper and books to consume information, to doing so through the television.

If you’re not paying for something, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold.

—Andrew Lewis, under the alias Blue_beetle, on the Web site MetaFilter

This is the opening quote of chapter one in The Filter Bubble. In this book, we learn how we transitioned from a few channels on our TV to countless channels, and how the way we operated it was deemed insufficient. It talks about how when the TV had just started out, the minds behind tech postulated that instead of volume, brightness and the channel being the only thing in a consumers control it should be sex, violence, and political learning instead. They hypothesised a filter of sorts that operated on relevance (read as preference) so that an attention crash could be avoided.

Today, algorithms are a well established concept that more or less everyone is accustomed to. We are reliant on it. Dependent to a frightful extent. Some of us haven’t seen the Internet without this concept. How long did it take us to get accustomed to social media? Its intuitive landscape so welcoming (or is that a trap?).

Before this, it was the newspaper or magazines that were the norm. Different sections of the paper appealed to different kinds of people — but it was always the paper and its writers that were in charge of the content. Sure, the more popular topics could be later gauged to understand what would be a hit, but the reliance on the paper ensured viewership because what other alternative was there?

The Internet paired with an algorithm would and has changed that tide. The creator is not the point of reliance anymore, it is us, the consumer. This shift is not the power statement it initially seems to be. In the beginning of this essay, I said that I can’t say that algorithms are unhelpful. I think this is the point where I will say they aren't.

This is where the creators lost liberty to their art. It’s where we went from choosing content that creators produced, to slowly becoming the machine that determines today’s content. Our mindsets progressed and creators wrote for engagement.

Indeed, I hope to persuade you that the decline of a print-based epistemology and the accompanying rise of a television-based epistemology has had grave consequences for public life, that we are getting sillier by the minute.

This is a quote from Amusing Ourselves to Death and gives us the impact of what The Filter Bubble was saying in a way relevant to my essay. Chapter two focused on portraying the progression of how we express truth. Postman tries to bring forth the point that truth is adorned in cultural prejudice, and the culture in question here is the form of expression.

As a culture moves from orality to writing to printing to televising, its ideas of truth move with it.

This is crucial to understand because since the televising of content according to the preference of the masses by gauging popularity, the quality of this content decreased in order to appease the people. Look at it this way, there was no need for subtext because the relevant people would find the content. You could simply say what you wanted because those who didn’t want to be exposed to what you were saying, wouldn’t be exposed to it.

This gave way for a spoon-fed version of content. The easier it was, the more relevant, and since ease could exist, and it would bring in more views, why would you go into complex intricacies? Why would you not water things down if it meant more money? Today, this rat race for views, and in turn simplicity to cater more views, produces a less critical crowd. If you are spoon-fed things long enough, you will naturally grow unaccustomed to holding the spoon, scooping up food, and even directing it to nourish yourself. What makes you uncomfortable will be avoided, especially when today, AI can do it for you.

And this, my friends, is one of the pillars that is killing deep and critical thinking. Stealing the skills from us, to produce more clicks, and in turn more money.

What Can We Do?

As a creator, writing here on

Substack

, I often look through my post drafts and wonder who will want to read these information-heavy pieces. I slip into a marketing mindset that makes me want to make it ‘easier’. Posts like these remind me that I would do you a disservice if I didn’t challenge you. Will this be hard when trying to gather an audience? Absolutely. But even if you stick around for one post, I hope to have rotated your thinking gears, gotten you to reflect and consider the information, and fallen in love with wanting to do something about it yourself.

Embracing the uncomfortable is key here. We cannot remain entitled to ease, and we should challenge that ease, especially when discomfort makes you turn away from doing something. Substack is famously anti-social media, so I have faith that a lot of you are already annoyed with unnecessary discourse and motivated to tackle things from their root.

Algorithms aren’t going anywhere, but platforms like Substack are already trying to give power back to creators.

The first step I took to try to tackle this was to analyse who I was blaming for what when discourse about the Internet was brought up. Because we have been conditioned into becoming reaction-oriented, it’s often hard to catch ourselves. But I urge you to analyse who you blame, and then delve into the discourse anywhere but social media. Find experts who are talking on the topic, read what they have to say, familiarise yourself with jargon instead of shying away from it, and then? Don’t engage. Not when it will incite another reaction cycle. You have to be sure of how you are being affected, and you have to identify which of your reactions need reworking.

I believe if you can make people aware of this, that is more pressing than schooling them on the discourse itself (even that of the decline of critical thought). Strangers won’t take well to that, so you start with people around you. You work on the grass-root level, and you work on making those that matter understand instead.

Reclaiming and exercising our critical muscles, and deep learning mechanisms are key to a lot of structural problems around us. It is a matter of taking care of yourself and those around you, equipping each other with knowledge for knowledge’s sake, and employing it in real life in healthy ways that will unshackle us from this epidemic. Doing so has never been this urgent, and relevant.

So if you take anything away from this post, let it be the need to not let ease destroy your capabilities to think. Your thinking matters, and your contributions are necessary. So consume to aid your thought, enjoy leisure in healthy dozes, and work on media literacy.

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Like what you read? What were your thoughts? Let’s talk about it down in the comments!

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Some updates on my fiction writing!

I have finally made some plotting breakthroughs and am steadily connecting existing scenes. My project, working name A Silent Revenant, is a standalone novel on grief, friendship, and the messy complicated human nature that affects it.

Here’s a sneak peak:

“There’s not much to say. There is at one point tangible and material living, and the next point drags itself in strife to reconnect with it. I mean to say, or not say much, that you were of a gentle stream. Like wading through water. A dull weight, with rabid wings that could not pick you up with all you tried. In this instance you are your own, a floating creature of the creek. The mind is hollow, encased around concrete, and the weight drags you down. He is finding you.”

From the Prologue of A Silent Revenant

If you like the gist of this, please consider becoming a paid subscriber to help me continue my writing journey through sustainable means.

Lots of love,

Bakhtawar.