{"id":555,"date":"2008-07-09T11:23:10","date_gmt":"2008-07-09T15:23:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ezrasf.com\/wplog\/?p=555"},"modified":"2011-07-25T20:35:46","modified_gmt":"2011-07-26T00:35:46","slug":"causal-stupidity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ezrasf.com\/wplog\/2008\/07\/09\/causal-stupidity\/","title":{"rendered":"Causal Stupidity"},"content":{"rendered":"<table border=\"0\" align=\"left\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td>\n<div class=\"zemanta-img\" style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Image:Everything_Bad_Cover.JPG\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin-left: 5px; margin-right: 5px;\" src=\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/en\/b\/b6\/Everything_Bad_Cover.JPG\" alt=\"Everything Bad Is Good for You\" \/><\/a><span class=\"zemanta-img-attribution\"><br \/>\nImage via <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Image:Everything_Bad_Cover.JPG\">Wikipedia<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>I remember as a kid, my parents restricting television and video game use because they would both make me stupid and violent. They worked too hard, so I had plenty unsupervised time to violate the rules. Plus no force would make me do homework.<\/p>\n<p>The past half decade has seen a resurgence of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/features\/books\/la-et-book5-2008jul05,0,3980465.story\">blame on making kids dumber<\/a>: the Internet. If I were a kid today, then certainly my parents would be trying to limit my time on it. Comics and radio were also accused of making kids dumb during my parents&#8217; and grandparents&#8217; generations.<\/p>\n<p>What I don&#8217;t understand is&#8230; <strong>If we are becoming so dumb from the current media sources, then how is it possible we can invent new technology to make us even dumber?<\/strong> Perhaps Mark Bauerlein and Lee Drutman should read <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Everything-Bad-Good-Steven-Johnson\/dp\/B000SOTQB2\/\"><em>Everything Bad Is Good For You<\/em><\/a>? (a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.boingboing.net\/2005\/05\/14\/everything-bad-is-go.html\">review<\/a>) Mike Wesch has an engaging video regarding how kids use these technologies called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o\"><em>A Vision of Students Today<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>These &#8220;dumb&#8221; kids know something as despite their involvement with media as they still significantly outperform their parents on IQ tests to the degree the grandparents would qualify for the &#8220;special class&#8221; taking the same tests. These gains are centered in our ability to create better expansive and interconnecting cognitive maps.  I suggest <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/What-Intelligence-Beyond-Flynn-Effect\/dp\/0521880076\/\"><em>What is Intelligence?: Beyond the Flynn Effect<\/em><\/a> for more about this.<\/p>\n<h6 class=\"zemanta-related-title\">Related articles by Zemanta<\/h6>\n<ul class=\"zemanta-article-ul\">\n<li class=\"zemanta-article-ul-li\">Research: Yes, the World is Getting Dumber<\/li>\n<li class=\"zemanta-article-ul-li\"><a href=\"http:\/\/shegeeks.net\/stop-calling-my-generation-dumb\/\">Stop Calling My Generation Dumb<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div class=\"zemanta-pixie\"><a class=\"zemanta-pixie-a\" title=\"Zemified by Zemanta\" href=\"http:\/\/reblog.zemanta.com\/zemified\/6e7cc499-6e12-4998-b034-bd26736c001d\/\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"zemanta-pixie-img\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.zemanta.com\/reblog_b.png\" alt=\"Zemanta Pixie\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Image via Wikipedia I remember as a kid, my parents restricting television and video game use because they would both make me stupid and violent. They worked too hard, so I had plenty unsupervised time to violate the rules. Plus no force would make me do homework. The past half decade has seen a resurgence [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[256,2,13],"tags":[94,617,314,88,315,75,313,412,64,312,92,262,176,160,522,151],"class_list":["post-555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books-novels-writing","category-computers","category-science","tag-books","tag-comic","tag-flynn-effect","tag-geek","tag-intelligence","tag-internet","tag-iq-tests","tag-kids","tag-member","tag-mike-wesch","tag-parents","tag-search","tag-technology","tag-video","tag-wikipedia","tag-youtube"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1rUBW-8X","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ezrasf.com\/wplog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ezrasf.com\/wplog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ezrasf.com\/wplog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ezrasf.com\/wplog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ezrasf.com\/wplog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ezrasf.com\/wplog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ezrasf.com\/wplog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ezrasf.com\/wplog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ezrasf.com\/wplog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}