Jeremy Stangroom

This is all true, of course. But bloody hell, it's taken a lot of people a lot of years to figure it out. || Social Media Is Making Us Dumber. Here’s Exhibit A. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/11/opinion/social-media-dumber-steven-pinker.html …

Hmm. 3 things. 1. On the balkanisation process: Yes, true, worrying, sad and not news. @slatestarcodex said everything worth saying about it in 2014: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/ … cc @keithfrankish, @mirandachale & @GodDoesnt

2. On making us dumber. Not necessarily. I think the discussion I'll link to below has been useful (but maybe I'm biased, because of my long rant therein!). With lots of TLC, social media can be used to better ourselves, IMO (otherwise: why are we here?).

3. The discussion in question (links in next tweets): I think it was worth having it. The deliberate smearing of Pinker made it possible, perhaps it all happened because lots of people have more subtle (but substantial) criticism of Pinker to offer? (AKA an axe to grind?)