[1/*] Using Twitter has put reading comprehension into a very different perspective for me. I used to think reading comprehension tests were silly when I was in grade school, because they seem so easy. But I guess I took for granted the skill of understanding a paragraph of text.
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[2/*] The reason I thought they were silly is because they seemed so much easier than the other things that we were asked to do at a similar time. For example, solving a quadratic equation seems dramatically more difficult than understanding a simple paragraph.
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[3/*] But lately it seems like people cannot read even one or two sentences and correctly build a model in their head of what is being said, never mind able to read, say, an article or a source document.
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[4/*] Note that this is separate from things like emotional content, or intent. I'm talking about just basic facts, like what is the subject of a sentence, or whether there was one thing being talked about or two things.
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[5/*] The most recent example that really drove this home for me is that there were recent disclosures regarding grant proposals and the Wuhan Institute of Virology. There were _two separate proposals_, one of which was funded, and the other which was not.
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[6/*] It turns out gain of function research was _in_ the first proposal (DARPA. unfunded), not in the second proposal (NIH, funded), but then the second proposal ended up in the lab "accidentally" producing gain of function. Those are the actual facts that were disclosed.
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[7/*] From a reading comprehension standpoint, this is very straightforward (to me). But Twitter is now _littered_ with threads of people who are all over the map on what they are asserting. It's insane. I guess Twitter is where people who failed reading comprehension end up?
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[8/*] It is so frustrating that it makes me want to make a weekly show where all I do is recap what the subjects, verbs, and objects of the week's news sentences were, because apparently nobody can handle that if it gets even slightly complicated.
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[9/*] Like it seems that people on Twitter can only handle one subject. Like there was a grant proposal. They could handle that. But once there were two grant proposals, that's the end of it. Their brain can't track two similar things at the same time, so it's over?
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Replying to @cmuratori
There has been an extreme drop in the span people can hold attention. Brains are scanning for small chunks to share on the socials (and take offense at). Having a max char limit on Twitter, a max time limit on Tiktok, Insta, etc. accommodates this. Deep thought is discouraged.
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I do worry a lot about this. I think it is much worse than people think :(
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Replying to @cmuratori
Spending a considerable amount of time on social media will give more power to the ego, and it needs attention to validate its existence. Going deep on a certain subject is not in its interest (it's not as rewarding). It's a new time where any thought can immediately be shared.
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Replying to @ziccidus @cmuratori
Since it's new (and addictive), it takes some time for people to experience the shallow sensations and emptiness it ultimately brings. Like a child grows, it'll settle down, and people start looking for deeper meaning again. They need examples of people with deep understanding.
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