Search engines like Google or Yahoo make people think they are smarter than they actually are because they have the world's knowledge at their fingertips, psychologists at Yale University have found.
Browsing the internet for information gives people a ‘widely inaccurate’ view of their own intelligence and could lead to over-confidence when making decisions, experts warn.
In a series of experiments, participants who had searched for information on the internet believed they were far more knowledgeable about a subject that those who had learned by normal routes, such as reading a book or talking to a tutor. Internet users also believed their brains were sharper.
"The Internet is such a powerful environment, where you can enter any question, and you basically have access to the world's knowledge at your fingertips," said lead researcher Matthew Fisher, a fourth-year doctoral candidate in psychology at Yale University.
"It becomes easier to confuse your own knowledge with this external source. When people are truly on their own, they may be wildly inaccurate about how much they know and how dependent they are on the Internet."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/11507200/Google-makes-people-think-they-are-smarter-than-they-are.html
[Paper]: http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/xge-0000070.pdf
(Score: 4, Insightful) by toygeek on Thursday April 02 2015, @05:10AM
Being good at phrasing searches doesn't make you smarter- it just makes you look that way. If you're egotistical enough to think that *you* are the one who's smart, then that's your own problem. If you're honestly smart, then you'll realize how little you really know.
I'd be lying if I didn't say that I use the knowledge that Google provides to gain knowledge and apply it, and it often helps me make a living. But I recognize that without it I'd be, many times, lost.
This reminds me of that study that found that people who are not very smart aren't smart enough to know they aren't very smart.
There is no Sig. Okay, maybe a short one. http://miscdotgeek.com
(Score: 3, Informative) by Aighearach on Thursday April 02 2015, @05:17AM
If acquiring relevant information about a subject makes a person smarter somehow, then making use of a powerful information tool would indeed increase intelligence. Seems a few dubious assumptions are involved, though, but not that reduce the value of information.
I think it is funny that "talking to a tutor" is compared to searching out relevant information. Well, duh, "talking to a tutor" isn't likely to impart very much information at all, and it isn't designed to. So people just accurately don't consider themselves to have gained knowledge. A tutor is not a substitute for a real information source, they're a person who can explain the information to you when you already have it, but don't understand it. That is a whole different problem... that may or may not also be solvable by a web search.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by lentilla on Thursday April 02 2015, @05:47AM
I've always been very careful when asking questions of a mentor/tutor - especially around the wording and the thought process. Discussions tend to follow the time-honoured tradition of "this is where I am, this is what I have attempted, where to now?" In essence, the very act of defining the issue cuts down on frivolous lines of questioning.
I'm not surprised that "talking to a tutor" is considered a valuable learning path. Whilst "shooting the breeze" with smart people is fun, anybody that has an ounce of respect for their "knowledge elders" is going to put some thought into their questions. That's half the battle - once you've done some critical thinking, you are half way to internalising the solution when it becomes available. It's the time taken to formulate the question that's important - not the time from question to answer.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 02 2015, @12:57PM
Indeed, it's not unusual that through the very process of formulating the question you already find the solution yourself.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 02 2015, @05:36PM
There is a downside: if you take the time to formulate a question well, then you will only learn the answer to that question.
If you want to branch out from the limited path of what you know you want to know, then it takes asking vague questions allowing multiple answers (which are usually themselves questions).
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday April 02 2015, @06:33AM
You can use "for sure" rather than "if/would". Smartness doesn't come from the answers one obtains, but from the reasons one raised the questions which lead to search for and, finally, the obtained answers.
It is the act of searching for and assessing the relevancy of the answers (and their truthfulness or plausibility) that makes a person smarter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday April 02 2015, @01:46PM
I'm reminded of a line in the film "Shirley Valentine". The titular character is recalling her experiences at school, where she under-achieved and was looked down upon by peers and teachers alike. On one occasion when she does give the correct answer in class, the teacher scolds her with "Well someone must have told you!"
How else are we supposed to know anything?
(Score: 2) by fishybell on Thursday April 02 2015, @05:20AM
Off the top of my head I'd say you're referring to the Dunning-Kruger effect [wikipedia.org]. I'm so smart it only took a second of googling to "verify."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 02 2015, @02:11PM
Man you must be super smaht. I wicked had to look that up.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 02 2015, @05:40AM
But being bad at phrasing searches makes you dumber.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by gman003 on Thursday April 02 2015, @12:46PM
On the other hand, why should I waste valuable brain-space remembering things, when I can instead remember where to find things? I'm sure people said the same about books, when they first hit the scene.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 02 2015, @01:01PM
Because you'll be outperformed by people who have internalized that knowledge.
Note that I'm not speaking about simple facts like "what is the value of this constant". That one can safely looked up (but even then, you better have a rough idea about the order of magnitude). What I'm speaking about is actual knowledge. Things you cannot put into a single number of a few words.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anal Pumpernickel on Thursday April 02 2015, @05:16PM
Because you'll be outperformed by people who have internalized that knowledge.
Only if you're a complete idiot. They'll be too busy wasting their time with premature optimization by attempting to memorize random information.
(Score: 2) by morgauxo on Thursday April 02 2015, @01:38PM
"Being good at phrasing searches doesn't make you smarter"
Don't you think that phrasing searches well is a form of intelligence? Do you think that everyone is equally good at this?
"If you're honestly smart, then you'll realize how little you really know."
Ok, I'll agree with that.
"I'd be lying if I didn't say that I use the knowledge that Google provides to gain knowledge and apply it"
I should hope so. The Internet is a very valuable resource that it would be foolish to ignore.
"and it often helps me make a living"
Of course it does. Doesn't pretty much every knolwge based worker use it?
"But I recognize that without it I'd be, many times, lost."
Everyone has their limits.
Going back to talk about "making a living" I think I would rather hire someone with a moderate level of knowlege and good Google skills than a braniac that refuses to consult a computer. The first will get the job done, the latter.. what would the latter do once things get hard? Leave to go to the library?
"This reminds me of that study that found that people who are not very smart aren't smart enough to know they aren't very smart."
But it's 'With a Computer'!
(Score: 1) by wantkitteh on Thursday April 02 2015, @08:31PM
I can phrase Google searches much better than most around me, I understand how to do it and have experience in forming search terms, but that's a product of intelligence, not a form of it. Similiarly, what I do with the information I pick off up the Internet is a process governed by my intelligence and has no direct effect on my intelligence at all.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 02 2015, @01:38PM
I don't know why anyone is still listening to psychiatrists. They live in their own warped idea of life where they eveluate others against their own lack of understanding of self.
How in the world they became considered authorities is amazing given that they say nobody can be "cured" of anything. Which only indicates their own lack of understanding.
Sure, given a faulty understanding of their own field how could you expect that to cure anything?! I guess you could give them that.
Imagine a car repair man saying sorry but your car cannot really be repaired but we'll take your money anyway! We'll hang up a shingle since nobody else seems to claim this subject, and once we are the authority who's going to question us!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 02 2015, @05:13PM
Memorizing information doesn't make someone smart. If someone can innovate in significant ways, then they can prove they are smart. I'm tired of people mistaking good memory for actual intelligence.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 02 2015, @07:29PM
Intelligence is not how much knowledge we have. Intelligence is about problem solving ability.
Of course, someone really smart would already know that.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 02 2015, @05:22AM
My experience with "google experts" - people who think they understand a topic because they googled it - is that they don't know what they don't know. They have some facts and the facts they have are totally accurate. But because their knowledge of the topic is so shallow they can't even conceive of what other mitigating facts might be out there. An example being the global-warming denier who says global warming is a hoax because antarctica sea ice coverage is at record highs [nasa.gov] but is completely unaware of the fact that sea ice is only tens of meters thick, while antarctic glaciers are thousands of meters thick [hypertextbook.com] and those are melting at rates faster than the previous worst-case predictions. [washingtonpost.com]
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 02 2015, @06:21AM
You just couldn't help yourself, could you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 02 2015, @07:10PM
> You just couldn't help yourself, could you.
Being wrong really makes your butt hurt doesn't it?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Thursday April 02 2015, @05:32AM
I think that's kind of like having a test population do a bunch of swimming and then evaluating if their self-opinion of their competence in the unrelated activity of running has changed. Except of course, the two exercises aren't actually unrelated. Competence in answering knowledge questions is not just the physical knowledge, but also the brain and how well it operates. Even though no new knowledge, supposedly of the second field of knowledge is gained, one may still be more competent in answering questions in that field of knowledge than if they hadn't gone through the study of the first field of knowledge.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 02 2015, @06:28PM
Perhaps one of the reasons this research is 'hostile' towards the Internet is because the Internet offers a cheaper competing method for gaining knowledge. An education is supposed to be at least in part a metric to someone's knowledge (and ambition). However, with the Internet, it's now much more possible for someone without a formal education to know more about a field than someone formally educated in it. The educational system must now compete with the fact that people are generally more knowledgeable and have more access to more information and so they must do more to ensure their students are even more knowledgeable within a given field than an enthusiast acquiring their knowledge through the Internet without paying lots of money for it. Businesses may conduct tests to test the knowledge of potential employees and those with a paid education must compete with those that may not be formally educated in a matter but have worked hard to learn about it via the Internet. This competition makes getting an education less attractive which threatens the business model of universities. So they have a conflict of interest in the matter, they have an interest in finding reason to criticize their competition (the Internet). Just like they have a conflict of interest with their research that alleges that educated people tend to get paid more and it is an education that causes them to get paid more. Yet there are many assumptions being made here and many other factors that maybe involved.
Here is something I posted elsewhere
"Most universities these days seem to be focused on the business of making money off their students instead of teaching them anything."
I completely agree. Why do you think universities try to constantly claim that educated people are more likely to get more pay than uneducated people. There is some truth to that to the extent that an education gives you more legal permission to do certain things (ie: to work in a lab in California you need a degree within a certain field or two years of out of state lab experience) but there is a problem with schools putting out these stats.
A: These stats are often based on surveys. Surveys are mostly bunk. Schools and universities call up businesses and whatnot and ask owners and employees what they make. Those that make very good money either lie or hang up. There is a bias in terms of who responds to these surveys and many business owners are willing to lie about how much they make trying to claim that they make much less than they really do or they are unwilling to take these surveys.
B: These stats assume that correlation equals causation. People who have the determination and ambition to get a college education are more likely to have the determination and ambition to become financially successful. Granted many (though not all) of the financially successful people that I know that own their own businesses have a college education but, often times, their success has little to do with their college education (ie: someone that owns restaurants but has a degree in psychology, etc...). They got their college education because they are ambitious and it is that underlying ambition that is responsible for their financial success. Schools try to make it out as though their education is what's responsible.
C: Universities have an interest (a conflict of interest) in exaggerating the contribution of education towards one's financial success. They have an interest in getting people to enroll in their schools so that these schools can get paid.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150311/09174430288/with-absolutely-no-legal-basis-to-do-so-university-counsel-demands-yik-yak-take-down-posts-turn-over-user-info.shtml [techdirt.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 02 2015, @10:20PM
(they have an interest in skewing the statistics and telling people that educated people get paid more than uneducated people and exaggerating the extent that educated people do get paid more than uneducated people).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 02 2015, @11:52PM
Why do you think universities try to constantly claim that educated people are more likely to get more pay than uneducated people.
Someone who doesn't have a degree can very well be educated, and someone who does have a degree can be uneducated. This is more propaganda that some people like to put forth. University and college are just one means of attaining an education.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday April 03 2015, @01:41AM
University and college is also education that employees and research institutes recognizes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 03 2015, @03:07AM
Which is problematic, because plenty of trash makes it through university and college. My employer doesn't look for degrees, but for people who know what they're doing. Otherwise, you miss a lot of people who have a great understanding of the topic.
The people who go to college and university mainly so they can get jobs and money are just trash. The good ones will be focused on getting an education.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Thursday April 02 2015, @05:41AM
I think that in a way, my mind is sharper now because I do have so much information at my fingertips, and don't have to spend inordinate amounts of time hunting it down like I did before the web and Wikipedia existed.
However, I also am quite aware that many times, my information is only as good as my search phrases, and that reading many sources I use (like Wikipedia) will not give me the in-depth knowledge that an expert in the field would have. However, I thought this would have been obvious to any internet user. What kind of idiot would think that a half-hour of reading something on the internet is going to give you the depth of knowledge that a semester-long university course is going to give you, or worse put you on even footing with someone who's studied a subject enough (for years) to earn a degree in it?
(Score: 2) by sudo rm -rf on Thursday April 02 2015, @08:11AM
I remember hearing on the radio that there was this new project called wikipedia and that there were already > 5000 (!) articles published. I still use it on a regular basis for quick info, e.g. who's the actor of Thomas Katz [wikipedia.org]. For in-depth info the articles themselves are often useless, but I find the sources section very rewarding.
Also there are differences between languages, take a quick glance at the articles about differential calculus in the english [wikipedia.org] and german [wikipedia.org] wikipedia (no knowledge of German needed). The german version is so full of formulae that I myself find it too daunting to read, but YMMV.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 02 2015, @05:50PM
I like the German one better. The English version looks like it is out of a bad textbook that doesn't quite answer the questions of why or when and will i'll prepare you for exams. The German version looks like my handwritten notes. Name, is, does, derived knowledge from, listed in that order sectioned off by case and leaving out what is only painfully obvious that could be recreated on-the-fly.
Why is English wikipedia so worthless when it comes to math? Perhaps I should be using the German one instead.
(Score: 2) by Ryuugami on Thursday April 02 2015, @10:01AM
What kind of idiot would think that a half-hour of reading something on the internet is going to give you the depth of knowledge that a semester-long university course is going to give you, or worse put you on even footing with someone who's studied a subject enough (for years) to earn a degree in it?
You must be new on this planet. Allow me to welcome such a distinguished member of an obviously rational and logical race. We need more people like you!
If a shit storm's on the horizon, it's good to know far enough ahead you can at least bring along an umbrella. - D.Weber
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday April 03 2015, @01:45AM
There are people that can do this. They are just so few that you rarely interact or notice them.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 02 2015, @05:22PM
What kind of idiot would think that a half-hour of reading something on the internet is going to give you the depth of knowledge that a semester-long university course is going to give you, or worse put you on even footing with someone who's studied a subject enough (for years) to earn a degree in it?
An idiot; that's what kind.
But you don't need university courses most of the time, unless the knowledge is selfishly being kept hidden. Knowledge doesn't exist in a vacuum. The Internet also gives you access to books and research that *are* in-depth, and yes, even university materials. Self-education is more possible now than ever. It will take more than 30 minutes, and it requires that someone not be an idiot with zero willpower (which is more than you can say for most college/university students), but it can be done.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 02 2015, @05:52PM
Sounds like someone is bitter about not getting that degree. Most people are "idiot[s] with zero willpower". There was no need to single out a specific class of people.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 02 2015, @07:39PM
Sounds like someone is bitter about not getting that degree.
I never tried to get a piece of paper to begin with. This attitude is part of the problem; what you should value is education, not the piece of paper. We see universities and colleges flooded with people who care only for money and jobs, and that is truly sad.
If I did go to college or university (and that is just one way of achieving understanding, while self-education is another), it would be so I could gain a better understanding of the universe around me, not for shallow reasons.
Most people are "idiot[s] with zero willpower". There was no need to single out a specific class of people.
Indeed, most people are idiots with zero willpower. I singled out people in college and university because it appears to be common to assume that someone without a degree is uneducated and someone with a degree is educated. I don't think either are necessarily true.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday April 06 2015, @04:16PM
I never tried to get a piece of paper to begin with. This attitude is part of the problem; what you should value is education, not the piece of paper.
The piece of paper is how you back up your claim that you're educated. It's a document that says that this educational institution put you through its program (which itself is overseen (called "accreditation"), tested you, and made sure you meet their standards, and is willing to vouch for you with their name and reputation which they've earned over decades or centuries. It's basically a stamp of quality.
If you only did self-education, there's no easy way to test for that in a 2-hour interview. You can ask some questions and such, but a common problem with self-educated people is that they have glaring holes in their understanding because they only educated themselves on the parts they were really interested in, and skipped over the boring but necessary foundational things. Maybe you're not like this, but many are, and again, there's no easy way to tell. Of course, the piece of paper is no guarantee either (some students cheat), but it's a good indicator.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by SlimmPickens on Thursday April 02 2015, @05:42AM
I'm not denying the statement in TFA (that people feel smarter because of searching), however I think in this day and age of information overload, crafting a good query and analysing and filtering the results is a key skill that if continually refined, does improve your intelligence.
It's kind of like previous generations claiming that calculators were 'dumbing kids down.' Calculators may have allowed some kids to wallow but some went on to do things that were not previously possible. Same thing for computers in general, same thing for search, it's how you use it.
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Thursday April 02 2015, @06:17AM
analysing and filtering the results is a key skill that if continually refined, does improve your intelligence.
It increases your knowledge.
You've already have the intelligence to use the tools in a productive way.
The article and the summary seem to conflate the concepts intelligence and knowledge.
The ability to FIND an answer is intelligence. But simply knowing something isn't intelligence. Rote memorization isn't intelligence.
Googling, and taking the first hit, is a fools errand. Google is a great filter, but people have to learn how to use it. That's the intelligence part of it.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by anubi on Thursday April 02 2015, @07:38AM
I never felt I understood a lot of thermodynamics as the tedium of log tables made it so much effort that - for a long time - I never went the next step of trying to understand what was going on... no, I was happy enough to pass the test.
With the advent of GWBasic, I was finally able to re-visit my old childhood nemesis and see him for what he was. Not to say I became an expert in it, but at least I now understood how the equations were derived and what they really did, and how to use them for practical use. At one time, they were black magic for me. I even had a piece of paper saying I had passed tests. Geez, I still could not tell you much about your air conditioner. Now, I could probably tell you enough about it to put you to sleep.
Same for phaselock loops and loop filters.
It was one thing to pass a test, it was another altogether to have an insight on changing what part will do what. And if a circuit is not doing what I want it to do, is the circuit even capable of it? What would I change? Does it need something else to stabilize it?
One only has so much time to devote to understanding something. Having me trudge through solving calculus problems by solving analytically did not help me much in finding out why my power supply was unstable... I never did find the exact equation doing what my power supply was doing... but understanding second order and the like response patterns gave me a strong hint of where to put the resistors and capacitors, and about what value I should use, and let me tweak from there... empirically.
Yes, I guess I could have tried to fit exact equations to the measurements, but that was like trying to measure salinity of soup with a digital ohmmeter.
Intelligent? Not really- I did not come up with this stuff... nah, some guy a lot more into things did that. But I was informed and was provided the tools.
The internet has made those tools universally available, thanks to a lot of *very* unselfish people ( big thanks!!! ).
The internet in and of itself has no intelligence, but has tremendous amounts of information... no - its the people using it that have the intelligence to know what to search for with something in mind to use it for. They will take what they find, and adapt it to their own particular need. That is intelligence.
Also intelligent people realize the value of this information, and in order to preserve such a valuable item, they use distributed storage so it won't disappear back into the nothing it came from... also known as "sharing".
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 5, Funny) by captain normal on Thursday April 02 2015, @05:58AM
Obviously a flawed study. Everyone knows that Google is smarter than Yahoo. Now if they had included Duck, Duck go and IxQuick we know who the real smart people are.
When life isn't going right, go left.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Thursday April 02 2015, @06:01AM
Oh, are we still in April fool's mode? This article sure sounds like it.
When life isn't going right, go left.
(Score: 1) by mvdwege on Thursday April 02 2015, @06:02AM
Time and again, on any forum I visit, I see people loudly asserting "See, I'm right" with a link that after a full reading of whatever is behind it actually contradicts them.
This research would at least be a partial explanation for this kind of behaviour.
(Score: 2) by The Archon V2.0 on Thursday April 02 2015, @03:00PM
Oh gods yes. My favorites are the ones who read sentence 1 and 3 of a Wikipedia paragraph to support their argument and somehow miss sentence 2, which absolutely demolishes it. But then, it's just a more secular version of people who read Matthew 25:31-34 & 46 without noticing 35-45.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by mvdwege on Thursday April 02 2015, @03:27PM
One of the last time this happened to me it was an LLVM fanboi who took umbrage at my suggestion that outside the C language family LLVM might not be a good alternative yet for production purposes. He quoted the first sentence of the Wikipedia entry with all 'supported' languages at me as a rebuttal.
Of course, the main article pointed out nicely that not all backends had reached the quality level of the C/C++/ObjC and Haskell backends yet, but tell that to a fanboi who is determined to believe it is the best thing since sliced bread.
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Thursday April 02 2015, @03:47PM
Yeah. There's a lot of xtian raping and functionally enslaving "the least of these, my breathren".
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 02 2015, @07:15PM
That happens whenever people are looking to confirm their biases of a topic rather than looking for a better understanding of the topic.
The kings of that are the islamophobes who quote scripture piece-meal. The irony of it is they do exactly the same thing the nutjobs do, picking and choosing scripture in order to justify their worst natures.
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Friday April 03 2015, @03:05AM
Not just the nutjobs, but any religious person. They all pick and choose their favorite parts of their preferred fairy tale books and ignore the parts they don't like, or call the parts they don't like 'metaphorical.' It's a common practice to avoid admitting that the holy book you hold in such high regard is complete nonsensical garbage.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday April 02 2015, @06:53AM
Several times I have read the assertion that it is meaningless to test for programming ability during job interviews, because when on the job, one can just use a search engine.
However in my actual experience it is quite common that search engines are of no use in answering the question actually at hand. Also, if you can just figure out the answer to a question, quite likely you can do so before you could turn up a relevant article then read it.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kaszz on Thursday April 02 2015, @04:30PM
Search engines won't make programmers exercise due diligence or think through their problems properly nor structure programs the right way so it doesn't become a future patch work.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 02 2015, @10:06PM
Several times I have read the assertion that it is meaningless to test for programming ability during job interviews, because when on the job, one can just use a search engine.
Being able to use a search engine only allows them to retrieve information more effectively. It does not guarantee that they have the critical thinking abilities required to do the job properly and in a timely manner. Testing people's programming abilities should be done, and it shouldn't just be an exercise in rote memorization, either.
When it comes to programming, you need smart people who are able to innovate, not people who mindlessly regurgitate information they heard somewhere.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 02 2015, @10:14AM
For instance, they might have figured out that the wanted to say "wildly inaccurate", not "widely inaccurate".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 02 2015, @01:12PM
FTFY. So much about choosing the right word.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 02 2015, @07:17PM
Grammar flame kamra is a bitch!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by morgauxo on Thursday April 02 2015, @01:52PM
They were looking for an Internet specific effect, right?
One group Googled the first question, the other group was given a printout. They seem to be interpreting this as one group relied on the internet while the other group had to do without. I would look at that like this:
One group had to work for their answer (come up with search terms, filter through junk results, etc..)
The other group had the answer literally handed to them.
So.. the people who actually did something felt smarter. Gee.. what a surprise! People get that warm, fuzzy feeling when they acomplish something. They feel good about themselves for a little while. That is a GOOD thing. It motivates us to DO stuff. To learn. To make. Without that we would probably still be running around naked in the savanna. No.. more likely we would have gone extinct long ago.
I think it would be more interesting to add a third group who are taken to a library with an old fashioned card catalog and told to find the answer in a book. I predict that the library group will get an even greater "I am smart" effect. Then again.. rarther than those warm fuzzies they might get frustrated. In that case you might see an opposite effect.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 03 2015, @02:56AM
> Gee.. what a surprise! People get that warm, fuzzy feeling when they acomplish something.
BTW, that effect is the reason fraternities haze pledges. The harder the initiation, the more the people who go through the ordeal will value the 'accomplishment' of joining the fraternity. Its a way to artificially construct social cohesion in the group.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kaszz on Thursday April 02 2015, @04:40PM
The problem with search engines in their current setup is that it will act like your personal yes-man. When you search for an answer it will give you an answer. It won't tell you that perhaps you asked the wrong question. Or that you should have asked something else. Nor that there's another question that will give the answer you really need. Or that you are completely wrong.
Once you reevaluate the question --> answer model can you avoid to dig your self into the right answer (tm) hole. Try to find answers that will refute your beliefs.
Then there's the issue of seeing the answer. Understanding the answer. Getting the context of the answer. And also to remember it when you need to answer something about it without looking it up. Too many people read documents and confuse it with actually knowing the material.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by RamiK on Thursday April 02 2015, @05:56PM
How well would Einstein have fared in the wilderness? Would Taylor hunt for boars or gather seeds? Would Newton and Gauss apply their skills well to out-running lions, tigers and bears?
The Internet is no different then any other tool. You could just as well have said the same about calculators, books or really any kind of tool or recording device.
Human are social animals with civilization being the expression of that trait. Taking the tools out-of-reach and placing a person in some synthetic test (offline) would be the same as pulling out a node from a cluster to test it's performance or placing a single ant in an ant farm expecting it to survive.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Thursday April 02 2015, @06:49PM
I think the problem the article is trying to point out is that there is a range on the graph of what you actually versus what you think you know where what you think you know vastly exceeds what you actually know, because you do not yet know enough to know how much you do not know, and the Internet often supplies just enough information to put people into that range.
The problem isn't the Internet per se, the problem is people and the quality of information free from traditional editing and publishing processes.
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(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday April 03 2015, @02:04AM
Some people just can't handle if someone didn't do traditional editing and publishing processing of what they are to read.