Wisdom is far more important than intelligence – read Filtering Bubbles: The Internet's Covert Manipulation of Us

【What the Reader Says】

Author:Lin Yu (Senior Media Person)

Some time ago, in the Xi'an Metro "Security Guards Dragging Female Passengers" news, there were two diametrically opposed stories circulating in different social media circles for the description of the course of the incident, one story describing the female passengers as a "shrew", and in the other version of the story she was a complete victim and a poor person. Two stories, which one do you believe? This is the post-truth context, as David Weinberg put it in The Boundaries of Knowledge: On the web, every fact has a reaction force of equal size and opposite direction. In many hot events, the public opinion field seems to have become a "small composition arena", and all parties concerned have a precise grasp of public opinion emotions, and strive to use the emotional "small composition" to win the swinging melon-eating public, forming a constantly reversing media landscape, two opposing stories, and there are firm believers in their respective story circles.

Reading Eli Parize's book "Filter Bubbles: The Internet's Secret Manipulation of Us" (Chinese Min University Press) can not only make people wary of those "small compositions" on the Internet, but also let people see the process of "possible being shrouded in filter bubbles". We often boast of being sober, thinking that we have seen enough information, and that we can often "escape" the deception of those Internet dramas and avoid the "combine harvester" of traffic. But our lives rely so deeply on intelligent algorithms that we accidentally enter that "intelligent isolation state", isolated in our own cultural or ideological bubbles, the brain is in a state of cessation, treating the bubble as the world, mistaking the information fed by the algorithm as our own interests, judgments and loves, and increasingly unable to see other perspectives.

Modern people are trapped by the anchoring of information algorithms

Parizer quotes sociologist Dana Boyd as if to say it's himself: The human body loves fat and sugar because they are rare in nature. Similarly, we are born to focus on something irritating: vulgar, violent, or sexual content, as well as humiliating, embarrassing, or offensive gossip. If we don't pay attention, we develop a psychological condition equivalent to obesity, and we unconsciously consume the least nutritious content for the individual and society as a whole. The factory agricultural system determines the structure of people's diets, the size and meat structure of wheat chickens, and the dynamic mechanism of modern media will also shape our information consumption patterns. The messages that cater to you have left many people suffering from "information obesity" without knowing it.

Sociologists have been looking for different metaphors to describe the modern man's plight of being anchored by information algorithms, such as echo walls, information cocoons, filter bubbles, and information slums. In fact, these are not problems that exist in the intelligent information age, our ancestors have long created a metaphorical image, to say this truth thoroughly, that is, "well". The story of sitting in the well and watching the sky is well-known in China, the frog at the bottom of the well, the world seen is the wellhead, I thought that after the Internet, I could go out and see the sky, but it turned out that it was not, but a group of frogs were pulled into the well, there was a common language between them, there was a reinforced consensus, and it was agreed that everything outside the well was wrong, and the world was the wellhead. Open networks have not led to consensus among different social groups, but have made dialogue more difficult.

If the metaphor of "well" emphasizes short-sightedness, the "cocoon room" emphasizes a kind of closure, and the "echo wall" emphasizes self-circulation, then Parize's "filter bubble" mainly emphasizes transparent isolation, isolation and colorful apparitions. "Filter bubble" is invisible, is a poke on the break, standing outside to see very clearly, but in the "filter bubble" of the person, the mind is blocked, can not see their own is isolated independently, can not see that it is a layer of "filter bubble", deep in the bubble phantom of the emotional temptation, is pinched to death, simply do not have the ability to make critical thinking, put forward the problem that can reflect the consciousness of the subject.

There is a lot of research on the information cocoon and echo wall, and the profound thing about Parrizier is not that he has created a new concept like "filter bubble", but that he proposes the way of transcendence from the epistemological level, which I summarize as the subjective logic of "anti-intelligent logic". Under the leadership of intelligent algorithms, it seems that you are using intelligent algorithms and enjoying their convenience, but in fact you are being used by intelligent algorithms, you are just a set of data it uses to calculate, a training specimen used to make the machine more intelligent. Parizon reminds you that your computer monitor is increasingly acting like a one-way mirror that faithfully reflects your personal interests on the one hand, while algorithms hiding behind the mirror observe your clicking behavior. The data you leave behind after you close the computer is enough to form a portrait that is "more like you than you" (as Baudrillard calls "mimesis", a "realistic" symbol that is more real than real), and then use the portrait schema to form a "filter bubble" that governs your information consumption and mental grammar.

Harness artificial intelligence with life intelligence

McLuhan says we shape tools, and tools shape us in turn. When the intelligence we design may dominate our information life, we need an anti-intelligent subject logic to regain the dominance of information consumption. We need a "forward-leaning" body posture to actively search for information, rather than being fed in a comfortable "lean-back" posture.

Parize discovers the manipulative logic of technology — the interface. Every technology, he says, has an interface, and that's the end point of the person and the beginning of the technology, and it's like a lens that stands between you and reality. This is the extremely secretive logic of intelligent algorithms, and when you use it, you will only feel convenient, and you will not be sensitive to technology and interface. Sociologist Bergman also found that in the era of electronic media, our lives are increasingly dependent on a variety of technical devices, which are designed to be more and more humane, convenient and easy to use, and even become part of the body, so that people are not aware of their existence. In fact, each device has its logic and interface, and when you choose to use a device, you have already accepted the screening of the device, and you rely on the "lens" provided by the device to see the world. "Automatic" corresponds to "numbness", anti-intelligence is to resist this "automatic generation" of numbness, critical thinking about the information "generating device", you can see the "interface" between you and reality.

Another important aspect of anti-intelligence is to value diverse sources of information, break the illusion of individuality, maintain curiosity about "different views", and avoid being trapped in a cycle of self. Intelligent algorithms advocate a thousand faces, giving each person a personalized media environment, Parize criticizes that personalized service refers to the construction of an environment composed entirely of similar unknown things, does not really shake our patterns, but makes people feel like new information. But what is really learning requires an unexpected encounter with something you don't know, something you haven't thought of, something you can't imagine, and something you've never understood or entertained, which is an unexpected encounter with other things and even with the difference itself. There's a saying that goes something like this: If you always read only books that fit your ideas, you'll always know only what you already know. The so-called personalization of the intelligent "filter bubble" is actually just a self-circulation and self-consumption without new information and new knowledge growth.

Intelligence is sometimes just numb repetition without creating, and the long-term "filter bubble environment" can suffocate creativity. Creativity comes from putting together ideas that are far apart, Pariza said, and some of the rather important innovation breakthroughs are driven by completely random ideas that are excluded by "filter bubbles, which eliminates the diversity that prompts us to think in novel and innovative ways. The logic of anti-intelligence allows us to abstain from the daily dependence on intelligent push, and maintain the rich association ability of the imagination in the diversified information contact.

Another important aspect of anti-intelligence is to recognize one's own ignorance, see one's own blind spots, and avoid intelligence becoming incompetent and incompetent. People who are soaked in the "filter bubble environment" can easily form a kind of arrogance and conceit of "I understand this matter" and "I know this thing too well", and they cannot see their own information blind spots. Recognizing one's own ignorance is something that requires a considerable degree of knowledge, and intelligence brings with it the illusion of omniscience that deceives us. Parize says deeply that what hurts us is not what we don't know, but what we don't know we don't know, which is another way that personalized filters interfere with our proper understanding of the world. They often remove their blank spots, turning the known unknown into the unknown unknown.

The biggest difference between science and superstition is that science says "don't know," while superstition doesn't. The "filter bubble" formed by the intelligent conceit can easily fall into the myth of "I know it", accept those thoughtless answers, unfounded conclusions and unsourced information, and thus slide to fallacies and make misjudgments.

The book "Speculation and Position" talks about an important quality of critical thinking, the criticism of self-inertial thinking. He said that when you build a "big screen" in your mind that can observe your own thinking, you have grown into a thinker. Parriza's book is like a "big screen" that allows us to see ourselves wrapped in "filter bubbles" and see how the internet is secretly manipulating our minds in a way that comforts us. Know yourself, this is the source of wisdom, wisdom is far more important than intelligence, in the moment when intelligence becomes our life device, we need life intelligence to control artificial intelligence, so as not to isolate ourselves from the "filter bubble" of entertainment to death.

Guangming Daily (12th edition, October 30, 2021)

Source: Guangming Network - Guangming Daily