Comments by "Doug JB" (@dougjb7848) on "Algorithms are breaking how we think" video.

  1.  @SeanCMonahan  To pick one of your example situations: you KNOW the tires should hold “some certain” PSI and you KNOW the sticker is there to tell you what it is. “Cognitive offloading” is not knowing OR CARING TO KNOW whether the tires should hold a certain PSI, and trusting entirely that “some system” will do it for you. And then, when the yellow light comes on, not knowing what it means or consulting the manual, and instead taking the car to the mechanic.
    19
  2. This. This right here.
    5
  3. 35:50 Evidence: the flood of ads telling us the best thing about “AI” is that we will never have to think about which restaurant to go to.
    3
  4. How a person decided to buy, for example, a car many decades ago: taking test drives, reading magazine reviews, talking with people who also owned that car. The same process, starting 20 years ago, has focused far more on algorithms - algorithms promote to us the kind of car that is owned (at least ostensibly) by the people that the algorithms know we believe are knowledgeable, objective and uninvested in our decision - because we told the algorithms. Soon, the answer to “why did you buy that car” will be “the algorithm told me it was THE BEST.”
    2
  5. A LOT of people do not realize there are (usually) options for A-to-B, and make no effort to understand the route before they start it. They just … follow the directions. Users trust implicitly the route will always be the fastest / best / whatever one. But the people algorithm that creates the directions has no vested, positive-minded interest in helping users, it is focused on making money (at some point it is ALWAYS the dollars). If it wants to promote routes that favor toll roads, and users do not realize that their map’s settings mysteriously changed to eliminate the “avoid toll road” option …
    1
  6. I disagree. “Watching TV” meant actively choosing a channel, sometimes multiple times in one “watch session.” If one show ended and you did not like the next one, you didn’t watch it, you changed channels. Today, people “tune into a channel” (perhaps more accurately “inhabit a platform”) and just … watch whatever its algorithm brings up next. If they do not like a particle video, rather than move to a different platform, or even-simply leave and restart their “platform inhabitation session,” they downvote or swipe or whatever. Rather than exercise agency and directly control what they are consuming, they complain to the algorithm. It would be like a pre-internet person who turns on “Channel #” and leaves it on nonstop, and shriek out the windows anytime it shows something they do not like.
    1
  7. I think (part of) the point is that an increasing number of people could not even do that - they would look at the photo and have no idea wha to do.
    1
  8. Okay Jingles.
    1