Haidt has a whole career built around demonizing letting children use the internet.
We just had a discussion on persistent vs obstinate[1]. It's this man's mission to be one of the two on this topic. To keep bringing up his bailiwick. This topic is going to keep coming up, almost every time by people like Haidt committed to the negative, committed to obstructing what they can only regard as a dangerous possibility. I do not particularly enjoy topics where we get blown in only one direction like this, it's rarely a useful dialog, it rarely adapts or changes to the world about it.
(One use I do see for AI is being able to go search & synopsize who it is we are receiving broadcasts from. Right now it takes research to go find out who the transmitter is. We are easily cast to places with little context. (This is in part why the appeal of the darker web is so effective, because we are liable to drift in
un-aware)).
I would like to note that he has created/supported a variety of political causes in the past. His current cause does seem to be pointing to restricting kids internet access, but I can't really figure out what he wants.
One of these is his "moral foundations" theory, which claims that people have different underlying reasons for having various moral opinions. He claimed to have identified some but left the exact reasons open ended and changeable. He claimed that everyone realizing this would decrease political polarization. Neuroscientists pointed out that the "modules" he described can't map to actual brain structures, and he claimed that it didn't matter. I'm kind of unsure of if I would even call this science, as I don't really see how to make a predictable hypothesis out of it. However, it could be valuable as political speech if people do indeed lack awareness that other people value different things than them. (I always assumed everyone knew that, but maybe they don't?)
He also argued for "anti-fragility". The concept that kids these days are kept from experiencing failure and other unpleasant things, and that this will lead them to become worse off during adulthood. This seems more testable, but almost seems to be in direct contradiction to his current anti-smartphone/anti-social media cause. Perhaps this does come from a general "Kids these days are online too much" sort of sentiment, but anti-fragility by itself doesn't really directly suggest we should deny kids internet access.
I really don't know what to think of the man's political leanings, but I don't trust his scholarship much either way. Any time I try to fact-check him, I come up with rather inconclusive or small effects.
"Haidt has a whole career built around demonizing letting children use the internet."
Social media is not "the internet".
Looking at the total volume of Haidt's publications over his academic career, most have nothing to do with the internet, social media or even computers.
Further, only a minority of his books are about the computers or the internet.
As such, this statement does not appear to be supported by facts.
Comments
Haidt has a whole career built around demonizing letting children use the internet.
We just had a discussion on persistent vs obstinate[1]. It's this man's mission to be one of the two on this topic. To keep bringing up his bailiwick. This topic is going to keep coming up, almost every time by people like Haidt committed to the negative, committed to obstructing what they can only regard as a dangerous possibility. I do not particularly enjoy topics where we get blown in only one direction like this, it's rarely a useful dialog, it rarely adapts or changes to the world about it.
(One use I do see for AI is being able to go search & synopsize who it is we are receiving broadcasts from. Right now it takes research to go find out who the transmitter is. We are easily cast to places with little context. (This is in part why the appeal of the darker web is so effective, because we are liable to drift in un-aware)).
I would like to note that he has created/supported a variety of political causes in the past. His current cause does seem to be pointing to restricting kids internet access, but I can't really figure out what he wants.
One of these is his "moral foundations" theory, which claims that people have different underlying reasons for having various moral opinions. He claimed to have identified some but left the exact reasons open ended and changeable. He claimed that everyone realizing this would decrease political polarization. Neuroscientists pointed out that the "modules" he described can't map to actual brain structures, and he claimed that it didn't matter. I'm kind of unsure of if I would even call this science, as I don't really see how to make a predictable hypothesis out of it. However, it could be valuable as political speech if people do indeed lack awareness that other people value different things than them. (I always assumed everyone knew that, but maybe they don't?)
He also argued for "anti-fragility". The concept that kids these days are kept from experiencing failure and other unpleasant things, and that this will lead them to become worse off during adulthood. This seems more testable, but almost seems to be in direct contradiction to his current anti-smartphone/anti-social media cause. Perhaps this does come from a general "Kids these days are online too much" sort of sentiment, but anti-fragility by itself doesn't really directly suggest we should deny kids internet access.
I really don't know what to think of the man's political leanings, but I don't trust his scholarship much either way. Any time I try to fact-check him, I come up with rather inconclusive or small effects.
If he had something that would hold up to scrutiny, he wouldn't put it on substack but in a proper journal.
"Haidt has a whole career built around demonizing letting children use the internet."
Social media is not "the internet".
Looking at the total volume of Haidt's publications over his academic career, most have nothing to do with the internet, social media or even computers.
Further, only a minority of his books are about the computers or the internet.
As such, this statement does not appear to be supported by facts.
Computing with friends, then. Anything social is too dangerous, seemingly.