Thoughts on the web's effects on our minds

Being a teacher, I somewhat agree that the internet is making us stupid. I saw this most clearly in trying to get my students to absorb information on climate change and make an argument for or against specific premises in the debate using a PowerPoint-style presentation. Some of them excelled, others just wanted to cull text from websites, copy and paste them to slides, and read it all off the wall to the bored audience. They had no sense of how to analyze the information, distill it into points, and support or refute those points using evidence and logic.

On the other hand, I don't know how I feel about the generalization that reading on the web in some way detracts from the cognitive skills acquired from reading text in print. I do both, and while I know that my attention span has shrunk, the content on the web is so much more distilled and comprehensive if you look on the right sites. For example, I read Al Gore's The Assault on Reason, which really went into detail in the first few chapters arguing that TV has fundamentally changed our "gut level" reaction to politics, but all of that could've been summarized just as easily in a blog post with links to scientific studies that support the ideas.

I think the web is great for counter-acting the very problem Gore decried because we have to process things cognitively in reading them online, rather than just reacting to a visual image, in reading politics blogs. This is good, although we now filter our news sources to our liking, and so supposedly drive partisan wedges ever deeper in our political divide, in addition to increasing our ignorance of viewpoints that we selectively exclude. The reason this is good despite the costs is that most people simply weren't armed with factual support and logical arguments to justify their political preferences. Partisanship may have increased, but at least most political partisans are well-educated (or misinformed) in their strong opinions, rather than going on the basis of what I heard my grandmother say about candidates: "I like the look of him."

Long story short, heavy web users know how to go to reliable sites for valid information, go through and distill long sections of prose into key points, and learn how to analyze writing and presentation for any viewpoint bias. I think that reading books is fantastic, and ought never end, but the power of the footnote is impotent compared with the power of the hyperlink to propel you to reference information. How many times, when you're reading a book, do you remember some trivia apropos to the topic and wish you had that at your fingertips? That's part of the sexiness of moving away from dead tree versions of information.

Summer reading

After seeing John McSame brag about being "5th from the bottom" of his Naval Academy class...of 899 individuals...I got to thinking about thinking. I thought geek was chic, even for chicks, but apparently not for GOP presidential material.

Thinking of that brings me to thinking of reading for pleasure, which has been tied directly to student performance, and employment economics, more strongly than almost any other measure. This summer, I've been able to read a fair amount, finishing the last two installments of King's Dark Tower series, Frank Herbert's Dune and Douglas Preston's Blasphemy. I spent more time than I'd intended on my writing on morality, which was important to me. For atheists or geeky-science types, I really recommend reading Blasphemy, whose plot features a particle collider far outmatching the LHC at CERN and strong religious themes throughout. It has a great twist at the end. I was able to read it in just a few hours; it's an easy read with a good plot. Check it out.

Correlations between reading and politics, religion

It's never as simple as we want it to be.

I want more people to read, and I complain about reading in America. Then, on the other hand, I wish that people read less of the same ol', same ol' religious stuff and tried a solid philosophical treatise on morality or metaphysics. It really seems that a lot of what people read is fluff and at least partially ahistorical, given Americans' preferences for religious reading. The trend is moving at least in part away from these books, so that's encouraging...

That said, there is evidence that people who are nonreligious and those who are politically liberal read more than those who are religious and political conservatives.

People from the West and Midwest are more likely to have read at least one book in the past year. Southerners who do read, however, tend to read more books, mostly religious books and romance novels, than people from other regions. Whites read more than blacks and Hispanics, and those who said they never attend religious services read nearly twice as many as those who attend frequently.

There was even some political variety evident, with Democrats and liberals typically reading slightly more books than Republicans and conservatives.

The Bible and religious works were read by two-thirds in the survey, more than all other categories.

Can we infer causation from correlation? I don't think so.

One of the reasons I reject IQ comparisons between theists and atheists is the point that if you can find me even a few people with very high IQs who are theists (or atheists), then any "argument" based on studies that show a disparity in IQ between the two person groups is flawed: even if on average, smart people are believers, or disbelievers, it would be cum hoc, ergo propter hoc.

Although I don't imply causation from correlation with reading, I do think it's worth thinking about why the correlation exists. Before I'm accused of meanness or prejudice, I pointed out that the anti-intellectualism on display in many Evangelical churches is not to be taken as a logical connection between religion and anti-intellectualism. That said, I think that part of being religious is taking doubt and skepticism seriously, and I think that this requires a lot of reading outside of one's own "comfort zone(s)" and world view(s). Here, there is real evidence that certain forms and brands of religion, especially those that equivocate on faith as certitude, discourage reading materials that may "incur doubt" or "lead one astray" or some similar sentiment. Perhaps there is truth in it.

After all, if, as I think to be the case, religions are all based on ahistorical myths and/or false premises about the nature of god(s) and revelation, then a serious analysis of religion done by smart skeptics will poke holes in anyone's certitudes. And if the religion one adheres to carries a threat of everlasting torment if said adherent doubts or loses faith, then it is logical for its religious leaders to exhort followers to avoid reading treatises on atheism/skepticism. Hell, just look at what Paul said about wisdom and philosophy, and his warnings of those with "false teachings" and such. So, is it prudent, then, to "flee" from reading materials whose conclusions you know to be in opposition to the religion you espouse?

Perhaps it is.

Maybe believers are right for sticking to reading materials that don't "endanger" their souls. I guess Calvinists don't worry about such subtleties.

I wonder, if the Bible and religious books were filtered out of reading surveys, what the results would look like. Until I have some data, I'm just speculating and pissing in the wind...

I did like the statistics that show the most popular books on college campuses, and the correlation with SAT scores at those schools has to mean something. But what conclusions can be drawn between one's reading habits and one's IQ or religious preference? Not too much. I know that I and a lot of other nonbelievers spend what is probably a surprisingly large amount of time reading "religious materials" and/or scriptures. Obviously, we do so in large part due to education and arguments' sake, rather than edification.

Neato Bandito

Alright, so this guy compiled the correlation between facebook network book rankings & college SAT scores to try to show what some of the "dumber" and "smarter" colleges are reading. I was happy to see that neither UF nor VT had the Bible at #1 or #2. See how your school stacks up, and play around with the data at his site, it's neat.

Reading

A new study finds that student performance is directly tied to reading for pleasure. Am I surprised? Not so much...

A swath from the NYT follows:

In his preface to the new 99-page report Dana Gioia, chairman of the endowment, described the data as “simple, consistent and alarming.”

Among the findings is that although reading scores among elementary school students have been improving, scores are flat among middle school students and slightly declining among high school seniors. These trends are concurrent with a falloff in daily pleasure reading among young people as they progress from elementary to high school, a drop that appears to continue once they enter college. The data also showed that students who read for fun nearly every day performed better on reading tests than those who reported reading never or hardly at all.

The study also examined results from reading tests administered to adults and found a similar trend: The percentage of adults who are proficient in reading prose has fallen at the same time that the proportion of people who read regularly for pleasure has declined.

Three years ago “Reading at Risk,” which was based on a study by the Census Bureau in 2002, provoked a debate among academics, publishers and others, some of whom argued that the report defined reading too narrowly by focusing on fiction, poetry and drama. Others argued that there had not been as much of a decline in reading as the report suggested.

This time the endowment did not limit its analysis to so-called literary reading. It selected studies that asked questions about “reading for fun” or “time spent reading for pleasure,” saying that this could refer to a range of reading materials.

“It’s no longer reasonable to debate whether the problem exists,” said Sunil Iyengar, director of research and analysis for the endowment. “Let’s not nitpick or wrangle over to what extent is reading in decline.”

In an interview Mr. Gioia said that the statistics could not explain why reading had declined, but he pointed to several commonly accepted culprits, including the proliferation of digital diversions on the Internet and other gadgets, and the failure of schools and colleges to develop a culture of daily reading habits. In addition, Mr. Gioia said, “we live in a society where the media does not recognize, celebrate or discuss reading, literature and authors.”

In seeking to detail the consequences of a decline in reading, the study showed that reading appeared to correlate with other academic achievement. In examining the average 2005 math scores of 12th graders who lived in homes with fewer than 10 books, an analysis of federal Education Department statistics found that those students scored much lower than those who lived in homes with more than 100 books. Although some of those results could be attributed to income gaps, Mr. Iyengar noted that students who lived in homes with more than 100 books but whose parents only completed high school scored higher on math tests than those students whose parents held college degrees (and were therefore likely to earn higher incomes) but who lived in homes with fewer than 10 books.

The new report also looked at data from the workplace, including a survey that showed nearly three-quarters of employers who were polled rated “reading comprehension” as “very important” for workers with two-year college degrees, and nearly 90 percent of employers said so for graduates of four-year colleges. Better reading skills were also correlated with higher income.

In an analysis of Education Department statistics looking at eight weekly income brackets, the data showed that 7 percent of full-time workers who scored at levels deemed “below basic” on reading tests earned $850 to $1,149 a week, the fourth-highest income bracket, while 20 percent of workers who had scored at reading levels deemed “proficient” earned such wages.

I thought the economic information was the most surprising part of this simply due to the magnitude of such a correlation, rather than the relationship per se. I wish that I had a longer life to live, so that I could read more. Approximately 100 million adults in the US are either illiterate, functionally illiterate, or alliterate people (someone who can read but never does), according to peer-reviewed research. Only 1/2 of Americans are currently reading anything at all. Apparently, none of them are on Facebook and MySpace, because everyone on those sites list lots of books that they've read. Or do they do it to appear and feel more intelligent?

...When asked how much they enjoy reading, some Americans succumb to the temptation to give a socially desirable response. Hence, the Times Mirror data from 1994 and 1995 are probably inflated...One may find reading a chore and still do it out of a sense of obligation, a realization of its utilitarian value, or habit. Nevertheless, if it is true that people are much more likely to engage in activities they enjoy and eschew behavior from which they get little or no satisfaction, the Times Mirror Center data are grounds for concern. Approximately two fifths of adult Americans today tell pollsters they do not regard reading as a particularly enjoyable activity. More ominously, less than half of Americans aged 18–29 (47%) say they enjoy reading “a lot,” compared to 57% of persons aged 30–44, 60% of people between 45 and 64, and 63% of those 65 and older. (Source)

No great surprise to me.