[ExI] a new low

[BillK]

On Dec 20, 2007 5:14 PM, Damien Broderick wrote:
> (Manchester Evening News)
>
> A LOTTERY scratchcard has been withdrawn from sale by Camelot - because
> players couldn't understand it.
>
> The Cool Cash game - launched on Monday - was taken out of shops
> yesterday after some players failed to grasp whether or not they had
> won.
>
<snip>

Of course, people who buy lottery tickets don't understand mathematics anyway.

That's why gambling is so popular. For people who can afford it, the
small thrill and excitement of the 'maybe I'll win' moment is worth
the price of the ticket. For those who can't afford it, it is
desperation as it seems to be the only way out of their problems.


But, as Ben Goertzel commented on his blog, after visiting a campus Starbucks -
<http://www.goertzel.org/blog/2007/12/global-moron-awakens.html>

The first thing that struck me was the everpresence of technology. The
students around me were constantly texting each other -- there was a
lot of texting going on between people sitting in different parts of
the Starbucks, or people waiting in line and other people sitting
down, etc.

And, there was a lot of talk about Facebook. Pretty much anytime
someone unfamiliar (to any of the conversation participants) was
mentioned in conversation the question was asked "Are they on
Facebook?" Of course, plenty of the students had laptops there and
could write on each others Facebook walls while texting each other and
slipping in the occasional voice phone call or email as well.

All in all I found the density and rapidity of information interchange
extremely impressive. The whole social community of the Starbucks
started to look like a multi-bodied meta-mind, with information
zipping back and forth everywhere by various media. All the
individuals comprising parts of the mind were obviously extremely
well-attuned to the various component media and able to multiprocess
very effectively, e.g. writing on someone's Facebook wall and then
texting someone else while holding on an F2F conversation, all while
holding a book in their lap and allegedly sort-of studying.

Exciting! The only problem was: The contents of what was being
communicated was so amazingly trivial and petty it started to make me
feel physically ill.
etc.....
--------------------


All that technology, billions of messages, instant - always on
communication, .........

and it's all total bollocks!

That's progress. The triumph of the inane.


BillK