#Greenfieldism
[Via The Loom]
The rise of the Internet has brought with it a steady stream of articles warning us of how it’s going to destroy us, stupefy us, or otherwise alter our brain for the worse. They are typically thin on evidence and thick with fallacies. They rely on what we want to believe to paper over their lack of a compelling argument. To see what’s wrong with this type of neuro-scare, check out rebuttals from the psychologist Vaughan Bell, such as this piece for Slate and this one at CNN.
One of the most maddening of these Cassandras is Baronness Susan Greenfield, an Oxford neuroscientist. For a few years now she has been warning that the Internet is rewiring our brain, whatever that means. She warns that Twitter is turning us into social cripples. When asked for evidence, she either points to papers that provide no support for her sweeping claims, or says that we shouldn’t wait for evidence. Her claims positively hum with contradiction. In order to make new technologies seem truly sinister, she ends up getting nostalgic about television. You know, the technology that was supposed to bring an end to civilization a few decades ago?
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Some people just do not understand how to put together a rational argument based on logic and on the Scientific Method. This is one of them.
But it does create a wonderful Internet meme.
