Someone mentions Postman below so I'm tempted to add: can the tech crowd try a bit of Neil Postman, Jean Baudrillard, Guy Debord and the Situationists, Mark Fisher, Marhsall McLuhan, presumably loads of others I don't know about who have done work in these areas, and then maybe Michel Desmurget on the more science-based side of it if they want to avoid any airy-fairy theory.

It's arguably especially wild that Desmurget doesn't get a mention in these discussions. Or, I mean, it would be wild in a world where there was a smooth and effortless flow of good ideas and arguments between people, maybe over some sort of transcontinental network...

A lot of the topics that people have opinions about when it comes to screens and devices and health and etc have loads of studies on them. Which doesn't mean that everything is all solved, there are unexplored and uncertain areas, but reading these discussions you'd think there was no data out there whatsoever. There's tons!

It doesn't mean either that people can't enjoy sharing opinions, some of the anecdotes are interesting and insightful, but there seems to be a few obvious arguments which are basically non-arguments that get trotted out, and which seem to be hindering a more fruitful discussion.

How many times have we seen someone make a point about the bad type of screen-use for someone to say: "yeah, but I use ________ like _________." or "yeah, but when you read books you're being antisocial as well." and so on. The research on the topic distinguishes carefully between the different types of use! Etc etc, I could go on.

This comment is intended constructively

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LargoLasskhyfv 7 months ago | parent | next [-]

Wanted to add Marshal McLuhan impulsively upthreads, but restrained myself, and read everything else first. Have something to amend your list with, though:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niklas_Luhmann

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jaco6 7 months ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Tech employees don’t engage constructively with tech criticism because of self interest.

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dlkf 7 months ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I implore everyone reading this to google the Sokal hoax before decide whether these guys are worthwhile.

	▲	sourcepluck 7 months ago \| parent [-]
		Michel Desmurget is a well-respected neuroscientist working in research in France, so the Sokal thing is totally irrelevant to him, presumably? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Desmurget https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair - for the curious. The Sokal affair is a funny thing yes, which I'd seen before (and I presume many people here are familiar with). I don't see how it's relevant here? I mean - it was one journal, in 1996, that had no peer review process, that published a fake article someone sent in to prove a point that the journal publishes at least some crap... What should we reject based on that in your opinion - all cultural and media studies presumably, at the very least, you seem to be clearly suggesting. And every philosopher too? The logicians? The linguists? All of social science? Economics too? Is it just STEM-type stuff that's acceptable then? Seems preposterous to me. The soft sciences are looser, and definitely have a higher proportion of hand-wavy nonsense, but rejecting it all to avoid stuff you don't like is just silly. Learning to avoid the crap and find the good stuff is pretty similar to other fields. And often, anecdotally, it seems to me that the more interesting figures in the experimental sciences tend to be very intrigued by the softer, arguably sometimes "trickier" questions that the non-STEM sciences can explore.

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tomjen3 7 months ago | parent | prev [-]

Any of them ran their own startups? Ported some code to jemalloc?

Then I am not interested in their idea on tech.

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sourcepluck 7 months ago | parent [-]

Wow, there you go. This is quite the straightforwardly authoritarian statement, if followed through on (though I doubt you actually follow it through).

If some politicians and engineers wanted to lay train tracks down straight through the middle of a town, would the locals have a say in the matter, in your opinion? Or should they leave those decisions to the experts?

I do imagine you're not really serious though. To illustrate that - let's imagine for the sake of argument that Julian Assange (or Richard Stallman, or Kent Pitman, or whoever whose political opinions you might dislike) would code rings around you.

Would you suddenly take their opinion seriously? You wouldn't, if you didn't like them or their opinions. You'd come up with some other ad hoc reason why they could (and must!) be totally ignored. I mean, please correct me if I'm wrong here.

So why maintain the pretense that you're rejecting these people because they're not a part of the coding tribe, of which you're such a proud member and staunch representative?

	▲	tomjen3 7 months ago \| parent [-]
		You are reading too much into it. I am simply unwilling to listen anymore to the commentariat (roughly those working at newspapers, think tanks and/or having degrees in political science, media, communications, or sociology) attacking tech. It has become a tribal issue where political hay is being made and politics drags all debates down to mudslinging. In short: Talk is cheap, I want to see that they have also done the legwork. That the issues is based on actual facts, and that it comes from a genuine desire to know and solve a problem.