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lucaspuskaric · 2 months ago

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Nobody Can Read and We Don’t Trust Anyone

130 million American adults have low literacy skills. A shocking number of Americans don’t know the three branches of government. Even fewer can name all their First Amendment rights. Even smart people misinterpret facts and believe misinformation. So what do we do?

We live in a overwhelming, exhausting world where everything seems to contradict each other. One day, coffee is killing you. The next, it’s a miracle cure.

We’re told to “do your own research” while algorithms inundate us with fake news and fake experts.

And sometimes the most unbelievable things turn out to actually be true.

This constant uncertainty erodes our faith in everything—science, government, even our own perception of the world.

So how do we navigate this endless black hole of information? How do we reclaim our sanity and trust again?

Read on to discover how we can:

Understand the limitations of ‘doing your own research’

Improve our critical thinking skills

Identify credible sources

Decide whether something is worth researching

Understanding why people lack trust in institutations

Learn how to rebuild trust in institutions (and ourselves)

The Real Literacy Rate

In school, I was told everyone finishes high school and we are a universally literate society. Neither of these things are true.

130 million American adults have low literacy skills. You can see an interactive map of literacy rates here. (https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/skillsmap/)

The high school graduation rate is 87% for 2021–2022. To be fair, this is actually 7% higher than the previous decade. (https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/coi)

Now you may be thinking this is clickbait, but let’s look at what literacy level means.

Level 1: Locate a single piece of info in a short, simple text.

Find the expiration date on a milk carton.

Level 2: Identify a main idea in a text with some distracting info, make simple inferences.

Read instructions for assembling a piece of furniture.

Level 3: Understand dense text, synthesize info from different parts, and apply it.

Read a news article about a political issue and summarize viewpoints presented.

Level 4: Integrate info from complex and lengthy texts, understand nuance, make high-level inferences.

Analyze a research paper and evaluate evidence presented.

Level 5: Understand and evaluate vert complex tests, synthesize info from diverse sources, and construct detailed arguments.

Write a persuasive essay on a controversial topic, citing evidence from multiple sources.

54% of Americans are at level 2 literacy level or lower. That’s a lot of people who can’t summarize multiple viewpoints and understand dense text. These are crucial skills to do your own research.

And while following instructions verbatim can be valuable in life, it certainly does not help to do your own research or critically think about those things. How can you be educated if you can’t summarize a variety of perspectives within a single article?

Here are some things people call doing “their own research”, which absolutely does not count:

Not Research Research Anecdotal Experience “I feel hot, so global warming is false” Facts “Global temperatures are rising year-over-year.” (source) Listening to someone who sounds authoritative Finding a real expert Citing a single “research” study Pointing to concrete data, multiple research studies by reputable scientists, and surveys that follow good methodology Cherry-picking data “I found this single fact to prove my point” Look for contrary evidence “Here’s multiple studies” Reading headlines “Crime is rising!” Read full articles “Despite reports of crime rising, it has actually been steadily declining” Believing personality over truth “He said it, so I assumed it was true” Double-check suspicious claims and people who have been known to lie or exaggerate Quoting old information “I learned airplanes were unsafe in high school in the 1950s” Update your knowledge “Ah, it turns out that airplane travel is the most safe form of travel” Ascribing supernatural explanations to known phenomena “My horoscope is so true!” Consider whether something is a generalization and look for alternative explanations Common sense “It makes sense to me!” Realize many things are not intuitive and require additional research Never following up on previous research “I voted this way because I thought something would happen” Recheck later. If you don’t validate you were correct, you didn’t research. You just looked something up one time uncritically. “Was I wrong? Did this person follow through on their promises? Did this info change?

Half the time, something stumbles across our feeds and you take it at face value. We get triggered emotionally by an enraging hook. We conflate confidence with expertise. Joan Westenberg has an amazing article about the death of expertise and how we give into this. (https://www.joanwestenberg.com/rip-expertise-the-death-of-knowledge/)

Then, there’s the stuff you chose to spend your time researching. It’s bad enough we can’t understand stuff when we come across it, it’s worse when we spend time on stuff that’s not worth looking into at all

It’s like meticulously researching the history of spoons when you’re trying to learn how to cook a gourmet meal. It’s just not that relevant to your life or goals.

We have people spending their lives dedicated to wasting time things we 100% know as facts.

No person can possibly research every topic, we simply can’t research every little thing in life.

Consider the grocery store. It’s a pretty complex place behind-the-scenes. Just to get a banana to your local store is a massive logistics nightmare, and that’s just one item. We take the grocery store for granted and we assume we understand it. Do we need to understand everything about how a grocery store works in order to use one? No. And few people know all the inner workings of pretty much anything in the world. Even “intelligent” people usually know far less than they imagine.

It’s like if someone asks you to draw a picture of a working bicycle from memory and you realize you are a goddamn idiot. I drew a bike that didn’t even have a chain on it.

We all have blind spots. To truly be told people need to research for themselves, we need to be taught:

— basic logic, like fallacies (not common sense) — better reading comprehension skills — how to determine what is worth researching — how to find credible sources — what to do with a credible source — how to update your knowledge — to make more trustworthy institutions worthy of public trust

I won’t break these all down here, but if you want to learn more about logical fallacies, check out this article from Farnam Street. (https://fs.blog/logical-fallacies/)

It isn’t worth spending your life researching obvious conspiracy theories that have been disproven centuries ago.

now on to the nuance: we do need to admit a few things.

I’m not a scientist, but sometimes our current understanding is wrong. That doesn’t make science wrong. Science updates when we learn new shit.

But humans are humans and they run human institutions that can corrupt shit

You don’t have to look far to see this:

Famous theories that define our current understanding were once dismissed. A popular example is Galileo. We all know him because of that one Queen song, “Bohemian Rhapsody,” or maybe because of astronomy. He said the sun was at the center of the universe, not the Earth. The Church really didn’t like that. But we know now he was right.

But sometimes, even scientists suppressed by science. People are invested in their theories and the way the world works. Doctors did not initially accept the idea of germs.

Let me tell you more of a personal example:

In college, I found an error on a test. There was a question about Lamarckian evolution.

The basic idea was that adaptation led to evolution. If a giraffe extended their neck, the next generation would have longer necks.

It most notably, did not include injuries in his theories.

Here is the question:

What answer do you think based on that definition?

They said the answer was three. They completely misrepresented his theories and codified it into the curriculum.

Even the textbook was incorrect. They absolutely lambasted Lamarck in my class as an absolute idiot, ignoring that his theory of evolution was a major influence before Charles Darwin. And some parts of it are technically correct, even though they don’t apply generally.

Humans rewrite history.

It’s easy to dismiss vaccine deniers as uneducated and foolish, but it’s not like there is zero precedent for vaccines that have caused harm. There is.

While vaccines have an overwhelmingly strong safety record, it’s important to acknowledge that there have been rare instances in the past where certain vaccines have caused harm. These cases have led to important improvements in vaccine development and safety protocols.

But there is far more robust evidence of vaccine benefits.

Vaccines have prevented hundreds of millions of deaths from diseases like smallpox, measles, and polio.

Vaccines undergo rigorous testing and monitoring for both short-term and long-term safety.

Scientists continually monitor vaccines for potential long-term effects, and ongoing research helps ensure their safety.

Most vaccine side effects happen shortly after getting the vaccine.

Thimerosal, a mercury-containing preservative, was removed from most childhood vaccines as a precaution, even though no evidence showed it was harmful in vaccines.

Medicine that is fatal in large doses act as poison, but the correct amount saves your life.

You haven’t heard of smallpox in a long time, and it’s not because it naturally faded away. It is because we eradicated it through the use of vaccines.

Vaccines use a weakened or inactive form of a virus or bacteria to train your immune system to fight the real thing, without causing the actual disease.

The problem isn’t just science or vaccines. People lack trust in institutions because often institutions have not earned our trust.

To say our government is not beholden to large business stakeholders that spend millions lobbying it is to fundamentally misunderstand the current system we live in.

Growing up around Chicago, we have plenty of distrust and plenty of corrupt politicians. Yet maybe we were more honest about our corruption.

Even with four governors in jail, Illinois likely isn’t an outlier in terms of corruption. The real problem is the lack of accountability across the board. When money talks louder than ethics, it’s no wonder that corruption flourishes.

Growing up around this definitely leaves you feeling jaded and like you can’t trust any authority.

It’s easy to blame other people as stupid, uneducated, or even evil. But it’s more likely that they were failed by society at large.

Whether this is intentional or not, you’ll have to put your tinfoil hat on and research for yourself

Further Reading

Factfulness by Hans Rosling is a great book about updating your knowledge, questioning your beliefs, and global health.

Clear Thinking by Shane Parrish

Matthew Facciani’s Wonderful Newsletter about Misinformation

Also, check out his upcoming book Misguided (https://www.amazon.com/Misguided-Where-Misinformation-Starts-Spreads/dp/023120504X)

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lucaspuskaric · 3 months ago

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We're Holding the Future Hostage

Believe it or not, we already have the tech for self-healing roads that repair potholes overnight, personalized nutrition pills that replace meals, and clothing that changes color with your mood — it’s just collecting dust somewhere.

Imagine a world with holographic of family, friends, teachers, and concerts that appear in your living room, instant teleportation to avoid rush hour, and devices that let us talk to our pets, many of these innovations are much closer than you may think.

Today we’ll explore why it took decades for everyday inventions like zippers and microwaves to catch on, uncover the hidden history of virtual reality, and discover how a 1968 tech demo predicted the future of Google Docs… 42 years early. And why these issues continue to affect the “futuristic” tech mentioned above. Buckle up, buttercup — because we’re about to take a wild ride through the past, present, and potential of technology.

We’ve discovered a bunch of stuff that hasn’t taken off yet. But, we often dismiss uses for existing tech in favor of the _ next hot thing_, instead of fully utilizing what we have.

Here’s how long it took some stuff to take off:

Zippers ~40 years.

Microwaves ~30 years.

Digital cameras ~25 years.

Smartphones ~10 years

3d printing ~50 years and still hasn’t taken off yet

VR first headset 1968 and it was the “future” then

It took 5 years from Google’s transformers breakthrough for ChatGPT to popularize the AI chatbot. Not to mention the decades of AI research before that which enabled Google to make that breakthrough. We had early neural networks in the 1950s! . Now, this example probably says more about how science builds on top of itself and technology has gotten cheaper and more powerful over time. But I mentioned it because GOOGLE absolutely had everything they needed to popularize this, but many believe they dropped the ball. We could have had all the fun of ChatGPT in 2017. I’m not sure if I’m being sarcastic with that last line. It’s possible Google was being more precocious and perhaps more responsible than OpenAI has been.

For color commentary, I really enjoy the original designer of the Game Boy, Gunpei_Yokoi’s take on this:

The Nintendo way of adapting technology is not to look for the state of the art but to utilize mature technology that can be mass-produced cheaply.

Which he also called this the “Lateral Thinking of Withered Technology” which kinda sums up what I’m talking about here and is a dope ass name. I aspire to name something so badass.

Taking this a bit further: Americans often yearn for a society similar to their view of Japan as this futuristic utopian. But few talk about how it is a lot easier to get adoption in a smaller, geographically restricted, and homogenous society. And, we helpfully ignore all the ways Japan is not futuristic, like how it is still a heavily paper-based and cash-dominated society. They’re still using fax machines!!! They love them. We could also go into societal issues, but I’m opting out for this particular essay. When I was younger, I incorrectly thought everyone in Japan was tapping to pay for everything since the 80s. Which itself is an example of why it is important to revisit and update our knowledge.

We’ve covered that tech can take a while to get adoption and why it might be helpful to look to the past, but not fully why all these technologies did not take off immediately. It isn’t for the same reasons.

The 3d printing scene has grown exponentially in recent times, but 3d printing itself still hasn’t fully taken off because it still takes a bunch of steps and it isn’t clear why most people would benefit from one. If tomorrow, a food printer came out that in one step produced Michelin star food, everyone would probably be lining up. But a lot of 3d printing gets you amateurish results without either investing a lot of money or doing a multi-step process of the output of the printer. So they are now small enough and cheap enough (when they were first invented this wasn’t the case), but it remains relatively niche. This will likely change as people are now growing up and many libraries and school districts also offer access to 3d printing and education.

Microwaves were a different story. People hated them. They absolutely thought they were the devil incarnate. Sometimes we have something great, like let’s say vaccines, but some group of people oppose them for unfounded reasons. Of course, it’s easy to dismiss this as obvious and these people simply aren’t forward thinking: but a necessary component of product adoption is the comfort level of people. And people were not comfortable with microwaves for a long time.

Other times, shit is just too expensive. Or bulky. Or ugly. Or it just hasn’t found a real reason. I think VR sets are a good example because while they have come a long way recently, they aren’t that different from when the VirtualBoy made everyone throw up. I’m not even going to go deep into the Apple Vision Pro — the coolest piece of tech that I couldn’t give a single fuck about.

If you search “VR gimmick”, I’m the number 2 search result. It’s a Medium article I wrote in 2018. And do you know why it’s number 2? Probably because no one is even searching for VR. Maybe linking it here will boost the SEO enough to be number 1, which would be pretty funny. It will be like my article took 6 years to adopt, meaning I was only about 1 year slower than OpenAI!

Here’s an image of a Google trend showing Apple Vision vs ChatGPT vs AI vs VR. It’s mostly meaningless, but I think you can at least see the inflection point where ChatGPT became a phenomenon and I really wanted some visual content:

The main factors preventing adoption of technology are:

people hate or fear the tech

people don’t get why it is relevant to their lives

it costs way too much

it’s cool, but inconvenient

there still needs to be a breakthrough

we know what we need to do, but the tech doesn’t exist yet

some stuff just doesn’t take off

no one put all the pieces together yet

I’m very interest in that last one. Similar to Nintendo’s philsophy, there is tons of technology hidden in research papers from 120 years ago waiting to be put to good use. For an irritating example, let’s look to 1968.

Retroactively-named, the Mother of All Demos showcased mesmerizing tech:

The 90-minute presentation demonstrated for the first time many of the fundamental elements of modern personal computing: windows, hypertext, graphics, efficient navigation and command input, video conferencing, the computer mouse, word processing, dynamic file linking, revision control, and a collaborative real-time editor.

Bruh, we didn’t get Google docs with real-time editing until 2010. And this motherfucker DEMOED it in 1968. Oh, and he invented the mouse. So thanks Douglas Engelbart.

It’s true that technology wasn’t quite ready for prime-time for a bunch of those things. Video conferencing sticks out as an interesting example. But we still had “virtual meetings” as early as 1916.

Only a year after the invention of the transcontinental phone call, 5100 engineers were able to hop on a call together.

Everyone says all the ideas have already been done. Just because an idea has been thought of doesn’t mean it was implemented and doesn’t mean it is good. And it doesn’t mean they can’t be used or combined in new ways. Personally, I think there are a lot of things that no one even imagined that have recently been invented. It’s a lot easier to dream up and idea than invent it. I’d rather say, “Tons of ideas have been thought of, but few people gave enough of a fuck about them to affect the world in any way.”

So how do we stop holding the future hostage? How do we more quickly diseminate technology so it is adopted quicker? How can we focus on the bottlenecks that prevent this tech?

Three things

individuals like you reading this. stop believing everything’s been done when we haven’t even implemented have the shit we’ve come up with as humans. you can be the lateral thinker who takes these ideas and makes something relevant to real people

companies are overly focused on short-term growth, meaning their full r&d budgets are dedicated to basically doing bullshit. we need more individuals, governments, and companies to identify important technology and focus heavily on reducing cost and access

we live in an interconnected world and people say we are more connected than ever. yet it is still difficult to get wide adoption of important things. we’ve been able to tiktokify fast fashion and a bunch of stuff that is terrible for ourselves and the planet, but there is no reason we can’t use this same technology to increase awareness and adoption of important and life-changing things (and in some cases, likely have, but i’ll leave that for another thought piece)

Let’s rescue our future from the past, the present, and all the powers that be.

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