Essay #3 Options for Essay Due 4-25-17
Choose One of the Following:
One. In the context of Caleb Crain's "The Case Against Democracy" and Ilya Somin's "Democracy vs. Epistocracy" support, defend, or complicate the argument that an uninformed public lacking adequate critical thinking skills cannot support a democracy as we tend to idealize democracies but rather, at best, maintains a democracy so flawed many would argue that it cannot be called a democracy at all, but rather some grotesque sub-version of a democracy.
Two. Support, defend, or complicate the assertion that the unstoppable presence of trolls on Twitter has made being on Twitter, for many, an exercise so embedded in futility that deleting one's Twitter account is probably the best option. Consult Lindy West's "I've Left Twitter," Joel Stein's "How Trolls Are Ruining the Internet," Kathy Sierra's "Why the Trolls Will Always Win," Andrew Marantz's and "The Shameful Trolling of Leslie Jones." And the following YouTube Video:
Three. Support or refute the contention that when you consider the radical deficits resulting from use of Facebook or any similar social media site you are morally and intellectually compelled to delete your account and instead focus on doing what Cal Newport calls "Deep Work." Consult Cal Newport's Study Hacks Blog on Deep Work, Newport's YouTube video on Deep Work, Frank Bruni's "How Facebook Warps Our Worlds," Matthew Warner's "The Real Reason to Quit Facebook," and Kim Lachance Shandow's "6 Reasons to Delete Your Facebook Account Right Now."
Four. In the context of Ta-Nehisi Coates' essay, "The Case for Reparations," defend, refute, or complicate that America is morally obligated to exact qualified African-Americans reparations for America's crime of an ongoing kleptocracy, which includes slavery, Jim Crow, and their ongoing legacy today.
Five. Develop an analytical thesis that shows how Jordan Peeles' movie Get Out builds on Ta-Nehisi Coates' notion of American kleptocracy.
Six. Support, refute, or complicate the argument that recycling is a liberal white middle class religion that speaks more to Kool-Aid-drinking tribalism than it does improving the Earth. Consult John Tierney's "The Reign of Recycling," Michael Crichton's "Environmentalism is a Religion," and Stephen Asma's "Green Guilt."
Seven. Support, refute, or complicate the argument that radical changes in the job market over the next 20 years due to robots and high-tech will compel country's to provide their citizens with a Universal Basic Income. Consult the following:
Universal Basic Income: Side Effect of the Tech Revolution?
The Progressive Case for Replacing the Welfare State with Basic Income
Why Universal Basic Income Is a Terrible Idea
Arguments Against Universal Basic Income (UBI)
One. A dependent society is a dysfunctional society.
Two. A lack of self-reliance diseases the soul and corrupts society.
Three. Acute dependence leads to totalitarianism and dehumanization. See The Giver.
Four. Acute dependence breaks down the family unit. Parents aren't responsible for their children; the government is.
Five. Being "off the grid" makes one chronically depressed, non-productive, and unemployable.
Eight. Develop a thesis that in the context of the documentary Merchants of Doubt addresses the question: Should we have faith that "reason and faith can defeat propaganda and falsehoods." Or is such a message optimistic bias rooted in delusion?
Nine: Develop an analytical thesis that in the context of Merchants of Doubt explains the fallacies behind spin and how these fallacies can be constructed to effectively cause doubt and confusion over the legitimate claims of science.
Ten: Support or refute A.V. Club critic Ignatity Vishnevestsky's claim that Merchant's of Doubt is a "toothless" documentary larded with "artless and gimmicky" film-making.
Consult for your Works Cited:
A.O. Scott's film review in the NYT.
Trolls and Twitter:
Two. Support, defend, or complicate the assertion that the unstoppable presence of trolls on Twitter has made being on Twitter, for many, an exercise so embedded in futility that deleting one's Twitter account is probably the best option. Consult Lindy West's "I've Left Twitter," Joel Stein's "How Trolls Are Ruining the Internet," Kathy Sierra's "Why the Trolls Will Always Win," Andrew Marantz's and "The Shameful Trolling of Leslie Jones." And the following YouTube Video:
Read the first half of Joel Stein's "How Trolls Are Ruining the Internet"
Sample Thesis and Supports for Going Off Twitter
While Twitter is a legitimate way to receive news from our favorite journalists and while I support maintaining a Twitter account with the caveat that we’re not being bombarded by trolls, I would agree with the argument that for those Twitter users who are in a collision course with the troll community, it would be better to delete their Twitter account for several reasons.
Some Reasons to Delete One's Twitter Account
For the undisciplined, Twitter can be, as Lindy West has noted, a bottomless “time suck” in which people start arguing endlessly back and forth just for the sport of arguing. This time suck becomes unpaid work.
Going on Twitter for “stress relief,” as Liny West observes, can quickly become a reversal and afflict the user with even more stress than before.
Arguing with a troll becomes a waste of time and exercise in futility. In fact, trolls want to argue. Arguing back with them is their nourishment. We are “feeding” them, as Lindy West points out.
We can’t even report threats from trolls, Lindy West chronicles, without being called “censors” by the Twitter community.
Twitter cannot stop trolls who are creating pollution on the site. Lindy West has concluded that in a way Twitter is enabling trolls, so it’s best to bail from this toxic landscape altogether.
Twitter makes you more vulnerable to people who can be hateful toward your political views. In contrast, you can manage your Facebook page to create a cozy bubble in which you converse with like-minded souls.
Joel Stein makes excellent point that Twitter, and other social media, produce the online disinhibition effect: Without face-to-face interaction and hiding behind anonymity, people who are normally cowards feel emboldened to unleash their inner demons of hate, rage, and obnoxious bullying so that online discourse becomes a toxic environment stripped of ethical mores and civil decorum.
Trolls and others can engage in “doxxing,” the act of stealing people’s personal data and publishing it.
Joel Stein observes that trolls are not just losers on the fringe; they are mainstream people who, frustrated, and shackled by Internet addiction, including the need for attention, develop into trolls.
Reminder: You need at least one counterargument-rebuttal paragraph.
Should We Delete Our Facebook and Other Social Media Accounts?
Essay Option Three. Support or refute the contention that when you consider the radical deficits resulting from use of Facebook or any similar social media site you are morally and intellectually compelled to delete your account and instead focus on doing what Cal Newport calls "Deep Work." Consult Cal Newport's Study Hacks Blog on Deep Work, Newport's YouTube video on Deep Work, Frank Bruni's "How Facebook Warps Our Worlds," Matthew Warner's "The Real Reason to Quit Facebook," and Kim Lachance Shandow's "6 Reasons to Delete Your Facebook Account Right Now."
"How Facebook Warps Our World";
"The Real Reason to Quit Facebook"
"6 Reasons to Delete Your Facebook Account Right Now"
Sample Thesis and Arguments
Facebook and all social media are enemies to our intelligence, dignity, and well-being evidenced by ___________________, ______________________, _______________________, _________________, and ___________________________.
Frank Bruni points out that Facebook is a place where we lose our intellect and critical thinking. In their place, we indulge in cognitive bias: reinforcing our foregone conclusions by conversing with other like-minded people.
Reinforcing our opinions with others in our Echo Chamber, we use Facebook, Bruni observes, as what McMahon calls a "Mutual Sycophant Society," in which we kiss each other's butts and feel empowered by our bold political beliefs.
Matthew Warner points out that Facebook makes us brain-dead because it's a default setting for killing snippets of time rather than being comfortable with being alone with ourselves and focusing on our deepest thoughts.
Kim Lachance Shandow criticizes parents for posting photos of their children and violating their children's privacy.
Shandow observes the stupidity of the FOMO effect, the fear of missing out as we see Facebook friends curate their staged happy lives, what is in fact contrived BS.
We tell our children to avoid strangers, Shandow points out, but Facebook's "friend suggestions" encourages us to accept strangers into our Facebook orbit. Even if these strangers are safe, they represent potential lost time as we may have to comment and deal with messages from these strangers.
Bosses and potential employers can snoop on your Facebook page, Shandow warns, to judge your character and credibility.
Oversharing is embarrassing. Shandow wants us to spare our dignity and get off Facebook before we're seduced by the false need to share.
Reminder: You need at least one counterargument-rebuttal paragraph.
The Addictive Effects of Facebook and Social Media
“Never Get High on Your Own Supply”
Adam Alter in his book Irresistible makes the point that even as Steve Jobs wallowed in glory of making the greatest Internet device ever, the iPad, he refused to use one or let his children use one.
Likewise, other tech avatars refuse to let their children use iPads. They sent their kids to expensive private anti-technology Waldorf schools.
The point is that drug dealers stay strong and rich by not getting high on their own supply.
Alter asks a great question: Why are all the world’s greatest public technocrats also in private the world’s greatest technophobes?
Clearly, they know the dirt. They know the hell that is at the end of the iPad journey. They’ve seen the darkness, and they don’t want to go there. They don’t want their kids to go there.
But they want you and me to go there. They want our money. Their moral integrity is seriously lacking.
Alter is making the point that we might reconsider embracing technology made by people who have no moral integrity and who secondly wouldn’t privately use the gadgets they make so seductive to the rest of us.
Adler asks: Could you imagine the outcry if religious leaders didn’t let their children practice the religion they preach to you?
This book introduction is piece of rhetorical brilliance as it drives home the point that the technology that is being foisted upon us is by its very nature addictive. It’s not built to help us. It’s built to manipulate us. The technology makes money for its creators after all.
Video game designers avoid World of Warcraft.
An Instagram engineer admits Instagram is designed to send its users down a bottomless pit of addiction.
Smartwatches, Facebook and Netflix, like Instagram, are designed to maximize addiction and obsession.
The smartphone is an opium-drip gadget you carry around with you 24/7.
Normal people succumb to addiction.
Because addiction is about immersion into environment and circumstance.
Steve Jobs and other successful technocrats know the secrets of addiction, and the addiction model is what fuels their designs.
Making irresistible tools to ensnare us is the formula for success in the crowded tech space.
Therefore, technocrats are in the addiction business.
“Design ethicist” Tristan Harris says even normal people with strong levels of willpower will succumb to addiction when “there are a thousand people on the other side of the screen whose job it is to break down the self-regulation you have.”
New York Times journalist Nick Bolton, who doesn’t allow himself or his children to use an iPad, observes that the environment and circumstances for addiction in the digital age have no precedent in human history.
We can be snared by many digital hooks:
Porn
Online shopping
The list goes one until we’ve lost the very core of our being.
In the early 2000s, tech was slow and “clunky,” but now it’s fast. It has to be fast if it’s to have sufficient addictive powers.
Tech engineers do thousands of experiments to make the visual experience appealing and addictive. They’ve created a sort of digital Las Vegas to seduce us.
Newer and newer versions of these digital Las Vegas seductive machines keep coming out until they’re “weaponized.”
“In 2004, Facebook was fun. In 2016, it’s addictive.”
Behavioral psychologists say everyone has an addiction, even successful, educated people, and they learn to compartmentalize, which means be functional addicts, like the teacher who has $80,000 debt from online shopping.
Our substance addictions and behavioral addictions are similar.
Both stimulate the same area of the brain. But there’s a big difference. If you’re a speed or alcohol addict, you can do a lot to change your environment to avoid speed and alcohol.
But technology is different. It’s part of who we are, where we work, and how we connect with others. It is ubiquitous, meaning it is everywhere.
We can create boundaries and minimize digital addiction if we understand how behavioral addiction works.
6 Ingredients technology uses to create behavioral addictions:
One, it creates compelling goals just beyond our reach. We can never have enough likes or followers, for example.
Two, it gives us irresistible and unpredictable feedback.
Three, it creates a sense of incremental progress and improvement.
Four, it creates tasks that slowly become more difficult over time.
Five, it creates unresolved tensions that demand resolution.
Six, it provides a sense (delusion?) of strong social connection.
Smartphone screen time a day:
About 3 hours. We can infer that people who don’t use Moment are on a lot more. Not knowing how much we use something, and not wanting to know, contributes to behavioral addiction.
In the same way, food obsessives are asked to keep a food journal in which they write down everything they eat. This cuts down on eating.
Most smartphone users are addicts. They spend over a quarter of their life on the smartphone. And they don’t even know it.
Addiction is not passion:
Addiction is deep attachment to an experience that is harmful and difficult to do without.
Addictions arise when a person can’t resist a behavior (compulsion), which, despite addressing a deep psychological need in the short-term, produces significant harm in the long-term.
Addictions bring promise of immediate award, or positive reinforcement.
Original use of the word addiction was in ancient Rome, and it meant a strong bond to something like slavery. So the first sense of the word addiction was to be enslaved to something.
Passion is different than addiction.
Passion is a strong drive for an activity that is important and valued as bringing meaning to one’s life. Because this passion is valued, it is worth the time and energy devoted to pursuing it.
Whereas we feel free to choose our passion, we are slaves to addiction, which is a form of compulsion.
Internet Addiction Test (IAT)
The Internet Addiction Test (IAT) is the first Validated measure of Internet Addiction described in the IAT Manual to measure Internet use in terms of mild, moderate, to several levels of addiction.
For more information on using the IAT and building an Internet Addiction treatment program in your practice, visit RestoreRecovery.net for our comprehensive workbook and training programs.
Based upon the following five-point likert scale, select the response that best represents the frequency of the behavior described in the following 20-item questionnaire.
0 = Not Applicable
1 = Rarely
2 = Occasionally
3 = Frequently
4 = Often
5 = Always
- ___How often do you find that you stay online longer than you intended?
- ___How often do you neglect household chores to spend more time online?
- ___How often do you prefer the excitement of the Internet to intimacy with your partner?
- ___How often do you form new relationships with fellow online users?
- ___How often do others in your life complain to you about the amount of time you spend online?
- ___How often do your grades or school work suffer because of the amount of time you spend online?
- ___How often do you check your e-mail before something else that you need to do?
- ___How often does your job performance or productivity suffer because of the Internet?
- ___How often do you become defensive or secretive when anyone asks you what you do online?
- ___How often do you block out disturbing thoughts about your life with soothing thoughts of the Internet?
- ___How often do you find yourself anticipating when you will go online again?
- ___How often do you fear that life without the Internet would be boring, empty, and joyless?
- ___How often do you snap, yell, or act annoyed if someone bothers you while you are online?
- ___How often do you lose sleep due to late-night log-ins?
- ___How often do you feel preoccupied with the Internet when off-line, or fantasize about being online?
- ___How often do you find yourself saying “just a few more minutes” when online?
- ___How often do you try to cut down the amount of time you spend online and fail?
- ___How often do you try to hide how long you’ve been online?
- ___How often do you choose to spend more time online over going out with others?
- ___How often do you feel depressed, moody, or nervous when you are off-line, which goes away once you are back online?
After all the questions have been answered, add the numbers for each response to obtain a final score. The higher the score, the greater the level of addiction and creation of problems resultant from such Internet usage. The severity impairment index is as follows:
NONE 0 – 30 points
MILD 31- 49 points: You are an average online user. You may surf the Web a bit too long at times, but you have control over your usage.
MODERATE 50 -79 points: You are experiencing occasional or frequent problems because of the Internet. You should consider their full impact on your life.
SEVERE 80 – 100 points: Your Internet usage is causing significant problems in your life. You should evaluate the impact of the Internet on your life and address the problems directly caused by your Internet usage.
Personal Score
I took the test and scored a 57, which is a low moderate addiction.
University Students
We see that 48% of university students suffer Internet addiction.
Worldwide, Internet addiction is about 40%.
Game-changing study radically alters our view of addiction:
In 1954, Olds and Milner discovered that stimulating the pleasure centers of rats’ brains made them addicts.
Before this experiment, it was believed that certain people had a predisposition to addiction.
But juxtaposing the Olds and Milner Study with Vietnam Vets (20% developed heroin addiction), we saw that addiction was based on environment and circumstance.
You could have a healthy “non-addict” disposition, but still be a victim of addiction if your brain’s pleasure centers were stimulated effectively.
Welcome to the Internet.
Comments