Dispenser of THE FACTS

Let's get right down to THE FACTS. Skip over the dialogue, just tell me what HAPPENED. Okay, enough about the methodology, what did the authors FIND?

Gimme the facts

Whether reading a summary before skimming Shakespeare, looking at the answers in the back of the textbook before working through the problems, or looking at the conclusion of some article rather than admitting or ignorance or evaluating available evidence, we have many shortcuts available for getting at "the essentials", THE FACTS, faster.

Unfortunately, this knack some of us have for going straight to "essentials" and brushing aside the rest as chaff has wreaked havoc on our understanding and appreciation of a great many things.

Engineering consent

In conclusion-driven education, "what you need to know" can be baked down to a list of points that don't even need to be consistent with each other. Atheists are often quick to attack religious people for their faith-based no-proof-needed adherence to certain rules or principles. But, they are often guilty of the same serving of beliefs on a platter (à la "science").

There are many things that I believe, but I cannot justify them off the top of my head in terms of first principles, observation, etc. I take them on faith based on what I was told. For instance: air is comprised mostly of nitrogen, plants don't eat soil but rather take carbon dioxide from the air which is converted to leafy matter, and Sacramento in the capital of California. This is all fine and good—I think we could verify these statements without too much trouble, whether by referring to experimental data, maps, etc. 

However, a great many other things we are taught are far more ideologically charged, and many would argue far from being well established (see red pills, blue pills). More often than not, the things we are taught are presented as a homogenous substance: e.g. THE FACTS, "what you need to know for the next exam", "what employers are looking for", "what non-Nazis believe," etc.

This approach of optimizing THE FACTS delivery is often baked right into our technology. Tristan Harris in a short essay titled, "How Technology Hijacks People's Minds—From a Magician and Google's Design Ethicist" points out that the technology we use often presents us with what appears to be many choices, but in reality is only a narrow range of options which are not necessarily selected with our best interests in mind. What are the best ways to have fun near me? Google will give you some suggestions. Who is your favorite twentieth century leader, Hitler, Mao, or Stalin? Hmm. 

Knowledge, presented as a one-layered jello pudding mix of individual statements, is readily available. You can know anything, FAST. We can look up things in an instant. You don't have to study BLAH, you can just look it up. Or so the tale of expediency goes.

Good grades pls

The reasons to skip the readings, argument, and everything in between and skip to the conclusions are many, especially for those still in school or some other environment that incentivizes that kind of behavior. For instance, if you know you will get the same (or an even higher) score for reading SparkNotes on a novel rather than actually spending the many more hours it would take to actually finish that novel, why would you read the novel? Particularly, if the novel isn't something that particularly interests you (for example, I remember not having a particular interest in reading about planting potatoes in my grade school years), why suffer more when there are so many other things available to do which are more fun/interesting to you?

Some people are naturally predisposed to being goody-two-shoes students and trekking through the readings. I think in modern personality trait terminology, this sort of disposition would be called "high in agreeableness and conscientiousness". However, there is also great diversity in personalities and many students do not dance the steps they are instructed to do unless the perceived benefits for doing so outweigh the perceived costs. 

A counter-measure against such 'slacking' I have observed is for instructors to create reading quizzes asking about obscure details in the reading. This does little (if not the opposite) to get students excited about actually reading the books they are assigned. Students may grudgingly do readings to pass this sort of trial, but will harbor resentment rather than have respect for the instructors that choose such methods. 

A rebellion

Many people are waking up to what had previously been hidden or kept from them. In a renaissance of Flat Earth scholarship, young students are questioning THE FACTS they previously uncritically accepted and are re-examining ancient learning. There is a renewal of interest in Judeo-Christian traditions and the foundations of the West, reexamining the atheism and scientism presented à la snark via fedora tipping.

What are these autodidact Youtube watching, PDF downloading netizens finding?

While each person must be assessed as an individual, at least one trend is clear. Many people are interested in learning. Rather than just receiving a list of facts to know, they are interested in knowing how to build things (e.g. online followings, businesses, heavily modified vans so they don't have to pay rent), how to argue positions (e.g. the earth is flat), how to explore consciousness (e.g. through meditation, prayer), and much more. In place of memorizing conclusions, many people of the Internet are seeking know-how (cooking, programming, knitting, you-name-it), principles, community, and many other things they previously lacked. 

Cultivating criticism

A big problem that has arisen out of the "just memorize these facts" approach to learning is that it has cultivated a utilitarian/consequentialist approach to knowledge. Now, we should of course strive to make technology that works and methods that produce results. However, our institutions can also create "games" or "environments" in which perverse strategies are optimal. In other words, we are very capable of incentivizing the wrong things, thus making actions which might otherwise not make sense become sensible. Students are willing to give instructors the answers those instructors want to hear, to put in the minimum effort possible, and to otherwise not care in order to get good grades and graduate because it makes economic sense to do so. 

More pernicious than entertaining the notion of Flat Earth, however, is the disillusionment and disrespect that is emerging between many people, particularly younger generations towards older generations. When older generations, rather than serving as stimulating conversation partners, mentors, or role models to younger generations instead serve as fact-dispensers, younger generations find that going to the Internet or their friends for information is not only faster, it doesn't come with nagging, condescension, and other bad stuff. Why would a teenager ask their parents for dating advice when they don't look up to or trust their parents on having much sense about that issue, and can pretty much predict the (non)response they will get? The life advice "go to college and get a degree" after years of indifference is not very encouraging.

The character I am criticizing here is a "fact dispenser" and an "auto-grader". Check student X's responses against THE FACTS, give marks, continue. Beyond school, programming can come from any number of sources: news media, religion, and entertainment. For dispensing THE FACTS, software typically does a much better job than us; this role is replaceable by non-humans. Much of this is already automated which is why it is so easy to retrieve certain types of information.

Whether we (and by this I mean humans reading this article, broadly considered) like it or not, we are becoming (or already are) that older generation. In order to remain relevant to anyone beyond ourselves, we must return and reexamine why people and opinions in our lives became irrelevant and plan to not make the same mistakes. How can we continue to provide value, even when we aren't (administratively) in positions of power? Are we worth listening to if there is no quiz on what we're saying?

Being boring is not a sin in any religious text I have looked over. But, enabling evil and failing to protect what we value, probably can be called a sin. The evil that I am speaking of here is amoralism and nihilism which is accompanied by indifference towards principles and virtues and solely result-based thinking. Failing to protect what we value means not examining just what is good about the things we enjoy (e.g. friendships, music, food, etc.), recognizing what may threaten it (stay away from my pizza), and thus not acting to preserve it for days to come. Being boring may be a consequence, rather than a cause, of a lack of conviction and connection.

So, how are novels made boring? How is art and music made boring? How are we made boring?

If you've made it this far, please let me know in the comments below. Going on and on without an outline in sight may be one way to be boring. 😜