Are we discovering more than we can process?

[Captain Utopia]

I'm curious as to what people think has changed or is in the process of changing in the environment that would cause the brain to evolve.  Do we really think we are absorbing or are subject to more knowledge than our ancestors? 

I've heard the "ADHD epidemic" blamed on childrens inability to stay focussed with so many distractions crafted and targeted towards them.  That's new.

So, yes.

[Adios]

I'm curious as to what people think has changed or is in the process of changing in the environment that would cause the brain to evolve.  Do we really think we are absorbing or are subject to more knowledge than our ancestors?  

I think we are. I remember clearly when the way to do research was to go to the library. I was 30 before I ever even used a computer, and it certainly wasn't then what it is now. Information is everywhere. Things a guy like me would never heard of are at the tips of my fingers. Places like this board are always presenting new information to research. We are able to instantly communicate thoughts and ideas that lead to an increase in knowledge.

Some days it feels like a child in the kitchen playing with a pot and a spoon, constantly banging in my head.

[Jenne]

As to the BRAIN and what it can adapt to or soak up and use, it's a unique little organ (ok, not so fucking little, lol) that still confounds and amazes those who study it.  Again, the test of such things is to me not really how well we in the midst of our OWN cultural morass have adapted but instead those who have moved not only cultures and countries but TIME PERIODS as well.  The strange ability of the PERSON to adapt to climate changes, time changes, food changes--experiential and yet CRUCIAL to human survival (I'm talking depression and suicide, homicide, dementia, I'm also talking sickness and starvation--and I know those this has happened to as well upon moving to the US--my husband's uncle got SCURVY in the 80's after he moved here from Germany).

Because what a human experiences in order to get through day to day life is the essential of where he's moving about and how he's moving through the universe.  So those things that are shaping it are pretty damned important in the scheme of things.  I'm now thinking of those who used to rely on pay phones for contact with others.  Just that very institution is pretty much GONE in California.  So if someone doesn't have a cell phone and needs to telephone someone, it's pretty difficult:  businesses don't let you use their phones--and a lot of folks don't own a home phone/land line anymore, either.  It's all cell phones.

So here we have a recent invention--the cell phone--that's gone from community to public to private and individuated in a mere century of use.  And those phones now have immediate delivery of news, media and commerce.  You pay your fucking bills on them.  THAT is significant.  It's huge, in fact.  And there's a satellite in OUTERFUCKINGSPACE that directs it all.

I'm sorry, I'm no historian, but I do believe this is a big fucking deal.  Like the loom.  And the matchstick.

[LMNO]

I'm curious as to what people think has changed or is in the process of changing in the environment that would cause the brain to evolve.  Do we really think we are absorbing or are subject to more knowledge than our ancestors? 

I've heard the "ADHD epidemic" blamed on childrens inability to stay focussed with so many distractions crafted and targeted towards them.  That's new.

So, yes.

It's just different information, and the stresses we put on it.

I mean, if you were living in the Amazon, and you had to deal with an environment that could kill you 50 ways in 10 minutes, every day of your life, you'd consider that a lot of information to process, right?





In some way it gets to the psychology of marketing... people find what the brain naturally is attracted to, and then exploit it.  So it's not the amount of information, it's the way that information is presented.  And if we learn how our brain works, we can set up meta-barriers to it.  Which means we're not dealing with information overload, we're dealing with bastards who are trying to manipulate us.[/i]

Which is not exactly new.  Just more clever.

[Jenne]

I'm curious as to what people think has changed or is in the process of changing in the environment that would cause the brain to evolve.  Do we really think we are absorbing or are subject to more knowledge than our ancestors? 

Yes.  We have less physical environment to deal with that would inhibit adaptation or understanding.

Really fucking inconvenient to get to know a new fandangly thing when 1) you're diseased 2) you're too poor to afford it because of #1 or 3) you're hungry or 4) you can't read or 5) there's no way to get the 50 miles away to see it and get back because 6) there's too much weather/snow/mud or roads...

[Jenne]

I'm curious as to what people think has changed or is in the process of changing in the environment that would cause the brain to evolve.  Do we really think we are absorbing or are subject to more knowledge than our ancestors? 

I've heard the "ADHD epidemic" blamed on childrens inability to stay focussed with so many distractions crafted and targeted towards them.  That's new.

So, yes.

THAT is a nurture vs. nature debate that is well, sketchy scientifically.  For one thing...a lot of ADHD and autism diagnoses are popping up not because people are getting it at a faster rate but because the science behind the diagnosis is changing.  So whereas before so-and-so was a "problem child," now they are autistic or have ADD.

[AFK]

I'm curious as to what people think has changed or is in the process of changing in the environment that would cause the brain to evolve.  Do we really think we are absorbing or are subject to more knowledge than our ancestors? 

I've heard the "ADHD epidemic" blamed on childrens inability to stay focussed with so many distractions crafted and targeted towards them.  That's new.

So, yes.

I would argue that input =/= knowledge.  I think it would be interesting to look at a similar time in our history.  The time when books became mass produced and widely available.  I would think that would be a similar time where all of a sudden kids and all people gained access, in a relatively short period of time, to all kinds of input and information.  

[Jenne]

I'm curious as to what people think has changed or is in the process of changing in the environment that would cause the brain to evolve.  Do we really think we are absorbing or are subject to more knowledge than our ancestors? 

I've heard the "ADHD epidemic" blamed on childrens inability to stay focussed with so many distractions crafted and targeted towards them.  That's new.

So, yes.

It's just different information, and the stresses we put on it.

I mean, if you were living in the Amazon, and you had to deal with an environment that could kill you 50 ways in 10 minutes, every day of your life, you'd consider that a lot of information to process, right?





In some way it gets to the psychology of marketing... people find what the brain naturally is attracted to, and then exploit it.  So it's not the amount of information, it's the way that information is presented.  And if we learn how our brain works, we can set up meta-barriers to it.  Which means we're not dealing with information overload, we're dealing with bastards who are trying to manipulate us.

Which is not exactly new.  Just more clever.

I think we do have problems with adapting FAST enough to what we're assimilating without getting out all the societal kinks and well PROBLEMS that can occur.  Isolation is one problem that I think we haven't dealt with well enough.  And education on how to just not let go of the good things we had going before we adapted to a newer aspect of modern existence. 

You hear a lot about "disconnecting" and "getting back to basics."  What does that mean?  Why is that desirable?  What does this hold for our well-being and what makes it crucial to find/keep/explore?  Why meta-ize at all?

[Adios]

I'm curious as to what people think has changed or is in the process of changing in the environment that would cause the brain to evolve.  Do we really think we are absorbing or are subject to more knowledge than our ancestors? 

I've heard the "ADHD epidemic" blamed on childrens inability to stay focussed with so many distractions crafted and targeted towards them.  That's new.

So, yes.

It's just different information, and the stresses we put on it.

I mean, if you were living in the Amazon, and you had to deal with an environment that could kill you 50 ways in 10 minutes, every day of your life, you'd consider that a lot of information to process, right?





In some way it gets to the psychology of marketing... people find what the brain naturally is attracted to, and then exploit it.  So it's not the amount of information, it's the way that information is presented.  And if we learn how our brain works, we can set up meta-barriers to it.  Which means we're not dealing with information overload, we're dealing with bastards who are trying to manipulate us.[/i]

Which is not exactly new.  Just more clever.

Well, when I spent every day working outside in less than friendly places my brain automatically processed things around me. In those places the world shrinks to a very small place, limiting the amount of processing required.

[LMNO]

I'll agree that some aspects of technology haven't been fully explored, such as whether a forum of friends is a psychologically beneficial as a group of people you physically inteact with.  But at the same time, you can't just say that "new=bad", and build your argument from that.

Personally, I think that from a psychological standpoint, you fuckers are just as mentally and socially important as the faggots I normally hang out with every weekend*.  And I get sick of sociologists who try to make money decrying the collapse of society because of the free flow of information.

But the inability of current society to adapt to new technology, especially beneficial new technology, is not the fault of the tech.  It's a problem that the ponderous beast of society has to deal with.

We can bitch about how slow society is to adapt to racial and sexual equality, but we somehow defer when it comes to tech?  Use the same criteria, I say.
























*No, really.  I mostly socialze with homosexuals, lesbians, and queers of all flavors.

[Jenne]

I hope I've made no qualitative statement...I am just spouting off in a qualitative, I hope, manner.  That's why I left open-ended questions in that one post.

Because truly, as a WOMAN, I'd rather be alive and kicking in THIS day and age, right where I LIVE, than any other time and any other place (though my freedoms in other Westernized societies in the here and now would arguably be much the same).  I don't want to go back to killing my own food, making my own clothes or relying on a horseman to deliver my mail on dirt roads.

[Requia ☣]

So are you guys saying that the brain is not evolving to adapt to a new environment?

I am.

Evolution is a process that is marked by centuries, if not millenia, and it involves those that reproduce, and genetic biological change.

What we're talking about here is not the physical structure of the braing changing.  It's still a brain, and it looks like a brain of 100 years ago.

It's structural, its been documented in London cab drivers when they study for the cab test (apparently London is a maze, and this is actually a very difficult test as a result).  The part of the brain that creates new memories will actually grow when it gets enough work (not through cellular reproduction, the cells themselves become bigger).

As more and more information becomes available, not just from a library but at the tip of people's fingers in nice ADHD friendly formats, more and more people are going to have the same changes occur.

[LMNO]

But that is not evolution.  Full stop.

[Requia ☣]

Agreed.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

But that is not evolution.  Full stop.

Agreed. The malleable of the human brain is the product of evolution... the exercise of that malleability is not.