Click, Swipe … or Pause and Question?
Authors note: This issue may be a little more philosophical, though sometimes taking a deeper look is valuable. Which is both a theme here and the essence of Paradigm Tipping – to shine a light on different perspectives.
In many areas of our lives, we run on autopilot. The inertia of our habits and muscle memory conserve energy on the routine things to be able to focus on areas requiring deeper attention and engagement.
As technology advances and expands into all aspects of our daily lives, we tend to operate across a broader spectrum in passive mode. A quick click, swipe, or brief verbal query brings immediate information access, personalized product and social recommendations, on demand GPS routing, virtual voice assistance, and IoT autonomous execution and monitoring of previously routine manual tasks.
Inertia -- the tendency of objects in motion to stay in motion, and objects at rest to stay at rest, unless another force causes its speed or direction to change.
It’s easy to be carried along in this inertia flow as suggested content, connections, products, activities, and entertainment tuned to our personal preferences are served up to us automatically. Because it takes work to proactively go search for different sources, find and consider alternate points of view, do an in-depth critical analysis, or seek out people to connect with having different life experiences or interests.
In the moment the inertia feels like it is propelling us forward, with convenience and efficiency and perceived choice. Yet over time, is it becoming something holding us back?
Ways of Widening Our World
I seem to get drawn into headlines like “The top X of something …”. Then after a while I noticed that my on-line feeds appeared to only have this type of content showing up. I was unconsciously, and unintentionally, narrowing the information into my feeds by a pattern of clicking on these attention grabbers. Search and social network algorithms are optimized for user engagement and retention. The objective is to get content (news, information, suggestions, ads, etc.) in front of us in a personalized way to draw us to click or swipe, based on perceived preferences that are continuously being shaped by whatever we engaged in previously.
Over time as on-line content and information served up to us is optimized more toward our preferences and activities, it tends to progressively narrow our world. We are fed more of what the AI algorithms learn to align with what it thinks we like, and we see less content and information of a diverse nature or not aligned to perceived preferences.
Broadening our world requires a mindfulness to actively make different choices and re-shape our preference profile by engaging in a more diverse way, and getting out of autopilot. So in my case, to bring back a broader flow of information, I intentionally, stopped clicking on these attention grabbers, and progressively and consciously clicked on diverse content, if and as it was served up. Overtime my feeds became more balanced again.
The force that shifted my inertia was a change of mindset from Passive Acceptance into a Critical Thinking space. I paused, and started questioning what was happening. I became aware of what I was missing, and started to analyze why I was only seeing these “The top X of something …” content. It led me to probe deeper, problem solve why it was happening, assess my patterns of clicking on content and the implications, and then make a choice to engage differently.
Shifting Inertia By Engaging Differently
As I share in the Inertia Model of Engagement below, we have a choice to shape the direction of our inertia, moving between the Passive Acceptance Zone and the Critical Thinking Zone. Engaging in the Critical Thinking Zone is like the game of Jeopardy! … it’s all about the questions. It takes energy and effort to engage at a higher state of awareness, consider implications, challenge assumptions, actively question things around us, be open and seek out differing perspectives and experiences.
Critical thinking -- the act or practice of thinking by applying reason, questioning assumptions, and analyzing in order to solve problems, evaluate information, discern biases, and make reasoned judgements and decisions
Critical Thinking is not just for education and research applications. Critical Thinking is an essential daily life practice, like exercise, good diet, and healthy relationships. Yet many things don’t require critical thinking. Our day would grind to a halt if we analyzed every thought and action. The Passive Acceptance Zone makes us more productive by employing habits, low mindfulness, and personalization to activities and decisions we make all the time or ones that have low consequential impact.
The key is recognizing when a shift of inertia between the two zones is beneficial. It starts with a question … “does what I’m doing have a bigger or boader impact than just this action or moment?” Staying in the Passive Acceptance Zone over a period of time can be like slow acting quick sand. It can evolve into stagnation, create habits from unproductive patterns, and generate a cocoon or filter bubble of reinforcing beliefs and experiences aligned to what we know. Without critical thinking, our senses and experiences become dulled like a continually re-photocopied image where the subtleties and crispness fade and the quality of the image degrades.
Is Critical Thinking Becoming A Lost Art?
AI and Machine Learning are a hot topic of conversation and application, yet they’ve been integrating into our daily lives for over a decade with evolving search engines, NLP and voices assistants, social media platforms, and image recognition. Emphasis on AI Ethics is a critical and prevalent discussion, highlighting areas such as AI decision transparency and explainability, truthfulness and accuracy, bias and fairness, privacy, security, and manipulation such as deepfakes and disinformation.
Yet interestingly, one of the aspects not as commonly called out in AI Ethics discussions is the progressive effects of echo chambers, confirmation bias, and erosion of critical thinking practices, stemming from algorithms optimized to continually send content across our on-line platforms that align with our points of view, preferences, demographics, mindset, and circles of influence.
“Critical thinking is certainly a ‘skill’ but when possessed as a mindset – a playful and humble willingness – it shifts from a labor to an art. It asks, ‘Is this true? By what standard? Who would disagree and why? What is the history of this issue or topic? What am I missing?” Terrell Heick, founder of TeachThought
Critical Thinking is like a muscle and has a use-it or lose-it impact, both individually and as a community. It requires first an awareness mindset to sense ‘what or if’ something needs deeper questioning, or to purely accept it as presented. Then shifting the inertia to seek out and find a more holistic set of information or interpretation, sleuth out the answers, and then make choices on a position or action to engage.
Today we are seeing effects of community fragmentation and the increased effort and inertia required to build a more shared social world view and reality. How might things progress over the next decade as application of AI and preference based algorithms increase, if we collectively build critical thinking muscle or if we let it atrophy?
Critical Thinking Practices To Exercise Regularly
In our ever evolving world, practicing and building muscle for critical thinking is essential. Similar to how we practice and instrument or sport, here are some basic elements of critical thinking to practice regularly.
Evaluation – assessing the credibility and quality of information sources, determining the validity and relevance of information
Analysis – breaking down complex ideas or information into more basic components, considering the relationships, assumptions and potential biases, and synthesizing to create a more comprehensive understanding.
Open Mindedness – a willingness to consider alternative viewpoints and new information, and being receptive to change ones viewpoint in the light of new information or perspectives
Discernment – ability to perceive, reflect, contemplate, and comprehend situations and information including awareness and examination of details, assumptions or biases, nuances, patterns, and underlying meanings to generate deeper insight.
Decision Making – ability to take an impartial stance to evaluate alternatives, weigh pros and cons, consider consequences, identify rationale or criteria, make a determination and choose a path of action.
If you’re interested in exploring more on ways of expanding perspective, check out my prior issue It's All In The Perspective. Or in Take A Step Into The Unknown, it explores how the conscious choices we make around growth or comfort, in the Growth Systems Model, can set us into a risk mindset fueling change or into a control mindset holding us in the status quo.
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