Consumption, Motivation, and Problem Solving in a Free Society

From the standpoint of execution, ts draft again repeats the new argument often, so that this one too can be boiled down effectively. You say that most people will make rather poor use of the opportunities presented by the democratization of knowledge, so far as their contributions to social problem-solving or activism for "positive" change are concerned. Let's grant the premise. As I have pointed out in the course of the conversation, Einsteins may be rare, but we throw away at least thousands each generation, with billions of children on Earth, unless every one of them can learn physics. Your argument repeats more than once this (to my mind) insensitivity to the numbers involved, Humanity has always starved almost all its minds to death. Only a tiny fraction of its available intelligence has therefore ever been applied to any of its needs. This was the first generation in which we had the ability to eliminate ignorance. Even assuming that only 1% of the human race will benefit powerfully from the universalization of access to knowledge, that would so immeasurably increase the available quantity oh human intelligence as to transform in one bound the prospects of humanity.

Given the simple clarity of the math, are you at all interested in the psychological roots of your skepticism about it?

You explained the value of creativity in your comment, and I agree that passing on acquired characteristics is the fundamental human activity and that curiosity is necessary for this. However, for this curiosity to be a powerful force for promoting positive social change, people must be willing and able to absorb information that will prepare them to take the types of action necessary for creating positive change. As we discussed in class, the information-sharing technologies developed over the course of the past century have the capacity to greatly increase access. What makes me question the efficacy of these technologies for facilitating positive social change is the type of information deemed worthy of passing on in the past, when capacity was lower. Because unrestrained and un-surveilled access to the net would make users the only limiters of the information they can consume, the social productivity of universal access would be qualified by people’s consumption preferences. The world would be better with unfettered access because people would be free to think whatever they wanted. However, I have doubts about the idea that most people would use this access to solve material natural and social problems that could improve quality of life for people not close with them.

We spent a significant portion of this course discussing how limiting access to information, whether through censorship, copyright law, or the imposition of surveillance technologies, is harmful. Decreasing public access to information through any of the means we discussed inhibits freedom of thought by parameterizing the inputs people receive. In other words, the systems which limit the flow of information can allow certain types of information to reach the public, but not others. Those in power of the limiting system can tailor the flow of information to their needs. In a society with complete informational transparency and no surveillance, however, the limiting factor dictating the types of information a person receives would be a person’s own preferences. In a society like this, how likely is it that people would exert significant effort trying to solve those problems which still existed? On one hand, people are curious, and love solving problems. On the other, people also seek pleasure and comfort, and we are able to construct minor, easily solvable problems to satisfy the desire for improvement in lieu of tackling major, global issues that are outside most individuals’ comfort zones. This leads me to believe that unfettered digital access might not result in a widespread shift toward consumption of information which could help people solve diffuse, uncomfortable, global problems.

The information we have about consumption practices in our restrained and surveilled digital environment cannot be extrapolated to make definitive statements about what people would do if they had unfettered access. People raised in a world without surveillance or restraints upon the types of information they view might have completely different curiosities and impulses. Perhaps, for example, without the anxiety of living under surveillance or capitalism, people might be less likely to seek out self-soothing behaviors or “fluff” media that serves as an escape from reality. I believe there would be less desire for such consumption in a world with freedom of thought. I do not, however, believe that the biological impulse to seek pleasure and comfort is frequently outweighed by the curiosity that leads to solving difficult problems. This might be particularly true in a society where inadequate access to information was no longer a major problem to be solved.

This could pose a problem because even in a society with total freedom of thought, there would still be problems that need solving. Although social problems like tyranny, censorship, and grossly inequitable distribution of wealth might be solved by freedom of thought, not all problems are social or arise from a lack of information. Global warming, natural disasters, overpopulation, and the individual tragedies of sickness and death would persist. I have strong hope that the global interconnectedness which would come from unfettered digital access would increase empathy for others and inspire curious people to solve these problems. However, I also think that completely equitable access could lead to a collective action problem where nobody would feel that they need to learn anything difficult or too far out of their emotional comfort zone – particularly if people are constantly exposed each person’s best ideas, emphasizing nearly everybody’s relative averageness.

I do not mean to imply that people would necessarily not be interested in solving complex global problems in a society with unrestrained digital access. The impulse to help and improve despite discomfort is strong, and probably stronger, than the impulse to seek comfort and pleasure. This gives me quite a bit of hope. My doubts instead come from the fact that we have no idea how human psychology would behave and change in a society like this. I believe that working toward uncensored and un-surveilled internet access is a worthy goal because it would almost certainly result in a better society than the one in which we live today. However, when so much of the current human experience centers around avoiding problems and seeking pleasure unless issues are so personal and proximal that they get in the way of an individual’s comfort and necessitate action, I simply cannot be sure.

This was a hasty draft. Writing about not understanding my idea was quicker than finding your own idea and having confidence in it. But you were moving too fast to be sure the idea you weren't understanding was mine. I spoke about the force of children's curiosity, which you morphed into children's creativity, which is not actually the same thing at all.

That's my idea. What's yours?

The Creativity of Children: Why is it Powerful, and What Goes Wrong?

-- By LaurenBaron - 01 Jan 2022

In the comments you left on my last paper, you wrote that “the greatest of social forces is the curiosity of children.” I’ve been thinking this through ever since, deciding whether or not I agree and trying to understand exactly what you mean and why you are willing to attach a superlative to the statement instead of just saying that it is one of the greatest social forces. You also spoke about the curiosity of children in class and when we met in your office. As I understood you then, you meant that such curiosity has the power to create change because relative to adults’ creativity, it is unadulterated (pun intended) by the ingrained patterns of thought and questionable values in which adults have been steeped. If I understand the basic idea correctly, a major question arises for me: how can we rely upon the curiosity of children to drive social change in a positive way if the much of the basis for that power is a lack of understanding regarding what is and is not valued by our society? This is the question I explore in this essay, and assuming I am missing some of the ideas upon which your statement was predicated, I beg your patience in incorporating these ideas into my answers upon my revision.

I have come up with two answers for how the creativity of children is so useful despite children’s lack of social education regarding what society values. First, it is possible that children have an innate understanding of social good which matches yours, likely meaning that the value of the freedom of thought is inherent and recognizable to people unburdened by social conditioning. However, if appreciation for the value of freedom of thought comes naturally, what destroys this by the time people reach adulthood? You have mentioned that “incentives don’t work,” so it doesn’t follow that the promise of an easy life through the perpetuation of capitalism and digital surveillance is enough to “incentivize” people to consciously abandon ideals they have held dear since childhood. If adult creativity is less useful because the nature of that creativity and the values underlying it have changed, then either we are doomed to lose the special creative quality through internal growth, external pressure, or both.

I doubt that internal growth alone, independent of social factors, plays a large part in killing the creativity that promotes freedom of thought. If it did, either getting older would make people stop believing that freedom of thought is important, or getting older would destroy creativity, or both. I believe that creative adults exist (I am one), and I also have plenty of evidence that there are adults which believe in and are working toward realizing the goal of universal freedom of thought (you are one). Perhaps these are anomalies, and losing these qualities is part of growing up for most people. However, I think that it’s more likely that external factors play a significant role, and that in the right milieu, far more people would reach adulthood with intact an intact drive for creativity. If this is the case, then curiosity could be preserved and used for good with the right social conditioning. As for how this happens, I think a combination of value-oriented messages and the technologies people are socialized to use can be catalysts for the death of childhood creativity. Remote learning and overly simplified user interfaces, for example, could hamper children’s creativity both by sending the message that a platform is static and “good enough” and decreasing the diversity in types of possible inputs and outputs (examples: no passing notes, smiling or frowning at the teacher, or considering the different ways an interface might be organized to get ideas across.

The second explanation I have for why the creativity of children might be so useful is that adults’ creativity is intact and could be equally useful, but it is simply not used. Emotionally, this is an easier idea to swallow. It holds the promise of untapped potential, an idea people tend to age out of after they are no longer told that anything is possible. If adults possess all the creative faculties of children but are not using them, perhaps the external factors described as decreasing creativity itself in the previous paragraph in fact only decrease people’s likelihood of using it. These external factors also might not work to decrease the likelihood of using creativity, but instead (or in addition) render people unlikely to use their creativity for social change. This could explain people like the King of the Undead Now Dead, who indubitably possessed powerful creativity and drive to use it, but directed that vector toward negative social change.

Based off of the thinking roughly described above, my own life experiences, what we have discussed this semester, and the technological determinism scholarship I looked over in undergrad, the best answer I can come up with for why the creativity of adults is not the powerful force of children’s creativity is a combination of my two possible explanations. Because creative adults exist and do great and terrible things, I doubt that growing up itself is a death sentence for one’s creativity. Instead, I believe that external forces, particularly the restrictive technologies we are socially encouraged to use, decrease both creativity itself (by narrowing exposure to the types of possible inputs, outputs, and things to think about them) and the drive to use creativity for positive social change (by decreasing access and exposure to the very information which would educate people as to why such access and exposure is necessary). I am having some trouble articulating exactly why I believe this within 1,000 words, but I am curious to hear comments on your explanation for your statement about the creativity of children and see if I understood the reasoning underlying your belief in the power of that creativity.

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