End game for attention deficit is stupefaction

by admin

After only a few months of compiling this library of blogs on matters of human and artificial intelligence, BAM has established its First Law of Smarts in the online world where these matters are discussed. Simply, the amount of intelligence employed in any act of communication will be in inverse proportion to the amount of clickbait on display. It is so ironic that such efforts are made to get the readers to a story, after which small triumph the primary impulse appears to be to distract them away.

This message slammed home with special force in an account of the continuing work of Nobel neuroscientist Tom Südhof in the online publication Scope, produced by Stanford Medicine. Neither the reader nor Dr Südhof himself appear from this article, nor from its companion piece explaining the science behind the Nobel Prize, to be much interested in distraction. And after absorbing this summary of the biology underpinning the most marvellous engine of wisdom in the known universe, anyone would be aghast at how careless we are of the potential for human intelligence.

Our respect for neuroscience, not to mention our regard for anyone in possession of a human brain, would be enhanced by a deeper grasp of the knowledge that Dr Südhof has acquired over three decades of focused investigation in his labs in Texas and California. If the destiny of patient enquiry is wisdom, the fate of all distracted clickbait victims must be the way of all goldfish: stupefaction before the final flush.