Can We Exist On Logic Alone?
Tuesday, October 27, 2009 at 09:24PM 
There was once a time when I felt a great deal of jealousy towards people with a strong memory. Having a powerful memory makes you a better student (based on our current school system), it makes you a better debater (you can recall evidence faster), and it makes you appear to be more intelligent. As the web has developed, my jealousy has subsided greatly. Although I cannot claim to have a good memory (actually it's downright terrible) I will say modestly that I'm intelligent. One of those stereotypical kids who can get high scores on standardized tests but not a 4.0 grade point average in school.
Because of the rise of Google, the accessibility of pretty much any piece of information from the palm of our hands, and the not so distance future of clouds feeding data directly to our brain, I am going to declare that memory will become a less valuable ability. Our ability to process data and allocate it correctly will trump the skill of recalling it because based on my theory, we won't need to.
Whether this is the situation in 10, 20, 100 years, I do believe it is inevitable. Obviously this reality could scare some. There's the old saying, "those who forget history are destined to repeat it" and if we are busy recalling only the information that we need at a given point, we're not going to be reflecting on the historical data that would potentially keep us out of trouble. That being said, I believe that our technology will not only evolve in quantity/speed of data delivery, but also in relevance. What this means is that when you pull up data relevant to buying a car, you'll also pull up data around 20 years worth of people's car purchasing decisions and be able to make a decision on immediate information AND a long time frame of human decision.
Next problem...back up reserves. If everyone is pulling data from a cloud, it is assumed that the cloud is powered by electricity. If a terrorist attack, natural disaster, etc were to cause a failure in power would our collective intelligence fail? This would obviously be a horrible problem, but once again I'll make a prediction that forms of energy (and backup energy) will also evolve before we allow ourselves to rely so heavily on this system.
I started writing this post believing that Logic alone will be enough for us in the future, but now I'm not sure. This is obviously completely theoretical, but if the idea of limitless memory proves true, how do we protect ourselves?
Reader Comments (3)
Nice post. I think Jamais Cascio's stuff on this is pretty on the money (or perhaps it's just wishful thinking on my part, since it neatly presents a positive interpretation of how our brains are starting to cope with the vast flow of information raining down on us from the cloud). He believes 'fluid intelligence' - namely “the ability to find meaning in confusion and to solve new problems, independent of acquired knowledge” - will become something we value & develop far more than an ability to remember & regurgitate information. He's written about it here - http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200907/intelligence and I've put his thinking about developing new cognitive habits in context of a broader, technological evolution here http://bbh-labs.com/the-coming-age-of-augmentation#more-2291.
Your point about the perils of a future where history does not colour our decision-making is well made. Same thought has occurred to me as I think about the world becoming addicted to real-time, social / human search (it's gonna happen...witness Bing & Google partnering with Twitter within 24 hours of each other). But I have the same faith that you do that data aggregation & assimilation will evolve alongside... even if our genetic memory fails us, somehow historical information will get crunched, updated & re-evaluated, not lost in the annals of time. I believe this for no other reason than the fact this isn't just a tug of war between Logic & Memory. We're emotional animals too: our hopes & fears will protect us!
Logic alone is not man oriented. the logic bywhich what we understand is highly task oriented construct.Even if some probability parameters are introduced it lacks both sides of any issue and sees the issue or constructs the issue alone per se.The comp technologists and the new generation miss a healthy future and are moving toward robotic logic.Without understanding full info and inventing a logic wheel with partial data will beget further tinkering and wasteful stress and issues.
I find the modern youth working on the socalled logical ways lack free growth of mind and don't understand simple things holistically. Logic should be predicated on data with intelligence.Reinventing logic "from original wheel" (the way programs are written is not good for growth of the world.
Venkat,
Thank you for that. You make an excellent point.