[indubitable]

Is depersonalized social media, such as this site, any different? I think media aggregation is of course a hugely valuable resource. But what ratio of our time do we spend discussing things versus learning new things. And how much of the discussion is at all productive?

I wonder about the time and physiological consequences. In particular the behavior of rapidly clicking back to these sites checking to see if anything interesting has popped up or if you have any discussions ongoing - I can't really see that as something that's particularly great for our longterm healthfulness. It's likely not just a correlation that the average human attention span has fallen by 33% just since 2000. We now have a lower attention span than goldfish. [1]

My justification is I've certainly changed my views on numerous things thanks to these interactions, and I've also even managed to convince a few people to change their views on various things. And that, on a high enough level, is how society evolves. But on the other hand the literally exact same justification can be used to argue that water cooler gossip is a socially productive behavior.

[1] - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/03/12/humans-have-sh...