I recently got called out for this, and rightfully so. In my case, I think it’s ADD. It’s embarrassing to admit, but many times, I start reading, a thought pops in my head, I impulsively post, then forget to read the rest of the article. Sometimes, I find myself reading a comment and voting or replying before I’ve read all of it.
My understanding is that a lot of us on Lemmy have ADD. Perhaps that’s why, for example, it’s not uncommon to see the most upvoted comment in a thread being one that completely ignores what the article actually says, or posts getting downvoted to hell when the article’s headline or initial paragraph appears to present a perspective the community disagrees with, but the overall message is actually more neutral or agreeable.
Have you noticed yourself unwittingly engaging in any of these behaviors, or am I just overlooking something due to a deficit of attention? Oh, wait, was there another post on this topic last week that I completely missed? Ha, I actually did remember to search first this time, so hopefully not. Ooh, look at that rock!
I don’t think it’s ADD. There’s a book called ‘thinking fast and slow’. In that book the psychologist separates the mind functions into two systems. System 1 is for intuition, no effort, fast thinking. System 2 needs effort, slow, but precise. What happens here is that simply people are trying to be efficient with their thinking and they use less system 2 which is required for reading.
Good call. I can’t remember if kahneman talks about it in the book but there is a fascinating experiment on people who have had a procedure that severs the connection between the left and right hemispheres (epileptics). They exhibit the impulsive tendency to explain away sensory evidence that contradicts their previous statements. The theory is that speech centres inhabit the left brain and in the absence of a measured analysis by the right hemisphere they just make something up without apparently thinking it through.
Our brain generally relies on the first system way more than the second, to the point where what we think of as logical decisions are often actually intuitive ones that we then rationalize after the fact using system 2.
This is basically a power saving trick: Rational thinking uses way more energy than intuition.
I think there’s also a bit of rationality behind that system, because
a) Trolls will just lie and declare an article says something it doesn’t to “win” an argument or waste people’s time making them read their bullshit article (usually something hosted on a website you don’t want to give traffic to)
b) Some people on those forums might have tightly constrained time-frames for looking at things because they’re students or they’re working in a restaurant or retail shop or some other kind of closely managed service job where they can get yelled at by a supervisor for using their phone
c) There’s a lot of content to get to on the internet
So, I think it’s kind of a dick move to get mad at other people for not reading the article, and it’s definitely a dick move to do that if you don’t take the time to quote the specific part of the article they’re claiming contradicts someone else