‘A Theory of Dumb’ (Part 2)

In the November 17–30, 2025 issue of New York magazine is an article entitled “A Theory of Dumb”, written by Lane Brown. I shared and discussed the article’s highlights with my class in Media Law and Ethics on the last day of class last week, followed by a fellowship merienda cena as my sem-ender tradition in UP. Here is part 2 of that lecture:

“According to “A Theory of Dumb,” much of what we think we know is now a churn of confabulations or chats, received wisdom, half-remembered threads, and pop social science that satisfies our dopamine cravings but spares us from doing the hard work of understanding. It’s like being the brain’s version of a couch potato.

“Anything mysterious is attributed to algorithms, with no explanations or real analysis needed. Any aesthetic trend is given a reductive catchphrase, rather than asking what values or anxieties the trend expresses. Likewise, anything that requires effort to understand is dismissed as irrelevant. This reminds me of H. L. Mencken, who said that for every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.

“All these are ethical problems because democracy and public life rely on citizens having some shared factual ground. Let me then ask a few more questions: In your own feeds, how easy is it to distinguish between carefully-researched claims and confident nonsense? What signals do you actually use? When you share something because it fits your ‘vibe’ or your political circles, even if you are not sure it is accurate, is that already an ethical failure? Why or why not? How should a responsible communicator deal with uncertainty: admit it, hide it, or project confidence anyway because algorithms reward certainty?

“The article ‘A Theory of Dumb’ argues that when models are repeatedly trained on their own outputs instead of fresh human writing, their performance degrades. They lose nuance, skip reasoning steps, and drift away from reality. This is called ‘model collapse.’ The writer here suggests that something similar can happen to a culture: when media feeds on commentary about commentary, memes about memes, AI-generated sludge summarizing old sludge, our shared map of reality becomes thinner and more distorted.

“More questions: You are the first generation of media workers and communicators who will routinely use AI for writing, editing, and research. What ethical rules would you set for yourselves so that your work does not become just slightly polished copies of other people’s copies? Imagine a newsroom or PR firm that quietly lets AI rewrite everything to save time. What kinds of harms might emerge over five or 10 years, even if no single story is ‘fake’? As teachers, journalists, or creators, how do we keep ‘fresh human data’ in the loop (real reporting, lived experience, on-the-ground observation) so that both humans and AI don’t collapse into generic, recycled content?

“To be clear, ‘A Theory of Dumb’ is not saying people are hopeless or that technology is evil. It is saying that our current media environment rewards a particular style of thinking: fast, compressed, emotional, confident, and shallow.

“When you graduate in a couple of years, you will enter that environment as practitioners: journalists, PR officers, social media strategists, content creators who chase engagement, maybe even public officials who will be shaped by media narratives. The ethical question is simple: When it pays to be shallow and loud, will you still choose to be careful and honest?

“And if everyone else is busy projecting the world into easy content, what small, concrete things can you do in your own practice to restore the richness of reality?”