Here is an excerpt from http://www.consc.net/papers/extended.html.
“First, consider a normal case of belief embedded in memory. Inga hears from a friend that there is an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, and decides to go see it. She thinks for a moment and recalls that the museum is on 53rd Street, so she walks to 53rd Street and goes into the museum. It seems clear that Inga believes that the museum is on 53rd Street, and that she believed this even before she consulted her memory. It was not previously an occurrent belief, but then neither are most of our beliefs. The belief was sitting somewhere in memory, waiting to be accessed.
Now consider Otto. Otto suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, and like many Alzheimer’s patients, he relies on information in the environment to help structure his life. Otto carries a notebook around with him everywhere he goes. When he learns new information, he writes it down. When he needs some old information, he looks it up. For Otto, his notebook plays the role usually played by a biological memory. Today, Otto hears about the exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, and decides to go see it. He consults the notebook, which says that the museum is on 53rd Street, so he walks to 53rd Street and goes into the museum.
Clearly, Otto walked to 53rd Street because he wanted to go to the museum and he believed the museum was on 53rd Street. And just as Inga had her belief even before she consulted her memory, it seems reasonable to say that Otto believed the museum was on 53rd Street even before consulting his notebook. For in relevant respects the cases are entirely analogous: the notebook plays for Otto the same role that memory plays for Inga. The information in the notebook functions just like the information constituting an ordinary non-occurrent belief; it just happens that this information lies beyond the skin.”
That is the thought problem called “Otto’s notebook”. A compelling case is put forward in the paper cited above to view a notebook (or equivalent e.g. phone, computer etc.) as an external memory that is equivalent in almost every way to “normal” memory.
Computer’s themselves have an “internal” memory called RAM and an “external” memory called disk. The RAM on my computer does not know right now that my last post was about Meditation, since I have not chosen to “recall” it from disk into RAM. However, it lies there in my computer’s disk. Analogously, I am not thinking about the location of the nearest McDonald’s until I recall that location from memory. What happens if I know that I know the location of the nearest McDonald’s but I’ve drawn a blank. This is the internal equivalent of losing one’s notebook. For, if you know you know it but can’t reach into your memory to find it, it is as if that memory were never there, despite the fact a memory of the memory exists. In the same way, if you can only ever recall anything that occurred in the last 5 minutes but you write everything down into your notebook and have an impressive sorting system, consulting your notebook produces the same outcome as consulting your memory. After consulting your notebook, you end up holding in your mind the location of the nearest McDonald’s.
Reliability of information is a concern. Is Inga’s memory more reliable because it exists in her head? If anything, Otto’s memory is more reliable, assuming his notebook is only ever modified by him. The fact access is unreliable is demonstrated by the aforementioned phrase “drawing a blank”. Human memory is also notorious for inaccuracy. Witnesses of crimes often report, for example, that a particular suspect of of a crime was wearing a red jumper, with absolute confidence. Later, they are shown video footage that the suspect was wearing a blue tee-shirt. Otto’s memory cannot fool him in this way, assuming the correct information was written down to begin with. However, you could say Otto may lose his notebook or it may be taken from him. As discussed in the paper, Inga can be sleeping or intoxicated which would make their memory less reliable or, again, she can just draw a momentary blank.
When new information becomes available we write that in our notebook for later consultation. What if we didn’t have to write things into a personal notebook, because everything already existed in a shared notebook? Would we ever need to remember anything? Do we already know everything?
Enter the internet. The internet, is not entirely analogous to our usage of the theoretical notebook. In our theoretical notebook we had “learned” something, which then meant it got put into our notebook (or memory) for later use by us. The internet does not require each of us, individually, to ever have learned anything that exists within the notebook that is the internet. That is, the internet is not so much a notebook as it is a mind itself. It “learns” as an individual learns and contributes to it as they would each to their own notebook. By analogy the internet is a single mind in the same way a collection of players create a single team, which play against each other as a single collective player, which we call a team.
Suppose the internet is a mind of its own (as opposed to just being a notebook) or analogously to Otto, it is an amalgamation of active learning (CPU’s) and a long term memory (servers and databases). Can we now say that if we have access to the internet, can we say that we know everything (that exists on the internet)? I would argue, as the paper argues that it cannot be said that we know everything on the internet. The internet is perhaps a mind, but not ours. Otto must process anything before putting it in his notebook and upon retrieving anything from said notebook, he trusts it wholeheartedly. The same cannot be said for the internet.
Not everything on the internet is objective truth (restricted to the domain where objective truth does or ought to exist i.e. I’m not talking about someone’s blog on hypotheticals of how the Avengers could have stopped Thanos).
However, should Otto be supplied with false information, which he takes as true, he will then later recall this false information. When this information is used, it will lead to an unexpected (wrong) outcome. This outcome is the feedback required for Otto to make a correction to his notebook by either putting the correct fact or by removing it entirely. Inga undergoes the same process, though entirely within her skull.
The internet can also go through the same process. As factoids become popularly false, they ought to be corrected or deleted. This is much easier said than done. Wikipedia does a decent job though. It aggregates a mutually agreed upon “truth”. Ensuring people can realise that something is objectively false and can also know it with a degree of certainty. This is beginning to sound a like the scientific method. Scientists disagree on theories of alternate versions of string theory, however, once one theory has substantial evidence the other scientists (if they are to continue calling themselves scientists) will undoubtedly sway with the evidence. However, some things are hard to treat with scientific precision, like politics. Fake news is atop Facebook’s “to tackle” list and recently Elon Musk announced he was interested in starting a Journalist ranking website to tackle fake news.
Until the reliability of the internet is 100% we cannot say the internet is a part of us. Believability is the difference indicator proposed in the article and for good reason. Imagine if we didn’t believe our own memory. Firstly it’s hard to imagine not trusting our own minds in the same way we distrust the internet. But once you do, you start viewing your mind as if were an internet-like, external resource. Currently we have responsibility to filter what’s on the internet and to do the extra research necessary to form the basis of an educated opinion. For now, you’re going to have to say “I don’t know” more often than you might like.
