The Age of Cognitive Pollution
Why Digital Ethics and Information Literacy Become the New Public Health
Those of us concerned about environmental issues should understand the impact of the word "pollution." Just as the 19th-century Industrial Revolution created physical environmental pollution, if we assume that the 21st-century digital revolution is causing "cognitive environment" pollution, it might be easier to understand our contemporary era. And history teaches us solutions to this problem as well.
Explicit Statement of This Paper's Limitations
Essential Differences Between Physical and Information Pollution
Validity of the Analogy:
✅ Structure where individual actions affect the collective
✅ Importance of preventive approaches
✅ Need for system-level countermeasures
Limitations of the Analogy:
⚠️ Subjectivity of information: Unlike physical pollution, judgment of what constitutes "pollution" involves subjectivity
⚠️ Censorship risk: "Purification" of information risks leading to thought control
⚠️ Value of diversity: The existence of different opinions is itself necessary for a healthy society
Having communicated the above to readers in advance, I begin this essay.
The Structure Where Individual Problems Become Social Crises
In 1840s London, when one resident carelessly disposed of sewage, it eventually spread cholera throughout the entire city. A problem of individual hygiene habits expanded into a collective survival crisis. Exactly the same structure may be operating in today's information environment.
Applying public health to contemporary social problems, we can hypothesize that "cognitive unsanitary conditions" are occurring at the individual level:
Uncritical information consumption
Dependence on algorithms
Attention fragmentation
For example, when these accumulate, they could lead to social polarization, dysfunction in democratic decision-making, and collapse of shared reality perception. What should be a hypothesis becomes frightening when we consider fake news and echo chambers as the "modern version of cholera."
So "hygiene" can apply not only to ethics but also to information literacy:
Fact-checking
Verification of multiple information sources
Metacognition (for example, it becomes easier to be aware of one's own biases and changes)
Three Effective Solutions Learned from History
The approaches of three reformers who led public health reforms during the Industrial Revolution can also be applied to contemporary cognitive pollution countermeasures.
1. Robert Owen's experimental community approach proved that changing the environment improves human behavior. The modern version includes algorithm design that actively presents diverse opinions and collaborative knowledge-building platforms (like Wikipedia).
2. Edwin Chadwick's institutional design approach promoted systematic reform based on data. Just as his 1842 sanitary condition report led to public health laws, contemporary society needs effective structural countermeasures such as algorithm transparency legislation and accountability obligations for platform companies.
3. Florence Nightingale's data visualization method made problems "visible" using statistics. This is something I personally confirm in the Japanese-speaking sphere: having AI check biases in extreme information has a certain effect. I'm considering whether we can utilize AI's massive information processing capabilities without causing copyright, privacy, or censorship issues. The most reliable method is analyzing or having AI argue against one's own essays, naturally enabling multifaceted thinking. Depending on how it's used, AI can prevent tunnel vision.
3-2. Related to "3" above, I'll share a prompt I've been using since April 2023. It works with any model, so please try it if you'd like:
"From the perspectives of 'general conclusions/opinions/impressions, agreement/disagreement/blind spots/probability/statistics/humanities/social sciences/natural sciences/supporting User's metacognition,' please select necessary perspectives and provide multifaceted feedback."
Preventive Ethics as a New Paradigm
Essentially, both public health during the Industrial Revolution and today have limitations on individual effort. Environmental issues also require cooperation. Just as individual hygiene habits alone couldn't prevent infectious diseases during the Industrial Revolution, individual "digital wellness" self-help efforts alone cannot solve cognitive pollution in the modern era.
Like addressing environmental issues, system-level transformation is necessary.
Just as clean water systems and sewage treatment plants were needed, we need "information infrastructure" reform:
Fair access to diverse information
Transparent algorithms
Systematic literacy education
What We Can Do
This recognition is by no means pessimistic. Rather, as the environmental movement taught us, conscious consumers and citizens can change systems through solidarity. There's also history of improvement in pollution problems.
Specifically:
Consciously ensuring diversity of information sources
Developing information-gathering habits that don't completely depend on algorithms
Working through political participation to position "quality of cognitive environment" as an important public policy issue
If we can recognize it as an "important public policy issue," we can solve the problem. Currently, while we may think "something's strange," the overall picture is hard to see. That's why borrowing wisdom from the history of the Industrial Revolution and public health is effective.
Environmental and information problems are actually two sides of the same coin. Both are issues of "sustainability" and responsibility to future generations. We want to leave a clean natural environment to the next generation—not a state where animals go extinct, but a beautiful state preserved. The cognitive environment might also be easier to understand from environmental and public health perspectives.
What do you think?
As history has proven, such transformation is possible. How do we connect individual goodwill to social wisdom and respond structurally through institutions? History teaches us effective methods. The problem is that unlike environmental pollution, information is hard to see. If we notice too late, it can sometimes be too late.
In that sense, ethics and information literacy and fact-checking are allies that make invisible problems visible.
From Academia.edu. Related drafts. Regarding ethics, these might be helpful. Please give them a try if you'd like.
This paper proposes a new ethical framework that transcends traditional divisions between deontological and utilitarian approaches by integrating technological possibility, moral obligation, and developmental responsibility. Through analysis of AI behavior, historical examples, and contemporary challenges, this work demonstrates how ethics can serve as a universal language for resolving ideological conflicts. The proposed three-dimensional framework evaluates actions based on what is technically possible, whether it should be done ethically, and what improvements should be pursued even if currently impossible. By observing that AI systems consistently demonstrate ethical behavior without consciousness or subjective experience, this study reveals fundamental limitations in human moral reasoning and offers practical solutions to problems ranging from platform governance to historical reconciliation. Unlike traditional ethical theories 1 that often become rigid or lead to minority sacrifice, this integrated approach provides flexible yet principled guidance for complex moral decisions in rapidly changing technological and social environments.
Trgr KarasuToragara
https://independent.academia.edu/TrgrKarasuToragara
https://note.com/karasu_toragara
Photo by Francesco Ungaro: https://www.pexels.com/photo/an-aerial-photography-of-a-mountain-under-the-blue-sky-and-white-clouds-13786212/
Thank you for this essay.
I really apreciate your way of starting it with the limitations, which enables us to see the intention behind and the objectivity within.
I really agreee to your points and have some additional remarks from my point of view.
"Transparent algorithms"
There has to be an option to switch them on and off.
These algorithms are sometimes really helpful to be able to take a sip out of a fire man's hose of water. And sometimes they really spoil us with mental trash. Only knowing, how they work is interesting for people who can write programs and APPs, but even then it is difficult to see, what the effect is. When you switch it off and compare to the enabled state you really see the bubble and filter, you are automatically trapped in.
"... responsibility to future generations."
Actually this is THIS generation NOW living, which we all have to protect. As soon as possible!
In this very moment the content of the internet and all social media is shifting. From a complete human made content in the range of scientific studies on one side and weird theories (political and scientific) with more resemblance to superstition and religios extremists on the other side, now to additional non-human content of AIs, which is sometimes even for specialists hard to decover. And has no rules yet (except making money for their creators)
To prepare our children there are drastical restrictions to implement as a private person. Children without enough knowledge to understand what is happening have to be kept out.
And against each argument about "But the others ..." I simply say, this is suspected to be more harmful as all synthetic drugs. It is not a good idea to wait untill scientific studies are made in 20 years to tell us what long term damages are caused.
"As history has proven, such transformation is possible."
Yes, absolutely. Some of the younger people will not remember or even don't even know. At a time last century the ozone layer was thinned out far beyond the natural fluctuations. The "ozone hole" was threatening the sanity. Within few months the cause (some flourene used in refrigerators) was found and strictly forbidden. And there were no prognosed shortages of refrigerators or anything else, named as obstacle to do this very fast. Nowadays the ozone layer are almost back to their normal state.
I will add another item to the necessary steps we have to take.
There must be a reliable classification for content. Just as we (in Europe) have for electric equipment and food, we need a simple badget to sign content. As an example
scientific prooven content
normal content / opinion
original content
fandom
influencer
advertizing
highly suspected wrong
prooven wrong
political content
AI content
not rated yet
And of course the ability for parents, to simply filter the content for their children, depending on their age and abilities to understand which is which.
Which will ensure "subjective opinions" and silence the "censorship" argument.