- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
I wonder if you could analyze internet discussions for an effect.
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I fucking believe it.
What does Chat Gpt say about this?
I wouldn’t worry about it … it wasn’t that high to begin with
I always remind my friends when we have political debates about so many things … we aren’t that many steps away from the cave we emerged from 100,000 years ago
I can’t help but think how much science fiction had stories where a civilization created machines to make their lives easier until there was no one left who knew how the machines worked or anyone who could fix them.
Those stories always seemed so far away yet here we are at the beginning with LLMs and machine learning.
Bored people can now tune into (source of entertainment) instead of learning.
I don’t think the capacity for intelligence has dropped significantly, rather we as a society dedicate our time differently.
entertainment
Bingo. We have a winner.
Lack of mental lifting. Critical thinking becomes too hard. Why innovate? The country has become fat, dumb and happy.
Every generation will be more intelligent than the last, our exponentially complicating world requires it.
Every generation will be more knowledgable than the previous… but there is no guarantee they’ll be more intelligent.
There’s also no real proof that high intelligence is actually a productive evolutionary trait.
We’re juuuuuuuuust smart enough to grow like a cancerous parasite and are getting close to killing our sickly host organism.
i’m optimistic enough to believe we’ll be like
Since humans have made many horrendous things we will easily agree on some things we would want to change in humanity. Yet, at some point, it’s difficult to define exactly what would be better … what would be more “productive” as you wrote.
Tech companies hire psychologists to behavior modify us to be engagement zombies. That alone must have done a number on intelligence.
One, we’ve off loaded much of our critical thinking and researching skills to Google et al. This will only get worse as we develop stronger AI assistants that perform a majority of the “thinking” tasks. Technology frees the mind in some ways and reduces the need for certain functions. I read an article probably 10 years ago about how Japanese struggle to write because cell phones and computers have taken over much of that skill.
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The FT source seems to be behind a paywall, and this article seems to be jumping between a bunch of possibly unrelated issues (focusing on young adult cognitive decline but looking at whole population reading rates and numeracy ability).
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It’s not, it’s not having to do the math or the remembering. The brain is a muscle, when you have your phone doing all the hard work it doesn’t need to be as buff. LLMs will worsen this problem even more. Microplastics? Maybe single digit consequences.
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Lol, you aren’t wrong there.
You (and everyone) are getting dumber because as convenience increases, intelligence decreases.
They didn’t remove math lol
You don’t pass classes if you don’t pass tests
Don’t even think about saying some dumb shit like “they pass them anyway” because that doesn’t actually happen
Ah yes because, as we all know, you MUST pass classes in order to participate in society. And clearly no one can ever possibly cheat because it’s against the rules. Problem solved!
Cheating is against the rules and you shouldn’t do it
Only after I can afford to get away with it
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At my college you could basically tell your teacher you’re depressed and get a passing grade regardless of your work.
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Solving for X is easy. X is always DMX, because X is gonna give it to you. Though I will agree solving for X has become a lot harder since DMX passed away.
This article seems to be only looking at America based off the sources that I can access without a paywall
is anyone here talking about the systematic dismantling of public education and starving of teachers and children in terms of learning resources and actual food
also i again have to complain about Idiocracy, the comedy film that suggests intelligent rich people will solve our problems and stupid poor people will doom society, where in reality you have incredibly wealthy and also incurious, unintelligent ghouls hoarding generational wealth, making it a top priority to have tons of children in order to make their ‘superior’ genes take over.
The fact that teachers need to beg for pencils is disgraceful. Teachers should get paid more and not have to pay for their supplies.
I agree. Idiocracy is a funny movie, but that’s it. The entire premise of “stupid people make stupid children” is based in eugenics.
Idiocracy keeps becoming truer and truer every year.
Shit. I know shit’s bad right now, with all that starving bullshit, and the dust storms, and we are running out of french fries and burrito coverings. But I got a solution.
Unfortunately, that movie’s main message was about eugenics. I am not arguing that anti-intellectualism is not spreading like a cancer, but that movie is not the best thing to reference.
I don’t think it ever actually promoted eugenics. It just explored the natural consequences of two facts in a comedic way:
- Intelligence has a hereditary component to it.
- Stupid people have more kids.
It never tries to push any eugenics-based agenda. It would have if they tried to say that dumb people shouldn’t be allowed to have kids, but they never went anywhere near that.
Wealth has a hereditary component.
- Intelligence has a hereditary component to it.
That is eugenics. https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/fact-sheets/Eugenics-and-Scientific-Racism
If one believes the accuracy of film’s central premise—that the dumb are reproducing at a higher rate than the smart, which will lower the world’s intelligence until idiocy reigns supreme—it’s only natural to want to stop that from happening. From there, it’s not at all that great a leap to begin believing that maybe there should be some kind of policy only allowing intelligent people to reproduce—in other words, sterilize the dumb.
This is just the author asserting their own absurd leaps in logic as the intended message behind the movie, which it clearly isn’t.
A 2015 Pew study looked at how many kids that women with postgraduate degrees have given birth to over the past half-century. In 1994, 30 percent of women with a master’s degree or higher were childless, a number that’s since dropped to 22 percent. In 1976, 10 percent of said women had one child, while in 2014 that numbers up to 18 percent; those with two kids rose even more dramatically, from 22 to 35 percent.
The author draws the wrong conclusion from this data. Just because women with degrees are having more kids now than in the past doesn’t mean that women without degrees haven’t always had more kids than women with degrees. It’s very telling that they never bring those numbers up.
The issue is the thought that people cannot grow and learn. Regardless of upbringing, anybody can choose to persue knowledge. The horrible state of public education is most likely the root cause, in my opinion. The US has chose not to invest in it’s people and now we are seeing the results.
You’re absolutely right that access to education can greatly improve intelligence. Critical thinking skills are just that - skills that must be learned. Genetics are just one of countless factors involved in how intelligent someone ends up being.
I saw Idiocracy a while ago, so I can’t remember every detail to bring up examples, but I think the characters surrounding the main character did show growth and a willingness to try to learn things. I don’t think we see much of an education system in that movie’s portrayal of the future either.
It’s also worth noting that while your genetics absolutely affects your brain structure and chemistry, parents can pass on stupidity or intelligence to their children in more ways than just genetically. After all, most people learn more from their parents than from anyone else.
I would recommend rewatching it. I tried to rewatch it with a friend and didn’t get more than 30mins in before they were done.
Yeah as the smart child of two dumbfuck parents who can barely read please stop repeating this dumb shit.
Two smart people don’t always make a smart baby. Two dumb people don’t always make a dumb baby.
It is eugenics.
If you automatically assumed that intelligence having a hereditary component to it meant that I was trying to say that all dumb people’s children were also dumb 100% of the time, you might not be as smart as you think.
It is simpler than all that. Elite parents send their children to elite schools and universities. Their children then learn how the world works and are equipped with the skills to engage with the people running things.
The lower classes do not value education in this fashion. Their children do not have parents at home who understand how the world works or how our society is organized. Even if those children are smart or gifted they have no idea how to learn the skills they need or how to properly use their gifted abilities.
I can believe it. Physical inactivity, less creative play for children, distraction all the time.
Mind you, in some ways I don’t buy it - the two of my kids who were very academically motivated both learned much more in school than I did (I went during a conservative time when the schools were doing “back to basics” which didn’t help, but simple research before the Internet was so difficult that I didn’t have access to as much as they did, it took more effort to learn less) and those two are whip-smart. So I think the potential to be smart is higher now. Also maybe we have included more people in the measurements now that it’s easier to get the data.
But physical inactivity does harm brain health, plastic probably does, the dumbing down again in the schools here (is this some 40-50 year cycle?) certainly does. I do, like @[email protected] work at maintaining my thinking by trying to learn new things, not just get good at what I am good at already; and do a lot to maintain physical health, meditate, and try to guard my sleep as much as possible within the context of a normal life.
Its a lot of work but you have to constantly push. I am 42, but I read a few dozen books a year, I’m constantly learning new languages, new instruments, I write short stories for fun, do creative projects, and meditate. I still feel really sharp but I’m throwing down everyday.
Neat! Tell us more!
You sound like you’re consumed by your own ambition. Hope you’re happy though.
Not really I mostly do it for entertainment and because I like to see what I can do
Sounds like he’s living his best life to me.
