Have Humans Passed Peak Brain Power? (ft.com) 146
Across high-income countries, humans' ability to reason and solve problems appears to have peaked in the early 2010s and declined since. Despite no changes in fundamental brain biology, test scores for both teenagers and adults show deteriorating performance in reading, mathematics and science. In an eye-opening statistic, 25% of adults in high-income countries now struggle to "use mathematical reasoning when reviewing statements" -- rising to 35% in the US.
This cognitive decline coincides with a fundamental shift in our relationship with information. Americans reading books has fallen below 50%, while difficulty thinking and concentrating among 18-year-olds has climbed sharply since the mid-2010s. The timing points to our changing digital habits: a transition from finite web pages to infinite feeds, from active browsing to passive consumption, and from focused attention to constant context-switching.
Research shows that intentional use of digital technologies can be beneficial, but the passive consumption dominating recent years impairs verbal processing, attention, working memory and self-regulation.
Some of the cited research in the story:
New PIAAC results show declining literacy and increasing inequality in many European countries â" Better adult learning is necessary;
Have attention spans been declining?;
Short- and long-term effects of passive and active screen time on young children's phonological memory;
Efficient, helpful, or distracting? A literature review of media multitasking in relation to academic performance.
This cognitive decline coincides with a fundamental shift in our relationship with information. Americans reading books has fallen below 50%, while difficulty thinking and concentrating among 18-year-olds has climbed sharply since the mid-2010s. The timing points to our changing digital habits: a transition from finite web pages to infinite feeds, from active browsing to passive consumption, and from focused attention to constant context-switching.
Research shows that intentional use of digital technologies can be beneficial, but the passive consumption dominating recent years impairs verbal processing, attention, working memory and self-regulation.
Some of the cited research in the story:
New PIAAC results show declining literacy and increasing inequality in many European countries â" Better adult learning is necessary;
Have attention spans been declining?;
Short- and long-term effects of passive and active screen time on young children's phonological memory;
Efficient, helpful, or distracting? A literature review of media multitasking in relation to academic performance.
natural selection (Score:5, Interesting)
Who is having the most babies? The best and brightest? Or the dumbest? QED.
Re: (Score:3)
It could just be micro plastic pollution, or the damage done by COVID, or the post-truth world, or any number of things.
Unfortunately finding a control population that hasn't been exposed to those things is not easy.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Leaded fuel? You mean that thing we phased out almost 3 decades ago? We can probably rule that out at least.
Re: (Score:2)
Leaded gas was technically available, but I don't recall seeing it in 2000 except very rarely and in rural areas. New cars stopped being able to take it in the late 1970s, use had all but cratered by the early 1990s. GM cars just didn't last for 15 years back then, 8 years was really stretching things with american cars in the 1970s and you might have already had an engine rebuild at that point. Demand for leaded gas dropped off really fast.
Re: (Score:2)
In the US at least we finished phasing leaded gas out in 1996 but that process began in 1970 and even by the 80's its use was mostly phased out. The time lines are all wrong for leaded gas to be the source with people's average blood lead levels having long since dropped to much safer levels
https://ehjournal.biomedcentra... [biomedcentral.com]. .
"In the United States, the removal of lead from gasoline was followed by a more than 90% reduction in mean blood lead concentration between 1976 and 1995 [23]. This decline closely par
Re: (Score:2)
You mean like avgas, which is still used now and is leaded?
Maybe instead of seeing "paid Russian trolls" under your bed, try joining the rest of us in reality?
https://ehjournal.biomedcentra... [biomedcentral.com]
"In the United States, the removal of lead from gasoline was followed by a more than 90% reduction in mean blood lead concentration between 1976 and 1995 [23]. This decline closely paralleled year-to year reductions in the amount of lead added to gasoline. The percentage of children in the United States aged 1–5years with blood lead levels greater than or equal to 10g/dl fell from nearly 80% in the late 1970s to less than 5% in the early 1990s"
1995 and lead blood leve
Re: natural selection (Score:2)
Can't be bothered to look up avgas, got it. Russian shill.
Re: (Score:2)
ive shown you how lead levels in our blood have long since dropped to minor levels and you think avgas is going to make you look less stupid here? If avgas was pumping the population in general with problematic levels of lead then why isnt it showing up in blood level measurements? Maybe around airports people still get a decent dose of lead but that's hardly your average American.
I know name calling is easier than using your brain but give me a fucking break here... We're long since past breathing this shi
Re: natural selection (Score:2)
Avgas is a tiny percentage of the total fuel consumption. Unless you live right under a municipal airport's takeoff path it is unlikely to affect you at all.
Re: (Score:2)
I was born in 1977, so I would be in the last of the leaded children brigade, except for the kids who got all their vitamin lead from municipal drinking water. So second to last. I am an adult now, probably.
Re:natural selection (Score:4, Insightful)
Duh, 18 year olds are spending 10 hours a day staring at TicTok which creates an attention span of 30 seconds. They use AI to do their homework. They don't study much and very few of them have hobbies like building electronics, ham radio or programming anymore. Any adult can see where all of that leads to; now there is hard data backing that observation up. The huge shift is to doing massive amounts of passive watching instead of actively participating,.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Being informed about something is not the same as the brain development associated with having hobbies where you actually build things and solve the problems around building them. One is passive, one is active.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Its since 2010 so not COVID or post truth. Personally I think (so not founded in actual fact) is its the proliferation of technology we now don't have to think as much so we don't. 2007 was when the iPhone was released, is a correlation. Also there is too much bullshit being taught in schools, as opposed to teaching children relevant stuff. For example my daughter has to learn Academic referencing for her Vet Nursing course? Why on earth is that necessary? Wouldn't their time be better spent learning actua
Re: (Score:2)
For example my daughter has to learn Academic referencing for her Vet Nursing course? Why on earth is that necessary? Wouldn't their time be better spent learning actual skills needed for Vet Nursing.
You don't understand why she needs to be able to cite a source?
She was told that if she quoted an source she had to change the wording of that quote otherwise she could fail.
Sounds like the telephone game is being played, and lost.
Re: natural selection (Score:2)
Don't forget information overload since the decline coincides well with the appearence of the like button.
Today people are deadscrolling a lot more.
Re: (Score:2)
Dopamine depletion through smartphone engagement (social media, notifications) which kills motivation and drive, while numbing the brain, is probably one of the big ones.
The brain that is addicted to scrolling doesn't want to do hard things anymore.
This, with all the nonsense people consume on social media (they will cry about "lying mainstream media" but not hesitate to believe a random social media account causing a ruckus for engagement) are legitimately making humanity dumber.
Too much easy entertainment
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
One of my hypotheses is that the 400+ ppm CO2 level is having cognitive effects on those susceptible. If susceptibility were a bell curve across the population, we're now moving the cutoff line into the fatter parts of the curve.
Or, to come from a different angle, we know higher CO2 levels affect decision making and cognition (well established at higher concentrations). At lower levels, the effect may be subtle and undetectable on the individual level, but say, a 1 IQ point downshift across the whole popu
Re: natural selection (Score:2)
It could just be micro plastic pollution, or the damage done by COVID, or the post-truth world, or any number of things.
It's good that you can admit that you're part of the problem. The question is, will you ever stop creating disinformation?
Re:natural selection (Score:5, Informative)
That was the premise behind the film Idiocracy [wikipedia.org] that came out in 2006. Worth watching IMHO.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Unnatural selection: who's running the information services you're feeding on, people who want you to be smart, or people who want you to be a dumb AF manipulable piece of human trash?
Change and decay in all around I see (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
This is study not an opinion piece, it may well be flawed like many studies are, but unless you can show me a study that states that from the 1850s or the 1920s I don't think the argument is valid. The fact that someone might of doesn't mean they did or that the study would of shown the same results.
Re:Change and decay in all around I see (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a fair point.
If I was going to be snarky, I'd say that "would of" instead of "would have" is evidence for declining standards, but that would just be me being old :)
The one time you can say "could of" (Score:2)
Here's an exception that proves the rule: "could of" in "I tried everything I could of those suggestions."
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Except we have empirical data, here. This isn't bigotry, it's a disturbing trend. People are getting dumber,
You're right so far... (for a certain definition of "dumber")
and it's not because of some kind of hyper-rapid devolution.
most likely true - given that there are tons of other explanations that seem more plausible, but it's not like we have empiric evidence to show this.
We're training our brains to be dumb.
... and there you go from "empirical data" to wild conjecture. It could be caused by a host of things - environmental pollutants, technological changes, pedagogical trends, nutrition, exercise... some combination of all of the above
Re: (Score:2)
most likely true - given that there are tons of other explanations that seem more plausible, but it's not like we have empiric evidence to show this.
No- most likely true, since the assertion is implausible.
... and there you go from "empirical data" to wild conjecture. It could be caused by a host of things - environmental pollutants, technological changes, pedagogical trends, nutrition, exercise... some combination of all of the above
Wild conjecture?
Environmental pollutants are currently excellent, historically.
Nutrition is currently excellent, historically.
Exercise? Yes, because all the smart people in history were well known for their athletic frames.
Now that bullshit list was "wild conjecture".
Mine was rational conjecture, and I'll explain why.
As you note- technological changes.
Technological changes have not reached into our brains and made us dumber. Rather, they ha
Re: (Score:3)
Let's evaluate the exact definition (FTS):
deteriorating performance in reading, mathematics and science. In an eye-opening statistic, 25% of adults in high-income countries now struggle to "use mathematical reasoning when reviewing statements" -- rising to 35% in the US.
This cognitive decline coincides with a fundamental shift in our relationship with information. Americans reading books has fallen below 50%, while difficulty thinking and concentrating among 18-year-olds has climbed sharply since the mid-2010s.
That's a pretty fucking universal definition of dumber. I suppose you could argue that since they're smarter at figure out what to put into a prompt to get the text they want to parrot in lieu of reasoning and knowledge, it's justified caveat it, but that's a shit argument.
Re: (Score:2)
Nothing natural about humans these days (Score:2)
You were going for funny, right? Or are you one of the worst and the dumbest?
Most relevant book I've read on the topic was The Anxious Generation (but there are several other books on the topic that I would like to read).
The conservatives (Score:2)
The conservatives (who don't like birth control) are out-breeding the liberals.
For all of the criticisms which have been levied at conservatives, I think it was a particular stroke of genius to convince the folks on the other side of the political aisle that they could "save the planet" by having few, or no, children.
Education (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
I think this has less to do with brain power and more to do with education.
the "peak brain power" thing is just yet another moronic headline proudly presented to you by the ft, funnily proving the point.
Re: (Score:2)
Look who we have running the department of education. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Also of note Financially, the couple fared poorly for several years and, despite her husband working at a quarry,[21] briefly received food stamps.
Wonder what her current opinion of food stamps is?
Re: (Score:2)
She's not running the Department of Education. She's there to dismantle the Department of Education and sell it for parts, regardless of what the public thinks about that. [newamerica.org]
And who loses in the end? Anyone with a learning disability who could otherwise become a productive member of society, and lower-income high-potential students who won't be able to afford college. What an awesome policy that helps "make America great again" by making sure the brightest among us can only reach potential if they're also the wealthiest among us!
These people need to get kicked out to sea on an ice floe - I hear we might be able to do that kind of thing in Canada and Greenland...
The problem is that these folks truly believe wealthy human = superior human. All of existence is a game, and money is the point system. Those of us below them on the monetary scale are inferior, and deserve nothing because winners win and losers lose. And if we were winners, we would have either been born to wealth, or managed to stumble into it by having exactly the right circumstances presented to us to do so.
When the folks with all the money decide that's the point system, they have the wealth to enforc
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Found the person who's never heard of the Individuals with Education Disabilities Act.
Guess what? If you have a kid with a developmental disability, the funding for their individualized education plan (IEP), and the regulation around how that plan is formulated and followed, comes from the Federal Department of Education, and it's a requirement. Ask literally any parent of a developmentally disabled kid (especially autism) what they think of this process, and you will quickly learn you are 100% wrong, and
Re:Education (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, this article seems to be discussing peak-education effectiveness, not peak-brain capability. We haven't even started the genetic engineering revolution yet, so we have no idea how high peak-human brain capability will get.
I couldn't read the article because of a pay-wall, but based on the quotes used I also doubt it was looking at peak capability anyway. It seems to be looking at average capability. If you wanted to look at peak capability you should be looking at how the top 0.1% are performing over time. That would show you if today's best and brightest are really declining or if it is just the average masses who are showing weaker results.
Re: (Score:2)
I think this has less to do with brain power and more to do with education.
It might also have something to do with the metric for making these types of assessments. There are many ways to assess "brain power." IQ tests, SAT tests, etc. The results of the tests are just numbers, but how well do they reflect reasoning and thinking ability? This is an age-old question. First, what is reasoning and thinking ability? It's not at all obvious how to define this or even to ascertain how many mathematical dimensions are necessary to quantitatively define it. Second, at least partly
Re: (Score:2)
When you expect that no matter what your level of education is, you will end up in a low paying job working more than 40 hours a week while "influencers" make a lot more money, that causes a huge drop in desire to put in the effort to get a better education.
Re:Education (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know wtf is going on in schools, but people are being given diplomas even though the school obviously failed them.
My guess is it's less about hurting feelings, and more about No Child Left Behind, and the successor Every Child Succeeds.
I think the acts were passed with good intent, but schools figured out it was easier to game the act, than try to fulfill its goals in spirit.
Re: (Score:2)
The US education system gets a lot of hate, but other systems fail in spectacular ways too. In France in the 80s the 1st socialist gov decided that 80% of each year should have their baccalaureate at 18 (the 'no-child-left-behind equivalent'). In order to do so they had to lower the level so much that complete ignoramuses now receive it and can request to go to university (*). I mean kids who at 18 can hardly read. 50 years ago it was 15-20% of a generation, the rest went into trades jobs. Now they go to un
Re: (Score:2)
phones on tiktok 18 hours a day
The effect predates TikTok, and applications like it.
and microplastics in the brain are other big factors
No evidence of this.
It seems far more likely to me that the cause of the damage is the facilitation of looking up not only information- but entire arguments for or against a thing, indeed, entire chains of reasoning via that phone. The phones have entirely replaced the need to answer any questions yourself. You just ask your phone.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
So you're right- the fault may be more that of the parents, and the schools just... unable to assert themselves.
Re: (Score:2)
While there is probably no doubt the US education is going downhill, this does not stand for the wider brush of TFA stating that brain skills are going down in high-income countries, of which there is more than one. The thing is, education only gets you so far. Doing math, or using whatever other measuring stick of a skill, is a muscle - you either use it or lose it. With the highly specialized jobs in high-income countries, not many people need math, or even functional reading ability.
The success of fordis
Re: (Score:3)
I have to agree its not lack of funding, we have computers that are capable of delivering information that could only be dreamed it should be much cheaper, but somehow we have managed make education worse and more expensive.
Re: (Score:2)
Indoctrination is the entire point of K-12. Education is not. Test scores do not matter. What matters is participation in the pep rally before the football game. Saying the pledge of allegiance. Identifying with the school mascot. Waiting for a bell to tell you when to move. Etc.
The reason test scores are down and education costs so much is that parents don't do as much at home anymore. The majority of kids' time is spent at home, not at school. I'll leave it to you to try and figure out why paren
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Shit bag grifters want to privatize everything. Profit margins are boundless. Funding has not even kept up with inflation. Right wing magtards are largely uneducated - again, not a coincidence.
Re: (Score:2)
Not true, https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com] that is in constant US dollars so adjusted for inflation per student. However there was a dip in 2010, and that might account for the decrease however if the effect was so instant why wouldn't go up again afterwards.
The Matrix said it first (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe... but not forever (Score:2)
Maybe it has reached a peak, maybe not.
It's clear that if the population peaks, and without good AI, the total brain will peak one way or another.
It's not the population peak, not yet. But adding people is just one of the factors, so other things can accelerate the peak a little.
BUT, that doesn't mean that's a stop for humankind. So that peak would be forever.
To grow exponentially we clearly needs grow, but we need to create more "space" to grow without collapse our environment.
That's exactly what a space p
Phones (Score:5, Insightful)
I got my first smart phone in 2010. It's all been downhill from there.
Re:Phones (Score:5, Insightful)
Absolutely this. Smart phones, dumber users.
Re: (Score:2)
I see it all the time- people with phones have offloaded their critical thinking and reasoning skills to Google.
The brain prunes unused synapses. If you train your brain to use your phone to answer questions instead of trying to answer them yourself, you will get worse at answering questions.
Re: (Score:2)
All of your attentions are now belong to us. (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
I heard a guy talking about "the attention economy" a while back, and just hearing that term and looking around and what's happening makes so much more sense now. Everything is a competition for a newly discovered constrained resource: your attention. And you have the power to freely give it where you wish, but a lot of people haven't realized that yet and continue squandering it.
Your attention is a scarce and valuable resource to many organizations and people. Do not freely give it to billionaires throu
Not passed peak brain power.. (Score:2)
High-income countries = technological havens (Score:5, Insightful)
Smart phones make people dumber. And kids raised with smart phones never pass through a time in their lives where they feel they need knowledge in order to survive. They can look up anything they need on the phone, or text someone to help. AI, even as it currently exists, is going to accelerate this.
Social media exacerbates the natural habits formed around smart phones. Short, staccato bursts of info become the norm, and hard to think about problems, or subjects where you can't learn about them without consuming vast amounts of information, like most sciences, actual history outside the big flashy subjects, and other areas that lead to developing real brain power, are seen as wastes of time. Why study astrophysics when you could just follow an astrophysicist or two on social media and pretend you know astrophysics by regurgitating tweets and memes?
Nobody really seems to be thinking about the long-term consequences of our current tech obsession. We even see backlash to the suggestion we ban smart phones from classrooms because people addicted to their digital leash want to be certain their kids stay addicted too. There's no easy fix to any of this, save maybe de-incentivizing social media consumption. And the only way that happens is by making it less profitable for the big businesses currently profiting off of dumbing down our entire society.
Minor issue: Those social media companies currently have their C-Suite buddying up to the current ego-maniac in chief. I don't see it changing in the US anytime soon.
Re: (Score:3)
Smart phones make people dumber. And kids raised with smart phones never pass through a time in their lives where they feel they need knowledge in order to survive. They can look up anything they need on the phone, or text someone to help. AI, even as it currently exists, is going to accelerate this.
That doesn't make someone dumber; it makes them less knowledgeable in certain areas. Smart people today are learning to rely less on accumulated knowledge of facts and instead are focusing on building capabilities. I'm a software architect, but I don't spend nearly as much time learning all the details about the tech stacks I work with as I did 20 years ago. I have Google and now AI to help with that. Instead I put my efforts towards learning how to communicate more effectively, how to build influence at wo
Re: (Score:2)
Smart phones make people dumber. And kids raised with smart phones never pass through a time in their lives where they feel they need knowledge in order to survive. They can look up anything they need on the phone, or text someone to help. AI, even as it currently exists, is going to accelerate this.
That doesn't make someone dumber; it makes them less knowledgeable in certain areas. Smart people today are learning to rely less on accumulated knowledge of facts and instead are focusing on building capabilities. I'm a software architect, but I don't spend nearly as much time learning all the details about the tech stacks I work with as I did 20 years ago. I have Google and now AI to help with that. Instead I put my efforts towards learning how to communicate more effectively, how to build influence at work, and how to think more strategically.
Not being able to read a financial statement is still bad, but that isn't caused by smart phones. That is just poor education.
Poor education isn't helping at all, for certain. And we've seen our share of that in the US. But the smart phone thing is an accelerant for negative learning behavior, and a distraction that too many parents seem to feel is necessary within the classroom as well.
I don't think a phone *HAS* to be a negative hit on intelligence, but by and large in our society it has become one. Your statement of "less knowledgeable in certain areas" can, in some cases, be applied to "all areas" and thus is a direct link to
Re: (Score:2)
That doesn't make someone dumber
Of course it does.
The brain is a neural network. It prunes and reinforces neuronal connections based on use.
it makes them less knowledgeable in certain areas.
No, it makes them worse at thinking/reasoning for themselves.
Smart people today are learning to rely less on accumulated knowledge of facts and instead are focusing on building capabilities.
There's more value to accumulated knowledge of facts than just the facts themselves.
Is an LLM trained on more tokens smarter than one trained on less?
What if we forego training altogether and just train it to answer queries by pumping them into Google?
I'm a software architect, but I don't spend nearly as much time learning all the details about the tech stacks I work with as I did 20 years ago.
You have the benefit of a brain that constructed itself out of a need to be intelligent
Re: (Score:2)
Social Media, like you said, has caused a problem with attention span, but I don'
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Why is it a problem for social media companies to "buddy up to" the current administration but wasn't when they did so with the last administration?
I thought that was bullshit too. Don't assume calling the current admin out for being shit means I love Democrats. The only difference I can see between the parties is the Republicans fuck you hard and fast and the Democrats do it slow and gently while whispering good tidings in your ear.
Eugenics? (Score:2)
Because of reasons, eugenics is considered evil. It needn't be, though. Why not encourage people with good genetics to have more kids, and discourage people with poor genetics from doing so?
Intelligence is one possible target. Reducing heritable diseases is another.
Of course, I can already hear it: "Why are you discriminating against my family of obese, diabetic school dropouts?"
Re: Eugenics? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Define which genetics you want to encourage. Sir John B. Gurdon shared a 2012 Nobel Prize of Physiology or Medicine. I recently saw a short video where he was read notes from his teacher in school. Essentially, he had no scientific aptitude, couldn't absorb material, and finished 250 out of 250 in his class.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not a fan of slippery slope arguments, but this is one that is VERY slippery.
Once you start talking about encouragement of behavior, it doesn't take much for a malevolent actor to mutate that into discouragement of behavior. Now we've gone from "you guys are smart, please have kids" to "you have a disability, do NOT have kids regardless of how much you want to."
Oddly, that's exactly what happened in Germany in the 1930s. Except now we have genetic testing and surgical sterilization techniques. No fuc
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe AI will just sterilise all of us, ultimate eugenics.
Re: (Score:2)
Because of reasons, eugenics is considered evil.
I think you'll find there are very good reasons.
It needn't be, though.
I agree.
Why not encourage people with good genetics to have more kids, and discourage people with poor genetics from doing so?
What could possibly go wrong?
Intelligence is one possible target.
Actually, I think the best target is those that don't think eugenics is a good idea.
Stopping you from breeding will do us all a lot of good, don't you think?
Re: (Score:3)
Stopping people from breeding is what Eugenics has been about for most if not all of its history.
Are you ChatGPT or some shit?
Did you read what was written here and think that either of us was confused about what eugenics is, or were you just setting yourself up for your political message?
It's why Planned Parenthood (a eugenics program founded by racists who taught eugenics to the Nazis) provides abortions instead of child-care.
Margaret Sanger was a eugenicist, a racist, and a general piece of shit.
She also died 60 years ago.
She was vehemently anti-abortion.
Her mission for birth control was not based on her eugenics beliefs- it was based on witnessing her mother conceive 18 times, giving birth 11 times, and dying at the age of 50. She w
Re:Eugenics? (Score:4, Insightful)
Because of reasons, eugenics is considered evil. It needn't be, though. Why not encourage people with good genetics to have more kids
Poor, uneducated, and apparently dumb people can have kids who are smart and have a thirst for learning, that's why.
Intelligence is one possible target. Reducing heritable diseases is another.
Do you plan to prohibit "undesirables" from breeding, perhaps through sterilization, or do you want to reward people with what you consider desirable genetics for breeding, and if so who is going to pay for it?
That's a leap of a headline (Score:2)
That doesn't mean younger generations are dumber, which implies a single dimensional range of smart vs. dumb, they just act an
Re: (Score:2)
If you don't see a problem with that, you're likely amongst those with broken reasoning ability.
Parochial point of view (Score:2)
Grief (Score:2)
So we haven't been imagining that the younger hires are dumber than a shiat covered stick?
VINDICATION!
All evidence/argument to the contrary will be ignored. Anecdotal evidence beats all.
Likely AI Propoganda (Score:2)
Funny (Score:2)
This on the same day there is a slashdot item titled 'There's a Good Chance Your Kid Uses AI To Cheat'
Are we even pursuing it? (Score:2)
Active vs passive consumption (Score:3)
Not to try to dismiss our current problem, but it strikes me that I'm old enough to remember the tail end of the "golden age of television" and the claimed detriment to society TV watching was claimed to cause, since it was just passive consumption of information.
Despite the number of hours weekly our youth spent in front of the TV having declined sharply from earlier decades, we're still claiming passive consumption is the problem. That would seem to fly in the face of "peak brain power" have been achieved during the time-frame when TV viewing went into this decline?
I have a suspicion that it's not necessarily active vs passive consumption that's a problem. (Even in school, a lot of time is spent in classrooms just sitting, listening to a teacher lecturing.) It's probably good to experience BOTH active and passive consumption because they help develop different skill-sets. But I think a person could become quite intelligent, just by absorbing knowledge presented to them passively. I suspect the problem lies with the QUALITY of information being absorbed. The Internet and social media encourage a great deal of focus on things that are relatively unimportant/inconsequential, and there's usually a lot of competition for your attention among multiple applications running. (EG. You might try to focus on reading your new email but then your device dings to announce a new text message or instant message from one of several "messenger" apps. It's always encouraging you to break your concentration.) Worse yet? Your friends trying to get you to laugh at the goofy video of your cat they just sent you is probably NOT helping you as much as, say, the car repair YouTube video you were trying to watch to get your spark plugs changed yourself.
Our brains have features no other animals have (Score:2)
Why would we think they have stopped developing new structures and capabilities now?
humans are fucking stupid (Score:2)
Why do we still have homeless people? Why is crime still a thing?
These should be international priorities to solving. The solutions don't require new tech just willpower.
Homelessness - There should be free 150 sq. foot cabins available for people to live in 10 to 15 miles away from the cities. They won't meet 100% of building codes (other than tornado, hurricane or earthquake resistance) but neither to does a cardboard box or tent. https://www.theguardian.com/ar... [theguardian.com] https://palletshelter.com/ [palletshelter.com] No hoarding, p
Re: (Score:2)
we don't need no stinking education (Score:2)
Re:we don't need no stinking education (Score:4, Insightful)
I wonder who was in charge of our nation's largest and most influential state at that time [wikipedia.org], and whose presidential administration began the Republican attack on education at the national level [theintercept.com]...
Fingering the DOE for Republicans' deliberate attack on our education systems is sleazy AF.
Re: we don't need no stinking education (Score:2)
It's a good thing I'm not a girl, what with Republicans also continuously attaching women's rights.
Elois (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Go away (Score:2)
'bating
The goal shouldn't be individuals (Score:2, Flamebait)
We know what we need to do but we don't want to do it because we have these old systems in place where we want to keep certain people at a certain level. Sort of like how the old book brave New world would intentionally cause brain damage to create stupid people.
That was a wor
I could blame technology for it. (Score:2)
I don't need brains (Score:2)
Status is based on your bank account. Not your physical prowess or intellectual capacity. Don't have money, then you will be quickly stripped of rights, property, and political power.