Summary The article describes a decline in human intelligence, particularly among young people. The decline is attributed to reducedk reading habits and the negative impact of excessive screen time on cognitive abilities.
this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
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Not really surprising given how all the social information delivery services are designed for a constant wall of short dopamine hits, and the platforms used to access the information are designed so no actual skill is needed to be able to access the information delivery services.
You give a rat a button that's tied into their brain's pleasure center, the rat will push the button until they die.
All computer-tech needs to be made more open. Not just from an observational standpoint, but the act of making disparate systems work together requires learning and knowledge beyond push button, receive good feels. Megacorp one-stop-shop software/hardware platforms need to be broken up. Both from a walled garden echo chamber perspective, and from a user-use perspective. When a company controls the entire experience, it is too easy to ensure their user is always engaging with their products and spending money/time. Making that company's life harder, makes the technology better for humanity.
Algorithms optimized for dopamine hits must be banned. As soon as our machines became revenue generators tuned for consumption, it was game over. Older systems, one used to have to learn at least basic things to accomplish a goal, which promoted the act of learning in general.
Basic hardware/software interaction and learning were useful side-effects of personal compute from the 1970s-early aughts. One was forced to occasionally open or fix hardware, one was forced to understand how the software worked. One ended up with basic understanding and approachability of the machines one used. Devices today are just expensive consumption toys with zero knowledge needed to consume. When they malfunction, the user has no reason or encouragement to attempt to fix them, as they can't see why the device ceased to work.
Big Tech has run amok too long. Governments are barely regulating them. We humans just gotta start saying no.
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).
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