8 ms·

I think the „my brain isn’t the same anymore“ sensation is pretty universal. Between addictive online media in our personal lives and AI at work, I think we’ve

I think the „my brain isn’t the same anymore“ sensation is pretty universal. Between addictive online media in our personal lives and AI at work, I think we’ve made mental effort largely optional. That must be a horrible thing. One of my favorite theories is the physical activity transition. In my grandparents‘ generation, physical movement became more optional as work shifted from manual labor to knowledge work or operating machines and transportation became motorized. Exercise was an ambient byproduct of daily life. Then it disappeared (exercise as a hobby was viewed as extremely weird, runners used to be arrested!) and a few decades later heart disease, diabetes, and so on became deadly epidemics. We now know exercise is not optional for health. And we’ve reintroduced it via gyms, clubs, etc. But that took decades. And I believe we’re now in the Mental Activity Transition. We’ve stripped away ambient mental effort so we practice it much less. I don’t know what the decades-long consequences of that may be, but they can’t be good. I hope it won’t take decades for societies to rediscover its value and figure out how to reintroduce it.

friendly_chap 9d ago
I have bad news for you: for the majority of the population mental effort was always a foreign concept. That's exactly what got us in this mess in the first place.
- thor-rodrigues 9d ago
  I mean, I’d argue that the overwhelming majority of the populous is not doing physical activity as they should. Even in a future with gym “for the mind”, I also assume attendance to be low.
  - pbhjpbhj 9d ago
    We have 'gym for the mind' now in the form of puzzles (eg crosswords, quizes). It's a different sort of complexity to writing assembly or proving mathematical identities ... most people weren't doing those things though. I'm more concerned that as a species rigorous education is giving way to machine-learning.
- DanielVZ 9d ago
  Not sure if always but probably there's a rise of anti-intellectualism in general since I'd say the 2000s. I remember being amazed by how intelligent adults were when I was little. Always doing cross-words, sudoku, reading books, discussing the classics, etc. But now those same adults don't read anything anymore, and just spend their time watching netflix on bed. The same adults that used to correct my vocabulary, grammar and ortography, somehow forgot the meaning of slightly obscure words and don't remember if a certain word was written with an "s" or "c" for example.
  - underlipton 9d ago
    I think the anti-intellectualism crisis gets mischaracterized. Common rejection of experts, academia, and empirical findings is certainly a part of it, but I tend to see more of an issue with targeted, self-serving ignorance, particularly among the elite. You have extremely intelligent and influential people balking at, say, the undeniable net benefits of universal healthcare, renewable energy investment, and cash payment UBI. Worse, they use their intelligence to attack interventions that run against their preconceived notions. Milton Friedman was not an idiot, and yet he and his acolytes did (and do) untold damage in anti-intellectual perpetuation of their outmoded ideas. The common thread between that and skipping conversation for Netflix is disengagement with cognitive load that doesn't immediately benefit you. They both suck, but I think that one hurts more, and hurts more.
    - airstrike 9d ago
      I'm sorry but just because I disagree with cash payment UBI doesn't mean I'm not anti-intellectual. Surely that much ought to be clear if you give it a little more thought, no pun intended.
      - underlipton 9d ago
        This is the anti-intellectualism I'm talking about. You're disagreeing based on vibes and not facts. Disagreement shouldn't even come into the conversation; falsify the net positive effects. The research is clear that most of the negative effects that most expect cash payment UBI to have don't ever actually appear. Employment goes up (except where recipients use the flexibility to return to school), productivity goes up; the money doesn't get "wasted" on drugs, and it doesn't pump landlord pockets. Giving people the money necessary to participate in the economy increases participation in the economy.
- FinnLobsien 9d ago
  I don't think that's true. Even if you think about what was considered junk entertainment decades ago, they still required much more cognitive effort. Reading about a celebrity breakup in a gossip magazine requires more cognitive effort than hearing about the same breakup in a gossip TikTok: -You consumed the thing for minutes at a time vs. seconds at a time and your brain had to actively decipher something, not just passively perceive. -You had to read and couldn't do it while also doing something else, which meant you were more focused. -You couldn't swipe in a split-second and have another equally stimulating thing that might be completely different, which meant you were more intentional about your mental context. The medium in which we consume something absolutely matters, independent of what we decide to consume.
mceachen 9d ago
The neurologists and neurotherapists for a family member who is a stroke survivor have been pretty consistent in saying that cardiovascular exercise and regular social engagement seem to be the most promising activities to stem cognitive decline.
- FinnLobsien 9d ago
  Yes, I think both things can be true. And also, we haven't had decades of mental activity being mostly optional, so we're not yet seeing the consequences nor science of long-term impact. In the 1950s, many doctors were convinced that exercise was actively harmful and running was dangerous.
serf 9d ago
>I think the „my brain isn’t the same anymore“ sensation is pretty universal. I disagree with the premise that you're propping up with the exercise example; I disagree that humans are thinking less because of mechanisms available in society. if anything I think people are thinking more than they ever have, and that has triggered a lot of people into overthinking themselves into a quagmire of inaction , judgement, and group-think.
- throwaway1183 9d ago
  I agree with this. We can think of anything and nothing can prevent that at all. I have to go therapy to be told, it's okay to not think 24/7.
- uneoneuno 9d ago
  [flagged]
  - lwood42 9d ago
    I detest the fact that that slur has reentered acceptable common parlance.
- FinnLobsien 9d ago
  Yeah I think this is also true. Maybe "thinking less" is the wrong framing. Whether it's an excess or a deficiency of thinking, there's definitely a lack of straining cognitive activity. It might be reading books, pondering deep ideas, painting a landscape, doing software engineering, or solving crossword puzzles. But all of those are happening much less due (in my opinion) to the factors I described.
- suzzer99 9d ago
  Telling codex how to program a feature is a much different, much easier type of thinking than back in the olden days of a year ago, when I had to get everything to work myself. I can't imagine that's going to be great for my long-term brain health.
  - 9d ago
boudin 9d ago
I have another suggestion which doesn't contradict yours. When I was younger I used to get bored way more often. I had to wait regularly during a week (e.g. for a bus, friend, appointment) or even at work as a software dev (e.g. compilation which used to take more time). This was also the case when doing some physical activities which didn't require lot of thoughts. Back then, before mobile phones with internet access, you were either reading something or alone with your thoughts in those situations. This was when I had time to think back at things that happened, processing the information I had, refining ideas etc. Nowdays those are often situations where we ingest more information like listening to podcast, reading stuff on the phone, etc... or situations that just doesn't exists anymore having optimised our work to remove those waiting points. I personally find myself with clearer thoughts when I break those habits and give my brain some time to be bored again. I do think there is "lack of boreness" epidemic leaving people with way more raw thoughts and way less time to process and challenge information, leading to some form of exhaustion and lack of clarity.
- XorNot 9d ago
  That seems less likely then people being tired and stressed from the costs of living and the increased economic instability. We have smartphones but we're perilously few missed pay cheques away from not having a house, with a capital class gleefully telling everyone how they'll all be unemployable very soon.
  - Folcon 9d ago
    It would be the greatest irony if failing to manage the economic fallout of the coming AI revolution had a larger negative impact than the benefit it brings We might just run into the worst recession in history as the heavily skewed service economy quickly runs out of customers who can afford to pay for it
    - carlosjobim 9d ago
      We're already several years into the worst economic depression in history. People aren't having children because they cannot afford a home. But it can get worse of course.
coldtea 9d ago
>I think the „my brain isn’t the same anymore“ sensation is pretty universal. One would hope so, but there are countless people that believe this can't ever be the case, and it's just lack of personal motivation that's the problem.
- FinnLobsien 9d ago
  Yes, this is a big issue. I really think these things are basically like cigarettes used to be when they were ubiquitous. I'd have a hard time blaming someone in the 1930s for being addicted to cigarettes. Everyone constantly smoked everywhere and their harm was rumored, but not proven. Try to quit smoking in that environment: the thing you're trying to get away from is inescapable and it's not even clear why you should quit. They might blame themselves for not being motivated enough. We're in that exact environment for the things I describe above.
- visarga 9d ago
  >> I think the „my brain isn’t the same anymore“ sensation is pretty universal. Another pretty universal thing is that we compare to younger versions of ourselves. That might explain the gap.
  - coldtea 9d ago
    If that was the case it would be a constant throughout history. And often it's also just "compared to 5 or 10 years ago" not 20s vs 40s or 50s.
serbuvlad 9d ago
I've been thinking about this as well. Certainly we will have mental gyms in the future.
- wdutch 9d ago
  I think they exist already... Crosswords, sudokus and puzzles have long been popular. Has the world also forgotten the brain training craze of the naughties?
recursive-call 9d ago
Additionally, everyone seems to have forgotten that covid can leave lingering mental symptoms for years after “recovery”. I wonder how much of the mental fatigue/ brain fog that people blame on tech is actually from covid…
- maddie0 9d ago
  It's not just COVID, either. You can get brain fog effects from a variety of things. The first and biggest is sleep apnea (woefully underdosed). Plenty of things can develop as you grow older. Some of them may have been present all your life and you only start to notice them when your body is a little less resilient. Food sensitivities, for instance -- eat the wrong thing, trigger a major release of histamines (which trigger both the stomach acid and a whole-body response). Too much of that releases other neurotransmitters, too, and you can get Depression and Fatigue too. (And then try changing the whole way you eat while at the bottom of a depressive slump where all the easiest foods are the likeliest triggers!!) Autistic people (plenty of us in tech) are especially predisposed to many of these inflammation-related issues. If you're brain fogged, see the doctor... and be prepared for a long slog of self advocacy, and maybe shopping around.
bethekidyouwant 9d ago
I think running down the road is still suspicious and to get you stopped by the cops (not arrested per se I’m not sure that ever happened…) which is why runners wear a uniform.
downut 9d ago
It's possible that I'm in your grandparent's generation, or maybe your parents. I'm 65. I don't want to derail the conversation, but I do want to correct the bit about "exercise as a hobby was viewed as extremely weird, runners used to be arrested!". In the '70s at least, running was extremely normal. Endurance bicycling was normal. For instance, starting in 1979. I bicycled all over the South: FL GA NC, at least. These were then as they are now quite provincial from the POV of alternate ideas. 10K runs were a thing, with thousands of participants. As were Marathons. Cross country running was a popular high school sport. If you want to talk about work, well I'm adjacent to 5th generation farmers. Self driving climate controlled machinery is a thing now, but! hard to imagine I know, people had tractors back then too. So, plausible as it might sound to ascribe some of the causality to flow from "the physical activity transition", I don't think it holds up.
- meowkit 9d ago
  I think the physical activity transition they are describing would have been closer to the end of the 19th century when mechanization really started to take hold (e.g. the car)
- SoftTalker 9d ago
  I'm about 5 years younger and yes running and exercise was popular in the 1970s. Maybe not quite like today in terms of people really spending a lot of money on gyms, personal trainers, and expensive bikes or equipment, but certainly not considered weird.
- dwedge 9d ago
  I can't remember which decade he's talking about or verify his claims, but in Shoe Dog the creator of Nike talks about how running for exercise was viewed as very weird in the last century, and he implies that Adidas pretty much singlehandedly changed public perception on this. Not that nobody did it, but that it was considered very weird and rare. He was only talking about running, not exercise in general, but I seem to remember Schwarzenegger reflecting similarly about the public perception of weight lifting
  - 9d ago
tayo42 9d ago
If AI at work is rotting everyone's brain then it should be like a superpower to be unemployed. But that doesn't seem to be the case...
- tristor 9d ago
  That's because the folks who are unemployed, unfortunately, are largely those who already were further down the curve. We're destroying the minds of those who were supposed to move society forward and gaining nothing elsewhere.
  - hyperadvanced 9d ago
    I struggle to understand this. I use AI quite regularly and find it frees up hours of my day to do consequential “understanding” work that previously got eaten up by there literally not being enough hours in a day to solve my own problems and understand others enough to help them solve theirs.
  - tayo42 9d ago
    Lol way to call me an idiot... thanks...
ethagnawl 9d ago
> runners used to be arrested! This reminds me of Ray Bradbury's excellent short story, _The Pedestrian_: https://www.libraryofshortstories.com/onlinereader/the-pedestrian https://www.libraryofshortstories.com/onlinereader/the-pedes... IIRC, this story also informed and inspired _Fahrenheit 451_.
SoftTalker 9d ago
Quick example which just happened, my adult son is starting a new job and was looking at the bus schedules to work out what time he would need to leave the house. One bus runs "every 15-20 minutes" and he has to transfer to another bus that runs on a schedule. So he wanted to know what time he had to be at the first bus stop to be on time to work in a worst-case scenario. This problem he presented to Gemini because he just didn't want to think about it. I look at ads on TV for AI platforms and the examples they show, of course they are a bit contrived, silly, or funny for effect but they always make me feel a bit uneasy... like why do you even have a job if you're using AI to do everything while you just dance around your desk or spin in your chair?
- im3w1l 9d ago
  For public transit in my city they have an official website where you can type in where you are and where you want to go and it plan it all for you. Can choose from arrive asap to picking a time when you want to depart or a time you want to arrive. This has been operational since 2002. More recently Google Maps has the same functionality and it will work in many cities across the world.
  - anon7725 9d ago
    I think their broader point is that it's becoming common to reach for an AI chat to solve problems that should take a few seconds of thinking to solve. Notably this kind of thing is not a search problem, since you presumably already know the schedules for both busses and just need to come up with a reasonable allowance for schedules not lining up properly.
SupLockDef 9d ago
We know already what's happening after decade of optional thinking: electing dumass Presidents, walking the same path than Germany about 100 years ago, cut scientific research, social nets, etc. We know already what's happening with optional thinking.
spoiler 9d ago
But historically, I don't think people engaged as much intellectually or mentally as much as we do today. And I'm not just talking about people who need to do it at work, but even "mundane" things like watching TV or Film. Heck, I have non-stem friends for which "pop culture" activities like wordle, pub quizzes, and film/TV are the most engaging thing intellectually. I'm not sure what they would have done if they live in the past. Would they find something else?
theodric 8d ago
I'm pretty sure you can get your brain back. You just have to stop having Internet at home/on your phone. 2003-04 I moved into student housing that didn't have Internet access provided. My first hard cutoff after years of being basically constantly online. Getting it hooked up would have cost me €130 plus a per-minute charge, and I declined. I got bored enough to play through Diablo II with a melee-only sorceress, and then I started buying/borrowing and reading books. Hadn't read in years; couldn't focus on the book long enough when Computer With Internet was there calling to me. Computer Without Internet wasn't nearly so enticing. 2 years later I moved into an apartment, got broadband, and reverted to my netbrained zombieism. I once again no longer remember how to read. I bet I could rediscover the skill a second time, but how could I convince my wife to let me get rid of the Internet at our house?

friendly_chap 9d ago

I have bad news for you: for the majority of the population mental effort was always a foreign concept. That's exactly what got us in this mess in the first place.

thor-rodrigues 9d ago
I mean, I’d argue that the overwhelming majority of the populous is not doing physical activity as they should. Even in a future with gym “for the mind”, I also assume attendance to be low.
- pbhjpbhj 9d ago
  We have 'gym for the mind' now in the form of puzzles (eg crosswords, quizes). It's a different sort of complexity to writing assembly or proving mathematical identities ... most people weren't doing those things though. I'm more concerned that as a species rigorous education is giving way to machine-learning.
DanielVZ 9d ago
Not sure if always but probably there's a rise of anti-intellectualism in general since I'd say the 2000s. I remember being amazed by how intelligent adults were when I was little. Always doing cross-words, sudoku, reading books, discussing the classics, etc. But now those same adults don't read anything anymore, and just spend their time watching netflix on bed. The same adults that used to correct my vocabulary, grammar and ortography, somehow forgot the meaning of slightly obscure words and don't remember if a certain word was written with an "s" or "c" for example.
- underlipton 9d ago
  I think the anti-intellectualism crisis gets mischaracterized. Common rejection of experts, academia, and empirical findings is certainly a part of it, but I tend to see more of an issue with targeted, self-serving ignorance, particularly among the elite. You have extremely intelligent and influential people balking at, say, the undeniable net benefits of universal healthcare, renewable energy investment, and cash payment UBI. Worse, they use their intelligence to attack interventions that run against their preconceived notions. Milton Friedman was not an idiot, and yet he and his acolytes did (and do) untold damage in anti-intellectual perpetuation of their outmoded ideas. The common thread between that and skipping conversation for Netflix is disengagement with cognitive load that doesn't immediately benefit you. They both suck, but I think that one hurts more, and hurts more.
  - airstrike 9d ago
    I'm sorry but just because I disagree with cash payment UBI doesn't mean I'm not anti-intellectual. Surely that much ought to be clear if you give it a little more thought, no pun intended.
    - underlipton 9d ago
      This is the anti-intellectualism I'm talking about. You're disagreeing based on vibes and not facts. Disagreement shouldn't even come into the conversation; falsify the net positive effects. The research is clear that most of the negative effects that most expect cash payment UBI to have don't ever actually appear. Employment goes up (except where recipients use the flexibility to return to school), productivity goes up; the money doesn't get "wasted" on drugs, and it doesn't pump landlord pockets. Giving people the money necessary to participate in the economy increases participation in the economy.
FinnLobsien 9d ago
I don't think that's true. Even if you think about what was considered junk entertainment decades ago, they still required much more cognitive effort. Reading about a celebrity breakup in a gossip magazine requires more cognitive effort than hearing about the same breakup in a gossip TikTok: -You consumed the thing for minutes at a time vs. seconds at a time and your brain had to actively decipher something, not just passively perceive. -You had to read and couldn't do it while also doing something else, which meant you were more focused. -You couldn't swipe in a split-second and have another equally stimulating thing that might be completely different, which meant you were more intentional about your mental context. The medium in which we consume something absolutely matters, independent of what we decide to consume.

mceachen 9d ago

The neurologists and neurotherapists for a family member who is a stroke survivor have been pretty consistent in saying that cardiovascular exercise and regular social engagement seem to be the most promising activities to stem cognitive decline.

FinnLobsien 9d ago
Yes, I think both things can be true. And also, we haven't had decades of mental activity being mostly optional, so we're not yet seeing the consequences nor science of long-term impact. In the 1950s, many doctors were convinced that exercise was actively harmful and running was dangerous.

serf 9d ago

>I think the „my brain isn’t the same anymore“ sensation is pretty universal. I disagree with the premise that you're propping up with the exercise example; I disagree that humans are thinking less because of mechanisms available in society. if anything I think people are thinking more than they ever have, and that has triggered a lot of people into overthinking themselves into a quagmire of inaction , judgement, and group-think.

throwaway1183 9d ago
I agree with this. We can think of anything and nothing can prevent that at all. I have to go therapy to be told, it's okay to not think 24/7.
uneoneuno 9d ago
[flagged]
- lwood42 9d ago
  I detest the fact that that slur has reentered acceptable common parlance.
FinnLobsien 9d ago
Yeah I think this is also true. Maybe "thinking less" is the wrong framing. Whether it's an excess or a deficiency of thinking, there's definitely a lack of straining cognitive activity. It might be reading books, pondering deep ideas, painting a landscape, doing software engineering, or solving crossword puzzles. But all of those are happening much less due (in my opinion) to the factors I described.
suzzer99 9d ago
Telling codex how to program a feature is a much different, much easier type of thinking than back in the olden days of a year ago, when I had to get everything to work myself. I can't imagine that's going to be great for my long-term brain health.
- 9d ago

boudin 9d ago

I have another suggestion which doesn't contradict yours. When I was younger I used to get bored way more often. I had to wait regularly during a week (e.g. for a bus, friend, appointment) or even at work as a software dev (e.g. compilation which used to take more time). This was also the case when doing some physical activities which didn't require lot of thoughts. Back then, before mobile phones with internet access, you were either reading something or alone with your thoughts in those situations. This was when I had time to think back at things that happened, processing the information I had, refining ideas etc. Nowdays those are often situations where we ingest more information like listening to podcast, reading stuff on the phone, etc... or situations that just doesn't exists anymore having optimised our work to remove those waiting points. I personally find myself with clearer thoughts when I break those habits and give my brain some time to be bored again. I do think there is "lack of boreness" epidemic leaving people with way more raw thoughts and way less time to process and challenge information, leading to some form of exhaustion and lack of clarity.

XorNot 9d ago
That seems less likely then people being tired and stressed from the costs of living and the increased economic instability. We have smartphones but we're perilously few missed pay cheques away from not having a house, with a capital class gleefully telling everyone how they'll all be unemployable very soon.
- Folcon 9d ago
  It would be the greatest irony if failing to manage the economic fallout of the coming AI revolution had a larger negative impact than the benefit it brings We might just run into the worst recession in history as the heavily skewed service economy quickly runs out of customers who can afford to pay for it
  - carlosjobim 9d ago
    We're already several years into the worst economic depression in history. People aren't having children because they cannot afford a home. But it can get worse of course.

coldtea 9d ago

>I think the „my brain isn’t the same anymore“ sensation is pretty universal. One would hope so, but there are countless people that believe this can't ever be the case, and it's just lack of personal motivation that's the problem.

FinnLobsien 9d ago
Yes, this is a big issue. I really think these things are basically like cigarettes used to be when they were ubiquitous. I'd have a hard time blaming someone in the 1930s for being addicted to cigarettes. Everyone constantly smoked everywhere and their harm was rumored, but not proven. Try to quit smoking in that environment: the thing you're trying to get away from is inescapable and it's not even clear why you should quit. They might blame themselves for not being motivated enough. We're in that exact environment for the things I describe above.
visarga 9d ago
>> I think the „my brain isn’t the same anymore“ sensation is pretty universal. Another pretty universal thing is that we compare to younger versions of ourselves. That might explain the gap.
- coldtea 9d ago
  If that was the case it would be a constant throughout history. And often it's also just "compared to 5 or 10 years ago" not 20s vs 40s or 50s.

serbuvlad 9d ago

I've been thinking about this as well. Certainly we will have mental gyms in the future.

wdutch 9d ago
I think they exist already... Crosswords, sudokus and puzzles have long been popular. Has the world also forgotten the brain training craze of the naughties?

recursive-call 9d ago

Additionally, everyone seems to have forgotten that covid can leave lingering mental symptoms for years after “recovery”. I wonder how much of the mental fatigue/ brain fog that people blame on tech is actually from covid…

maddie0 9d ago
It's not just COVID, either. You can get brain fog effects from a variety of things. The first and biggest is sleep apnea (woefully underdosed). Plenty of things can develop as you grow older. Some of them may have been present all your life and you only start to notice them when your body is a little less resilient. Food sensitivities, for instance -- eat the wrong thing, trigger a major release of histamines (which trigger both the stomach acid and a whole-body response). Too much of that releases other neurotransmitters, too, and you can get Depression and Fatigue too. (And then try changing the whole way you eat while at the bottom of a depressive slump where all the easiest foods are the likeliest triggers!!) Autistic people (plenty of us in tech) are especially predisposed to many of these inflammation-related issues. If you're brain fogged, see the doctor... and be prepared for a long slog of self advocacy, and maybe shopping around.

bethekidyouwant 9d ago

I think running down the road is still suspicious and to get you stopped by the cops (not arrested per se I’m not sure that ever happened…) which is why runners wear a uniform.

downut 9d ago

It's possible that I'm in your grandparent's generation, or maybe your parents. I'm 65. I don't want to derail the conversation, but I do want to correct the bit about "exercise as a hobby was viewed as extremely weird, runners used to be arrested!". In the '70s at least, running was extremely normal. Endurance bicycling was normal. For instance, starting in 1979. I bicycled all over the South: FL GA NC, at least. These were then as they are now quite provincial from the POV of alternate ideas. 10K runs were a thing, with thousands of participants. As were Marathons. Cross country running was a popular high school sport. If you want to talk about work, well I'm adjacent to 5th generation farmers. Self driving climate controlled machinery is a thing now, but! hard to imagine I know, people had tractors back then too. So, plausible as it might sound to ascribe some of the causality to flow from "the physical activity transition", I don't think it holds up.

meowkit 9d ago
I think the physical activity transition they are describing would have been closer to the end of the 19th century when mechanization really started to take hold (e.g. the car)
SoftTalker 9d ago
I'm about 5 years younger and yes running and exercise was popular in the 1970s. Maybe not quite like today in terms of people really spending a lot of money on gyms, personal trainers, and expensive bikes or equipment, but certainly not considered weird.
dwedge 9d ago
I can't remember which decade he's talking about or verify his claims, but in Shoe Dog the creator of Nike talks about how running for exercise was viewed as very weird in the last century, and he implies that Adidas pretty much singlehandedly changed public perception on this. Not that nobody did it, but that it was considered very weird and rare. He was only talking about running, not exercise in general, but I seem to remember Schwarzenegger reflecting similarly about the public perception of weight lifting
- 9d ago

tayo42 9d ago

If AI at work is rotting everyone's brain then it should be like a superpower to be unemployed. But that doesn't seem to be the case...

tristor 9d ago
That's because the folks who are unemployed, unfortunately, are largely those who already were further down the curve. We're destroying the minds of those who were supposed to move society forward and gaining nothing elsewhere.
- hyperadvanced 9d ago
  I struggle to understand this. I use AI quite regularly and find it frees up hours of my day to do consequential “understanding” work that previously got eaten up by there literally not being enough hours in a day to solve my own problems and understand others enough to help them solve theirs.
- tayo42 9d ago
  Lol way to call me an idiot... thanks...

ethagnawl 9d ago

> runners used to be arrested! This reminds me of Ray Bradbury's excellent short story, _The Pedestrian_: https://www.libraryofshortstories.com/onlinereader/the-pedestrian https://www.libraryofshortstories.com/onlinereader/the-pedes... IIRC, this story also informed and inspired _Fahrenheit 451_.

SoftTalker 9d ago

Quick example which just happened, my adult son is starting a new job and was looking at the bus schedules to work out what time he would need to leave the house. One bus runs "every 15-20 minutes" and he has to transfer to another bus that runs on a schedule. So he wanted to know what time he had to be at the first bus stop to be on time to work in a worst-case scenario. This problem he presented to Gemini because he just didn't want to think about it. I look at ads on TV for AI platforms and the examples they show, of course they are a bit contrived, silly, or funny for effect but they always make me feel a bit uneasy... like why do you even have a job if you're using AI to do everything while you just dance around your desk or spin in your chair?

im3w1l 9d ago
For public transit in my city they have an official website where you can type in where you are and where you want to go and it plan it all for you. Can choose from arrive asap to picking a time when you want to depart or a time you want to arrive. This has been operational since 2002. More recently Google Maps has the same functionality and it will work in many cities across the world.
- anon7725 9d ago
  I think their broader point is that it's becoming common to reach for an AI chat to solve problems that should take a few seconds of thinking to solve. Notably this kind of thing is not a search problem, since you presumably already know the schedules for both busses and just need to come up with a reasonable allowance for schedules not lining up properly.

SupLockDef 9d ago

We know already what's happening after decade of optional thinking: electing dumass Presidents, walking the same path than Germany about 100 years ago, cut scientific research, social nets, etc. We know already what's happening with optional thinking.

spoiler 9d ago

But historically, I don't think people engaged as much intellectually or mentally as much as we do today. And I'm not just talking about people who need to do it at work, but even "mundane" things like watching TV or Film. Heck, I have non-stem friends for which "pop culture" activities like wordle, pub quizzes, and film/TV are the most engaging thing intellectually. I'm not sure what they would have done if they live in the past. Would they find something else?

theodric 8d ago

I'm pretty sure you can get your brain back. You just have to stop having Internet at home/on your phone. 2003-04 I moved into student housing that didn't have Internet access provided. My first hard cutoff after years of being basically constantly online. Getting it hooked up would have cost me €130 plus a per-minute charge, and I declined. I got bored enough to play through Diablo II with a melee-only sorceress, and then I started buying/borrowing and reading books. Hadn't read in years; couldn't focus on the book long enough when Computer With Internet was there calling to me. Computer Without Internet wasn't nearly so enticing. 2 years later I moved into an apartment, got broadband, and reverted to my netbrained zombieism. I once again no longer remember how to read. I bet I could rediscover the skill a second time, but how could I convince my wife to let me get rid of the Internet at our house?