8 ms·

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 pla

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 10d 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 10d 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 10d 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 10d 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 10d 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 10d 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.
      - airstrike 10d ago
        No, I'm not disagreeing based on vibes. I'm disagreeing based on my deep understanding of business and economics. You're assuming you already know what my objections are and defending against them, when I haven't even said anything specific. Now _that_ is anti-intellectual. The research isn't clear. It's near impossible to model the effect of UBI on the population at large by running a study with N people who know they're going back to normal at the end of the study. Many have attempted to "give people money" before. It has invariably failed and resulted in inflation.
        underlipton 9d ago
        I know what the common objections are, and I actually addressed the one you mention: in actual UBI pilot programs, there was no resultant inflation. If you have objections that weren't among the ones stated earlier, you can state them now. If you think that there are better examples of the results likely to be produced by a non-pilot UBI program, you should detail their circumstances and how they're more applicable than the pilot programs, instead of waving vaguely at instances where "many have attempted to 'give people money' before", as if that's a panacea. Because it's not; it's precisely the vibes-based anti-intellectualism I spoke of. The issue is that you probably can't, because UBI's efficacious nature has been proven rigorously. It would be nice if we could just get on with implementing it.
FinnLobsien 10d 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.

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 10d 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 10d 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 10d 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 10d 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 10d 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 10d 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.
    - airstrike 10d ago
      No, I'm not disagreeing based on vibes. I'm disagreeing based on my deep understanding of business and economics. You're assuming you already know what my objections are and defending against them, when I haven't even said anything specific. Now _that_ is anti-intellectual. The research isn't clear. It's near impossible to model the effect of UBI on the population at large by running a study with N people who know they're going back to normal at the end of the study. Many have attempted to "give people money" before. It has invariably failed and resulted in inflation.
      - underlipton 9d ago
        I know what the common objections are, and I actually addressed the one you mention: in actual UBI pilot programs, there was no resultant inflation. If you have objections that weren't among the ones stated earlier, you can state them now. If you think that there are better examples of the results likely to be produced by a non-pilot UBI program, you should detail their circumstances and how they're more applicable than the pilot programs, instead of waving vaguely at instances where "many have attempted to 'give people money' before", as if that's a panacea. Because it's not; it's precisely the vibes-based anti-intellectualism I spoke of. The issue is that you probably can't, because UBI's efficacious nature has been proven rigorously. It would be nice if we could just get on with implementing it.

FinnLobsien 10d 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.