[clickety_clack]

I also feel that people then were about as smart as we are now, so they could have solved problems in inventive ways they way we do now. Just because they didn’t have an electric stone flattener, it doesn’t mean that stones cannot be made flat in a fairly repeatable way.

[leptons]

And there were no video games, which I think is a huge source of brain-drain these days. I read somewhere once that people played more solitaire on Windows 95 per year than it took in man-hours to send people to the moon (something like that, I don't remember the original statistic). And that's just a shitty game on an old OS.

[JrProgrammer]

To me, blaming an activity which requires active participation for “brain-drain” is such a weird and quite dated thing. Take social media for example, these require no active participation other than moving your thumb up and down, and is in my opinion the real brain rot these days.

People will always find a way to get their dopamine, be it video games, reading, watching stuff, etc.

Don’t pick out a single thing and make it the boogey man.

[leptons]

Sure there are plenty of other frivolous and pointless pursuits that people engage in, like yourself making pointless comments on HN.

[Cthulhu_]

You're attacking video games and the like a bit, but the core of your argument is sound I think - there's 24 hours in a day, a percentage will be spent on taking care of your needs, what percentage that is depends on various factors but most anthropologists agree that that number was much lower in ancient civilizations. People get bored and when they get bored they get creative. Polishing a rock would be one of the things they could end up doing.