[threatripper]

I'd argue that this is an adjustment period that society has to go through. The way we are using electronic devices today, in some years it will probably be looked at like smoking cigarettes. And I'd argue that a lot of the "decline" is due to a shift of skills away from things that mattered more in the past toward other things that are not measured/perceived by the older generation.

[justinnk]

Interesting analogy. I believe regarding addictiveness they may be compared.

> a shift of skills away from things that mattered more in the past toward other things that are not measured/perceived by the older generation.

Do you have any ideas what these things might be? As someone in his twenties, I’m sometimes saddened by observing that some of the skills I acquired over a long time (e.g., writing, coding) may become obsolete or won’t be respected anymore just now that I‘m finally getting good at them.

[GoblinSlayer]

Thinking is the skill that becomes obsolete.

[hypfer]

Nah.

What you said there is just an extension of the elimination of friction that the silicon valley has been pursuing for the last 15+ years.

But that is just.. well. Their business model. Not a force of nature.

[chasd00]

it happens, things change and the change is only speeding up. I think the real skill to have going forward is the ability to acquire new skills. I tell my boys "get good at learning and you don't have to get good at anything else".

[senorqa]

Ages ago I had similar thoughts. Everything changed when I came to terms with the concept of change being the only constant. A bit of a cliché, perhaps, but profoundly true.

[Forgeties79]

> I'd argue that this is an adjustment period that society has to go through.

I used to think like this until social media proved there are some tech innovations we just can’t adjust to. 10 years ago you would’ve never caught me supporting any sort of age based social media ban. Now? I don’t think it goes far enough. Fake news (actual fake news) and misinformation has only gotten worse with it as well. It’s so destructive.

[mylastattempt]

The human is designed to interact with small groups, to understand several smaller groups, and perhaps to imagine a big group of smaller groups. In a literal sense, let's say 100 people per group. At that level the human can actually know and interact with them still. In a city of 100.000 it's still managable to feel you are related and involved to this group-of-groups. In a city of a million, you'll revert to only your own small group and have lost the connection to the collective.

The same goes for speed and quantity of input, as to what the human is designed for (not literally designed). Be it social media with it's infinite scrolling, cars racing by as opposed to looking out the window a few times per hour because you see someone/something, constant sound input if you live anywhere remotely busy or work in a busy office.

The point I'm trying to make is that the world used to be comprehensible for the human. Some understood a little complexer things, some only the simpler things. Now there is an overload of everything. So, most humans are in survival mode wether they know it or not. Hence the many seekin mindfullness etc

No matter, it's an observation, not a judgement or opinion on it. The world will just keep rushing forward. Some have a slight hand in the direction it goes for better (never) or for worse, but spiral it will.

[Forgeties79]

I think there’s a major part of this conversation being omitted, though I am not saying you did it intentionally: “the attention economy.” We have gone from advertising to a system of creating addicts for profit

[mylastattempt]

Definately agree, that was included in the "or for worse" in this sentence I wrote. As for creating the addicts, nobody had a masterplan. It's all the pieces spiraling together,

>> The world will just keep rushing forward. Some have a slight hand in the direction it goes for better (never) or for worse, but spiral it will.

The systems are too large and self-propulsing for anyone to really control. Consider the rainforest. How many millions of variables interact, nobody is in charge, everything influences everything in a billion different ways. You might say, well we can cut it down, so kind we can control it. Allright, let's continue to spiral. You might build a city there after a few years. Still in charge right. But it get's too hot because there's no vegitation, so you have to change again. And then we find that people keep getting strangely sick, and scientists find some special mushroom that survived and apparantly thrives on the mix of cut trees and diesel fumes and their spores in the air are poisonous. I made that up, but you get the idea hopefully.

[vineyardmike]

Eh, I think it's less like a cigarette and more like the car. We're not going back. Americans are famously less healthy the more car dependent they are, and now people walk/run as an explicit task to be healthy. People will start going to a "thinking" gym, or engaging in additional manual mental activities for sport, like we do with chess today.

[ernst_klim]

Or when the Internet came and made memory kinda obsolete. Why remember facts if you can simply index them and then lookup on demand.

But now we delegate thinking itself, so I wonder what is left.

[bigstrat2003]

The Internet in no way made memory obsolete. People who know things off the top of their heads are far more capable than people who have to look things up.

[Cthulhu_]

This is an age-old argument actually, the same one was raised when the printing press was invented and reading became a more generally available skill.

[windward]

Merely leading to the upending of the political structure of most countries.

[dotancohen]

Funny that you mention that. A month ago I started the Duolingo chess course, and just yesterday I noticed that my brain is clearer, more capable of deep thought than it has been in years. It's like stepping out of a fog. I also started CPAP recently, so it's hard to attribute the change to either, but I feel certain that the chess helped.

[weavie]

> I also started CPAP recently

A proper nights sleep is massive! I'd put 99% down to this..

[latentsea]

Yeah CPAP is doing the heavy lifting most likely.

[WalterBright]

The interesting thing about jogging is I do my best thinking while jogging. I've found it impossible to do deep thinking while driving, as driving evidently requires higher functions of the brain. Jogging doesn't require any of that, I can jog deep in thought and have no recollection of the previous mile.

[jancsika]

Apparently Petri was driving when he figured out a new fingering for a Chopin Etude he'd use at a concert later that evening[1]. The passenger survived to tell that story, so I think this is more about your correct risk-assessment than physical limitations of the brain. :)

1: Just to unzip: "I don't like this fingering; let me imagine playing with this other fingering; yep, that will feel more comfortable and stronger; I'm now confident enough in the change that I'll do it that way in public, for one of the most difficult piano pieces, without ever having practiced it physically..."

[2b3a51]

I wonder who would be working in these thinking gyms? Nice idea. Extra mural studies for the age of agentic ai.

[eueje]

You do realise most people aren’t in shape right?

The idea that most people have the discipline to keep themselves mentally in check is false. We already know this! Millions and billions of people who spend hrs a day consuming media on platforms such as instagram.