

How America is Dumbing Down the Next Generation (2012) - kunai
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2012/01/18/How-America-is-Dumbing-Down-the-Next-Generation.aspx#page1

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dusklight
Yeah and when cars replaced horses, the next generation got dumber because
they no longer learned the skills they would have acquired by learning how to
ride a horse?

If anything, based on what I have seen, the next generation will be shockingly
smarter, more adept at fact-checking, much better at focusing and multi-
tasking, much more disillusioned about institutionalized education and much
more interested in self-directed learning (with much more options to do so)

~~~
coldtea
> _Yeah and when cars replaced horses, the next generation got dumber because
> they no longer learned the skills they would have acquired by learning how
> to ride a horse?_

Well, at the time they merely replaced those skills with learning how to drive
a car.

But, in a future where you won't have to replace previous skills with anything
(e.g self driving cars, calculator vs having to know basic math in your head
etc) it can be argued that it can lead into a general dumbness.

Some people will say that it will "free resources for higher level learning"
etc, but in all probabillity it will just infantilize most people, a la "Brave
New World". We already have huge resources for higher level learning and most
people just spend their time watching 3 hours TV and day and learning
celebrity gossip on the internet.

> _If anything, based on what I have seen, the next generation will be
> shockingly smarter, more adept at fact-checking, much better at focusing and
> multi-tasking, much more disillusioned about institutionalized education and
> much more interested in self-directed learning_

A few perhaps. For the majority it will be the same ever increasing dumbness
that has been going on for decades.

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takluyver
> ever increasing dumbness that has been going on for decades.

Do you have evidence that it's _increasing_? Maybe there have just always been
dumb people. Of course you can point to amazing discoveries or great
literature from the past, but that only represents a tiny slice of the
population. And we're still doing science, still writing books, etc.

~~~
coldtea
> _Do you have evidence that it 's increasing? (...) And we're still doing
> science, still writing books, etc._

For those kind of things they is no hard evidence. One either sees that
happening through historical changes, or does not. But there are lot of
secondary indications.

For example the books we're writing don't compare at all favorably to past
works.

Including the most cherished books of our era. Whereas literature, poerty, etc
was constantly replenishing it's stock for centuries, there has been nothing
like what we had even 50 years ago.

Same for the fine arts -- there have been no great new art movements since pop
art (which even that was a lame immitation of older ideas). Same (and worse)
for philosophy.

As for science, after the low hanging fruit (which demanded huge
breakthroughs, like Newton's, Darwin's, Maxwell's, Einstein's, Cantor's,
Turing's etc) have been picked, there's mostly boring incremental work -- we
might as well have had stopped doing science. It's mostly engineering these
days.

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takluyver
Literature and art are very subjective things. I don't think you can really
judge them against other periods until you've got a century or so of
hindsight. So I'm afraid that your assertion that they're not like they used
to be sounds like it's prejudiced by your belief that people are getting
stupider. I bet in a hundred years, there will be classics from our time as
much as any other.

Science is an interesting one. Perhaps we have already made most of the big
leaps in understanding the natural world. But that doesn't imply that
scientists now are less intelligent than scientists 'back then'. I'd argue
that it takes more knowledge and work to make even seemingly 'minor'
discoveries. Besides anything else, we have to understand all that past work
before we can build on it.

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zeteo
The kids are OK. They'll be messed up a lot more by college loans and Social
Security for baby boomers than by tire sensors.

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jspark
The Greek philosopher Socrates objected to writing because he believed that it
would negatively impact memory.

The next generation will be just fine.

~~~
coldtea
It's extremely naive (and, oh so, contemporary) to treat the philosophical
arguments put forward in that text (which was written by Plato, btw, who
attributes it to the Egyptian King Thamus), as some kind of failed prophecy.

Writing DID have a negative impact on the directness and vividness of memory
of pre-writing civilizations, and the role that memory played there.

To use a somewhat crude analogue, Plato was speaking of a phenomenon akin to
what we have today, where any idiot with an internet connection can play the
know-it-all in conversation, not by having studied a subject and absorbed it,
but by just looking it up on Wikipedia to get a shallow quote.

This, which we have all witnessed on online forums, also holds for written
books. Yes, they can help solidify memory and pass it over to the next
generations. But they also served as an easy shortcut to information, compared
to memory (which takes years and experience to create). While everybody can
aknowledge what was gained, few (like Plato) could see what was lost in the
process.

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dusklight
Can we agree that writing did have negative impacts, but given the trajectory
of human civilization since then, that the benefits have outweighed the costs?

~~~
coldtea
> _Can we agree that writing did have negative impacts, but given the
> trajectory of human civilization since then, that the benefits have
> outweighed the costs?_

Sounds reasonable, but then again, the work of philosophy (or thought in
general) is to question what sounds reasonable.

For example, why should we have to be that proud of the "trajectory of human
civilization since then"?

Sure, we since had computers and brain surgery.

We also had nazi concentration camps, 2 wolrd wars, colonialism, Stalinism,
the nuclear arms race, and global warming. Oh, and Justin Bieber.

If a WW III thing was to happen in the next 50 years, taking most of the
population with it, I'm sure more than a few people will think "Damn, we were
better off before all that technological shit -- perhaps even writing enabled
us for more that we were good to handle".

~~~
dusklight
A (partial) end to slavery. Significantly improved lives for women as far as
being raped and domestic violence goes. A significant number of people moving
from the working class to the middle class Democracy vs having a violent war
frequently when there is a question of succession. A significantly reduced
fear of violent death, or violence in general really. Unless you don't think
slaves are people, I really think people are much better off nowadays compared
to pre-writing.

------
stephengillie
[http://xkcd.com/603/](http://xkcd.com/603/)

~~~
richardjordan
Just because XKCD says it doesn't make it true. The idea that there because
societal decline claims of the past might be interpreted in ways that leave
them open to debate doesn't mean that there is no possibility of societal
decline.

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r0s
I know this is tongue-in-cheek, but none of the "skills" mentioned are very
valuable.

People one hundred years ago also took every convenience available. Maybe your
average turn of the century citizen could _use_ a radio, but few could build
or repair one.

Information access and understanding is WAY higher in general than ever
before. Anyone who can use a google map can use a regular map, they'll just be
frustrated by the lack of information that was never there. People rely on
these new sources of information that augment the old, limited information.
It's not replacing anything.

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crashandburn4
I read things like this so often I can't help but assume that a lot of people
think this but I find the thought so incomprehensibly alien that I can't
really understand why. To me it makes no sense at any level.

~~~
coldtea
To give an example I think you'll understand better.

Let's say tomorrow the stable life you have collapses. A war, a meteor
strikes, riots -- whatever. You have no electricity anymore, no super-markets,
no gas, and everybody is trying to survive.

What exactly survival skills do you have in a situation like this? If you are
a fat, lazy-ass programmer, are you any worth at all top people trying to
survive there?

Your ancestor from 5-6 generations ago, living in some log cabin, could
probably be ten times as useful and knowledgable about what had to be done.

Something was lost in the process from man surviving using several skills to
couch potato programmer that has everything served to him on a silver platter.

Now, you might find those kind of things unlikely to ever be needed again, but
you can see how it makes sense at ONE level at least.

(What I described, btw, is a quite common theme in literature and movies).

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jotm
Not dumbing down, more like freeing up resources for higher level thinking...

~~~
dgallagher
Exactly. You see the same trend in programming by way of abstraction.

~~~
angersock
It's like kids these days don't even know how to use the XOR trick for linked
lists. >:(

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richardjordan
Lot of comments dismissing this, as their always are when we see kids are
getting dumber articles. Yet in my life I think it's been pretty much
factually accurate that graduating class after graduating class has emerged
from education with slightly lower levels of knowledge in key areas.

I wonder if a lot of folks live in too much of a bubble of people like them to
really understand this. I don't know what other explanation there can be
because I see this around me all the time.

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lnanek2
I was really sad when my wife made me take out the jump starter, battery
recharger, and electric air pump out from the car trunk to make more room. She
says the car always warns her when the air is low far ahead of time, has run
flat tires anyway, and the one time in its entire existence it didn't start
she just had to push the on star button on the dash and someone came
immediately. Damn I like my tools, though. :(

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j2kun
I don't know what this article has to do with America as a country. Do people
in other countries not embrace technological innovations? </sarcasm>

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sbierwagen
Flagged.

