Yes. Next question.
Nope, humans have always been stupid. People said the same shit when the printing press was invented, or TV, or whatever.
Seriously, crack a history book. Modern times are actually pretty good, even with all the bullshit.
It’s pretty good compared to, say, 100 years ago. But is it better than, idk, 10 years ago? This is highly dependent where you live, of course. But, in the US, I can 100% say life was better a decade ago and people weren’t outright rejecting intellectualism en masse.
The idiots didn’t have their own eco chamber. As an unfortunate byproduct of the social media they realised how many of them there are and organised themselves.
I wish they had an eco chamber! Their echo chamber is vehemently against that, though.
54, American here. Yeah, I think we peaked in the 80s and 90s after a small setback in the 70s. Through 2010 was pretty good as well except for 9/11 fucking up our politics and legislation.
I’d agree the US peaked in the 90s. 2008 really fucked us for almost a decade, though. Economy had essentially recovered by 2014/2015sh until COVID. I’m almost 40, so most of my adult life has been plagued by crisis after crisis.
Quite my last tech support job in 2007, hated it, ready to move up. Didn’t score another IT role for 7 years, hated the job I was in.
Humans have always been stupid but today technology has made it easier for the dumbest among us to be more influential than any stupid person of any prior era. This, we are in the golden age of stupidity.
You could say the exact same thing about the smartest people being able to spread their message, and the two effects cancel out.
Same age as any other, more or less. These are human problems that won’t be fixed until we’re no longer human.
It requires more effort to spread intelligent ideas.
With that said, lately americans seem like a new insane kind of stupid.
New media indeed coincides with revolutions. I disagree with your final assessment. We have yet to see how this turn of new media plays out.
Good or bad is a relative. The frame of reference should be contemporary. Just because we ostensibly have technological luxuries not mean things are going well right now. Authoritarianism on another up cycle.
Yep, as long as we don’t change/better ourselves on fundamental/cognitive level, the result will always be the same. Can’t make the play field better if the ground rules are broken. Most systems today are shaped by excusing violence and injustice. Violence is violence, no matter what.
It’s fake gold spray paint.
That wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest.
AI is also putting pressure on the ability to have multiple, independent sources by diverting traffic away from those sites. Just like reddit kills independent phpbb boards, AI will (and is) killing critical thought.
Oh that’s been going on way before AI became a thing
We are living through idiots revenge.
It’s only a golden age insofar as a golden shower is golden
i mean there was the whole Dark Ages thing.
We’re well on our way to Dark Ages 2: Electric Q-galoo
Dark, because not much written history about it is available; not necessarily because Western society was especially stupid. Maybe it was, but we can’t know because how few records remain.
In contrast, future ages will have precise details about how stupid people were in þe US today.
Also, add this:
https://old.lemmy.world/comment/20014496
I meant to say your first part there and forgot. :) So, THREE reasons the times were called thus.
That’s all mostly propaganda from the Renaissance and the nineteenth century.
I have a book titled “Generation Doof” (Generation Stupid), and yes, this book got it right.
I’m afraid that most people under 30 would simply cease to function if the internet suddenly went away.
you would cease to function if electricity suddenly went away.
Many people would, but I think I could rig something to have a sufficient amount of power in the house.
I can still read books and manuals, and i do have those books and manuals in paper form.
and you think youre special? most people who cant read shit on paper cant read it on the internet. “reading books, and manuals in paper format” doesnt take that much brain power
I’ve noticed no one has books anymore though. I used to be able to go to peoples houses, look at their bookcase, and learn lots about them. No one has bookcases full of books on display anymore except really old people. Even our library has been mostly emptied and has maybe a fifth of the number of books it used to have. I have no idea where all those book went.
Writes the one who has learned grammar in Twitter school.
sad argument
Point is that most people who read on Internet have not the experience to do somthing without Internet since they never lived without internet.
The only thing the internet allows you to do is find information.
You don’t need “pre internet information gathering” experience to figure out where information is held. I know the location of many libraries off the top of my head.
I can go there, figure out the system they use, read a few books to find what I need, then head home.
I think that you overestimate the capacity of the yourger people to solve problems without any access to any form of online informations.
True, but the old generation will not fare any better if something they were born with suddenly went away.
My point is that it isn’t a new thing.
You don’t realize how hard it is to do physically the work of water pumps in the grid, which allow you to have running water. Or to collect firewood (or some other burnable fuel) to use much of it every damn day for cooking, heating water, heating your habitat.
And the water will have unbalanced composition, so things you are getting from almost any findable water you’ll have to get specifically. Imagine a water supply short on lithium, but with horrible concentrations of iron, or something like that.
I am well aware of that. But that was not the original topic.
Not really, sorry. Only problem would be the freezers.
I mean I’d be absolutely, jump out of a window, levels of absolutely fucked without the internet.
Obviously.
The golden age of having to hear from stupid people.
where’s that Kylo Ren MORE! meme at…
Yeah, but probably not for the reasons this article pointed out.
Wouldn’t the golden age be the formation of all religions?
God no. Are you joking?
Religions are the absolute bane of human philosophy. Its prepackaged bundles of ideas that no one is allowed to challenge. Most religions are basically ridiculous and easily proved false. They serve to control. All of them were written by flawed people from long ago, and it shows.
The meaning of all writing is based on the time it exists in. Whats in the bible (and Koran, and Talmud) today doesnt mean what it meant two thousand years ago, and even then it was probably sketchy. Now its worse and getting more irrelevant all the time. But say that out loud in any setting except an anonymous internet chatroom, and everyone shuns you, at best.
No, but we are getting there.
