Re: Dimdows Decay Syndrome Continues

On 2025-02-03 06:17, Jeff Barnett wrote:

On 2/2/2025 7:50 PM, Java Jive wrote:

On 2025-02-02 21:26, chrisv wrote:

Paul wrote:
>

Similarly, the AI doing the Google searches, is doing
a shit job, and I'm now looking at a situation were
I don't get any help at all from the Internet any more.
>
AI is definitely a "mission accomplished" thing. It's
trashed the Internet. Good work.

>
It's not done until it's trashed human society.  Eventually we'll have
no reason to think, at all.

>
That's nonsense  ...  It's like saying that because we have calculators we don't need to be able to do any mental arithmetic, but you always need to be able to check that the result you get is reasonable to be sure that you haven't miskeyed something while entering the calculation.   Or it's like saying that because we have navigation apps no-one will need to read maps or think about what the app is telling them to do. Remember the German couple who drove off the end of a pier, and, IMS, drowned, because their navigation app told them to?!  Or the Euro continental lorry drivers who enter "Gibraltar" into their nav apps and end up in a tiny English village that happens to have the same name?! Didn't any penny drop when they had to take a Channel ferry?  Etc, etc.

 As best I only see, a significant portion of the younger generations can neither do simple arithmetic nor 1-step logical deductions (or the informal equivalents or approximations). In other words, they cannot verify or validate much of the information presented to them.

That's not a generational thing, there are people like that in every generation.

I see, as a result, such moves as not accepting cash at many stories.
 I asked an owner of a fast food place why. The answer: The schools didn't teach them arithmetic and I think they are too old to learn! I also recall an experience a few years ago. I selected some supplies at a store in Marina del Rey (part of greater LA) and approached the cash register where a vacant looking 20 something young lady was the cashier. She laboriously rings up the items and the total comes to $19.99. I take out my wallet, hand her a $20 bill and apologize for not having anything smaller. She says nothing, does not crack a smile, and remains frozen until the register tells her to give me a penny back. Still no reaction.

Again, there are dumb-asses in every generation.

So you really think we, collectively, will be able to profit from information that allows us to double check our computers?

My post to which you are replying gave examples of what can happen if we don't.

These are the same folks who are frightened by vaccines and community health. (I know there is a small number of people who have predictable poor reactions, but they're generally not the ones spouting conspiracy theories.)

Yes, there's one of those living near to me, but, at a guess, he's in he's 80s, so, again, not a generational thing.  [His wife, a nice, kind old dear, had a severe stroke a week or two after having a covid vaccine and is now mentally much impaired.  Understandably, but most probably incorrectly, he links the vaccine and the stroke, whereas in truth she may well have had the stroke even if she had not had the vaccine beforehand.  What happened to her is tragic, and they both deserve every sympathy, but in all probability the two events are unrelated except by coincidence.]

The promise that connectivity (the internet) would improve society and its human inhabitants has been shown false. Rather, it has led to intellectually laziness and polarization. Non-vetted results are repeat as gospel and we are all manipulated and exploited.

Again, not a generational thing, people used to be just as undiscriminating reading newspaper reports and watching TV reports.  The thing that the internet has changed is the speed of it all.

The point is that the vast majority of us are entrenched in this madness and our brain's off switch has been thrown.
 We do not regain rationality when presented with quality information unless we agree with it before it is presented to us. When I say "we" I included all of us who have spent our lives using our brain; we all seem to have these blind spots where we would rather believe than think.

The problem has always been compromising between saving mental effort  -   so that you don't go through the laborious process of reinventing the wheel every time you need to use one, you just reuse what is already known  -  and assessing new information whose usefulness is as yet unknown.  No person or the wider society of which he/she is part could ever make progress at either extreme of rethinking everything all the time or taking everything new as 'good' without questioning it, the best path forward has always been a compromise between those two extremes. The internet has made this problem more obvious and thus magnified its apparent importance, but it's always been a problem.
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Fake news kills!
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