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A.I. and Social Media Contribute to 'Brain Rot'

nytimes.com

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Re: A.I. and Social Media Contribute to 'Brain Rot'

#121

Post by brailsafe »

Mabusto wrote: post #30

I think we'll start to see AI as any other tool that can atrophy your natural faculties. You can use a wheelchair to get everywhere, but your leg muscles will start to wither, but a wheeled vehicle for going longer distances is a genuinely useful tool. Reaching for AI as a _substitute_ for thinking is bad, but reaching for it as a tool to assist thinking is good; you just need to be honest about whether it's your bra…

> You can use a wheelchair to get everywhere, but your leg muscles will start to wither

Although it's not to the same degree of atrophy, I've been thinking of cars the same way. They're too easy to use once you have them, just press the pedal, so you stop walking and everything becomes a matter of driving distance, which makes it acceptable to distribute commercial activity in stupid little pockets of car destinations and avenues separated from each other by noise, pollution, and danger. People may not physically atrophy to the point of having no leg muscles, but their tolerance for walking a km becomes much more strained and their appreciation for investment in public transport lessens. They don't see or speak to people as much because they're always in their portable silo. You burn less calories, it's easier to gain weight, and people discount the value in having a gym within walking distance.

It's tough to reconcile it with being a functional tool, because although I could conceivably use it as one and buy one, I know that it can become an addiction.

Re: A.I. and Social Media Contribute to 'Brain Rot'

#122

Post by supersrdjan »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #99
supersrdjan wrote: post #84

Socrates thought that writing contributed to brain rot. If I AI rots my brain than so did Google before it, and printed encyclopedias before that. In reality, the fact I can get my questions answered quickly only makes me think of more and more questions to ask, more things to wonder about, more problems to ponder.

Socrates is probably right. There are probably entirely different connections being made in ones brain in an oral culture vs written culture. Socrates was alive to see the transition where these differences in manners of brain activity were readily apparent, unlike today where all educated people are already “ruined” by writing and there is no control possible. I have seen something similar. Engineers from the analog…

I agree that those are impressive skills that are becoming rare and make us compare unfavorably to old schoolers. But I am also impressed by trackers who can follow a trail in the bush by observing clues invisible to ordinary people. All kinds of skills fell into disuse when the problems they solved lost importance.

But we will never run out of problems to solve and new problems will call for new competencies.

I wonder what are some of these new competencies. I can’t think of any off the top of my head. Can you?

Re: A.I. and Social Media Contribute to 'Brain Rot'

#123

Post by bloppe »

MSFT_Edging wrote: post #79
tharne wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Reaching for AI as a _substitute_ for thinking is bad, but reaching for it as a tool to assist thinking is good; you just need to be honest about whether it's your brain in the driver's seat or the chat bot. I think this is generally true, but human nature being what it is, the vast majority of people will use AI as a substitute for thinking rather than a tool to assist thinking. You can already see this from casua…

Proper use of anything that has a big downside is in direct opposition to making money, sadly.

This is true if you're only looking at the short term. In the long term, quality does matter.

Re: A.I. and Social Media Contribute to 'Brain Rot'

#124

Post by keiferski »

randycupertino wrote: post #7

I'm in a local facebook group for my town where people post hiking pics, bird pics, local business updates, contractor recommendations etc. I am annoyed to see "brain rot" videos starting to take over the page. There is one dude promoting his succulent repotting/resale business and he's posted like 5-8 ai generated surfer dude monkey surfing and partying with his potted succulents just in the last week. I opened the…

I think it’s a generational thing. Younger people don’t really use Facebook very much and are much more active on TikTok and instagram, both of which I would describe as semi-hostile to AI, or at least the kind of lazy slop AI you’re talking about.

Re: A.I. and Social Media Contribute to 'Brain Rot'

#126

Post by chemotaxis »

ryandrake wrote: post #77
randycupertino wrote: post #7

I'm in a local facebook group for my town where people post hiking pics, bird pics, local business updates, contractor recommendations etc. I am annoyed to see "brain rot" videos starting to take over the page. There is one dude promoting his succulent repotting/resale business and he's posted like 5-8 ai generated surfer dude monkey surfing and partying with his potted succulents just in the last week. I opened the…

I'm pretty surprised by how fooled normal people are by all this AI-sludge, and/or how accepting they are of all this low-effort content. My reaction to this stuff is the same as yours: please don't clog the internet up with all this fake content! But everyone else in my life thinks it's great, and sometimes don't believe me when I point out it's obviously AI generated. I think people are already totally fooled and t…

> I'm pretty surprised by how fooled normal people are by all this AI-sludge, and/or how accepting they are of all this low-effort content. My reaction to this stuff is the same as yours: please don't clog the internet up with all this fake content!

I instinctively want to blame AI, but on some level, I think the problem runs deeper: it's that we are for some reason compelled to consume content where it just doesn't matter if it's real or not. It has no bearing on your life. You just want to spend your time scrolling through heartwarming stories about complete strangers, or through rage-bait that reinforces your political beliefs. Ethically, I see a difference between telling you true stories and lies. But if we're being honest with ourselves... what changes if the kitten rescued from a storm sewer is actually just gen AI?

This isn't even a Facebook thing. 24-hour news networks and many newspapers perfected this craft before. Endless streams of celebrity gossip and stories about stranded / rescued pets, written for no reason other than to satisfy this weird craving among the readers.

Each step along the way lowers the bar for feeding you the content and allows it to be tailored better, but I don't know what the fix here is. Short of banning the internet and forcing people to go outside more.

Re: A.I. and Social Media Contribute to 'Brain Rot'

#127

Post by PeaceTed »

supersrdjan wrote: post #102
District5524 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That still seems to be a problem. It was not what "Socrates thought", but what Plato put into Socrates' mouth in Phaedrus, and even this imaginary Socrates is not saying anything like that, just referencing an even earlier Egyptian tale: "There is an old Egyptian tale of Theuth, the inventor of writing, showing his invention to the god Thamus, who told him that he would only spoil men’s memories and take away their u…

Can’t you say the same about the printing press?

I mean to some degree it is true in that you have the luxury of forgetting stuff if you know where you can get that information in future. I think many can agree that having access to written and printed word even has been a big positive.

"I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me." Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Re: A.I. and Social Media Contribute to 'Brain Rot'

#128

Post by xanderlewis »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #104
sdwr wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty clearly not a native English speaker

What language has a space preceding commas?

...good question. This (standard) excuse is designed to make you feel bad for potentially insulting someone trying their hardest, but it doesn't make any sense.

Re: A.I. and Social Media Contribute to 'Brain Rot'

#129

Post by nekusar »

anukin wrote: post #110
Loughla wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I left when they killed 3rd party app access. Honestly even the curated subs I was a part of were pretty toxic or echo-chambery now that I've had time to look back

The biggest problem is that Lemmy is no substitute for Reddit. Majority of it is run by tankies and people professing extreme left views.

"Extreme left" said by someone likely from the USA is slightly left-of-center basically anywhere else.

The USA democrats and "left" have been overton window'ed so hard that a actual democratic socialist, Mamdani, is compared to being a communist. https://nypost.com/cover/november-5-2025/

There's also hundreds of Lemmy federated servers. I'm sure some are actual communist. But there's plenty for all walks of life. And it's like Mastodon in that regard.

And honestly, if "killing SNAP and other public benefits for poor people" is capitalist, I want nothing to do with that. That is completely ethically bankrupt. Doubly so being one of the richest countries in the world. Absolutely 0 people should be starving. And I'd also say that 0 people should be involuntarily homeless. (some may want to, and choose to be vagabonds and travel. they should have that right! but they should also be able to choose to have a home.)

Re: A.I. and Social Media Contribute to 'Brain Rot'

#130

Post by Esophagus4 »

ryandrake wrote: post #77
randycupertino wrote: post #7

I'm in a local facebook group for my town where people post hiking pics, bird pics, local business updates, contractor recommendations etc. I am annoyed to see "brain rot" videos starting to take over the page. There is one dude promoting his succulent repotting/resale business and he's posted like 5-8 ai generated surfer dude monkey surfing and partying with his potted succulents just in the last week. I opened the…

I'm pretty surprised by how fooled normal people are by all this AI-sludge, and/or how accepting they are of all this low-effort content. My reaction to this stuff is the same as yours: please don't clog the internet up with all this fake content! But everyone else in my life thinks it's great, and sometimes don't believe me when I point out it's obviously AI generated. I think people are already totally fooled and t…

I will admit, I consider myself pretty tech savvy and I am having a harder time these days identifying AI-generated content (aside from the obvious ones).

I find myself squinting hard at interior design pictures on Pinterest to see if they’re real, I can never be sure with an instagram video, and even blogs and comments are getting harder to tell.

And I think the fact that I am having a harder time distinguishing reality from AI worries me greatly that I would be susceptible to misinformation if I venture outside of trusted sources.

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