Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 200 posts

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

#131

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

HeinzStuckeIt wrote: post #15
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…

On modern social media, even if you had a group full of smart and reasonable people, the platform itself is injecting crap that may well drive out many of them. I rececently returned to Reddit since there are no other remaining discussion venues for one of my hobbies. I looked at the new-Reddit interface and shuddered: ads are being shown among comments, and many comments are hidden by defaul because apparently discu…

There are Firefox extensions that monkeypatch the old UI with usability enhancements and force a redirect for all reddit links.

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

#132

Post by xanderlewis »

SunshineTheCat wrote: post #60
entropie wrote: post #55

> “I’m pretty frightened, to be frank,” Dr. Melumad said. “I’m worried about younger folks not knowing how to conduct a traditional Google search.” Well, this guy obviously didn't get the memo that Google search isn't what it was 10 years ago and is total junk. It's not just AI brain rot. Brain rot is everywhere. Social media, linear TV, politics.

“I’m worried about younger folks not knowing how to conduct a traditional Google search.” This has a real “I’m afraid no one will know how to ride a horse when the motorcoach comes out” sense to it. The answer is, who cares? Why would a better way of doing something “frighten” someone. Not to say it won't come with its own set of issues, but technology constantly evolving/improving should be expected by now, but huma…

> a better way of doing something

Your argument fails right here because you're supposing something that isn't true. LLMs are better than search engines for some things, but you're speaking as if they're a replacement for what came before. They're absolutely not. Reading books — going to the original source rather than relying on a stochastic facsimile — is never going to go away, even if some of us are too lazy to ever do so. Their loss.

Put another way: leaving aside non-practical aspects of the experience, the car does a better job of getting you from A to B than a horse does. An LLM does not 'do a better job' than a book. Maybe in some cases it's more useful, but it's simply not a replacement. Perhaps a combination is best: use the LLM to interpolate and find your way around the literature, and then go and hunt down the real source material. The same cannot be said of the car/horse comparison.

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

#134

Post by 52-6F-62 »

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?

It was used in exactly the same way. You think the world you live in is based on the honest truth of how things went? Entire families and peoples have been written out of history, for convenience. They are kept out of history for "stability".

Reading should help one think, but it is not to replace thinking...

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

#135

Post by triMichael »

sureglymop wrote: post #116
monospacegames wrote: post #13

It's funny how multiple commenters here are reacting to this article by saying that older media is also bad when the article itself is about specific observations about how relying on AI and overengaging in social media can lead to detrimental outcomes. Ironically this tendency to form an opinion without investing time might also be a form of brain rot.

I don't really understand how they used "brainrot". I thought brain rot was this generations surrealism, a type of art? By all means, study the detrimental effects of social media and AI on our brains but don't correlate it with people creating art just because .

There are two types of "brainrot" that are related but not the same. Essentially brainrot is anything that is anti-thinking.

The first type of brainrot is what happens when you let other things think for you and your thoughts and opinions become not your own. AI is anti-thinking because you can let the machine think for you. Social media is anti-thinking because you can let other peoples' opinions think for you.

On the other hand, memes actually communicate ideas. For example, The Simpsons Ralph meme "I'm in danger" and the dog on fire "This is fine" memes both represent understanding being in a dangerous situation while doing nothing about it. Star Trek was actually way ahead of its time with the episode "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra" which was about a culture that used memes as communication.

So what do you get when you combine brainrot ("anti-thinking") with memes? You get brainrot memes, which is the second type of brainrot. For example, 6-7. 6-7 doesn't communicate ideas. It doesn't mean anything. Instead, it communicates the opposite of an idea. So when someone says "6-7", they are embracing using language in an anti-thinking way. In this way, brainrot memes can be thought of more as an anti-meme. It's as contagious as an idea, but since it doesn't contain any information, it acts more like a virus. So brainrot memes are essentially mind-viruses that embrace the lack of thinking that comes with brainrot.

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

#136

Post by bloppe »

The wishful cynic in me sometimes thinks this might actually lead to a partial reversal of ageism in the workforce. It's almost starting to look like the kids graduating from school with chatgpt are actually handicapped (painting in extremely broad strokes; there will always be prodigies) and those who graduated or worked before 2022 will actually become more desirable to hire.

I'm sure this take is at best oversimplified. Probably mostly wrong. But it's certainly something I will think about while hiring from now on

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

#137

Post by cloverich »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #78
HeinzStuckeIt wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using a HN post to talk about something unrelated you wanted to talk about anyway, has been part of HN for years. Probably because a lot of people feel with the rise of 140-character type social media, there are fewer and fewer venues on the internet where you can substantially talk to educated and non-brand-hustling people about the things that you think about.

Yes and it's largely made the site lose the rigor it used to have. You compare it to Slashdot downthread which I don't think is a good thing. The reason I joined this site so long ago is because Slashdot was more interested in tech culture shibboleths than actual tech or business. Natalie Portman!! Hot grits! Embrace, extend, extinguish!! Unfortunate to see the same happen here but that's life I guess. The fact that…

> We're more interested in finding people like us than confronting reality.

The reality is there arent many people like us outside of work. I would love to be able to talk about this kind of stuff irl but in all my years none of my irl friends, acquaintences, etc, are more than remotely interested in the kinds of topics that come up here. There is a distinct difference between echo chambers where the opinions are common (politics), and thread discussions like on HN where real life versions are fleetingly rare. I dont think its entirely fair to conflate the two. eg:

> Is it that fulfilling to find online bytes that share your opinions?

I discuss on HN as much to find and genuinely debate alternative opinions, and IME thats a pretty common pattern. i have learned so much reading other comments, formulating thoughtful responses to others, and have others break down / extend / critique my own shared opinions. Its what makes HN enjoyable and also the primary way its different than other social media sites.

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

#138

Post by Alex2037 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #69
Alex2037 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how many wars did LLMs and the social media instigate? the shitrag here did at least one.

> how many wars did LLMs and the social media instigate? At least one already. I suspect your comment won't age well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohingya_genocide https://www.reuters.com/article/us-myanmar-rohingya-facebook... > Marzuki Darusman, chairman of the U.N. Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar, told reporters that social media had played a "determining role" in Myanmar. You could pro…

>Marzuki Darusman, chairman of the U.N. Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar, told reporters that social media had played a "determining role" in Myanmar.

"played a role" != "instigated". everything "played a role" there.

their fucking government did it.

>You could probably count the war in Gaza to some extent.

are you for real?

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

#139

Post by Loughla »

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.

I'm saying you don't even need a substitute. Genuinely looking back, I was more anxious when I would browse reddit in my free time.

I promise, disengage from social media (and the doom news cycle for that matter) and you'll be happier, or at least you'll worry about stuff you can control instead of stuff you can't.

Except hn. Never disengage from hn.

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

#140

Post by Alex2037 »

everdrive wrote: post #23
Alex2037 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how many wars did LLMs and the social media instigate? the shitrag here did at least one.

LLMs are quite new, so you might honestly want to save your comment and return to it in a few years. For social media, I think you can point to directly social media with regard to the Arab Spring as well as the Rohingya genocide, and many, many mass shooting events. I'm sure there's more, that's just off the top of my head. Much like legacy media, social media is certainly not _wholly_ or necessarily even _primarily…

>LLMs are quite new, so you might honestly want to save your comment and return to it in a few years.

okay, call me when an LLM begins to append "furthermore, I think that X must be destroyed" to its outputs.

Post reply on HN