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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'

#171

Post by webspinner »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #131
HeinzStuckeIt wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You bet there are, and I use them regularly. The ones I need, anyway.

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

#172

Post by webspinner »

yen223 wrote: post #163
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…

Those comments are probably AI as well

I'm actually writing fairly literally lol! If you want me to write more in-depth comments, I sure can! I'm not stupid enough to go generate them like you might be, I suppose. In fact, I think the whole thing is ridiculous, so I try to avoid it entirely!!

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

#173

Post by webspinner »

brailsafe wrote: post #121
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 destination…

Sure thing, sometimes it's fun! I suppose that's because I'm a thrillseeker. Let's see how fast it gets up to is a test. That wouldn't be the case if I were driving.

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

#174

Post by webspinner »

tharne wrote: post #52
api wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ancient Egyptians on writing: "For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them." https://www.anthologialitt.com/post/the-god-thoth-and-the-in... This discourse is as old as humanity. Every…

> This discourse is as old as humanity. Every tool makes us stronger but also paradoxically weaker. Of course that statement is true for every tool, but what's missing from the discussion is whether the trade off is worth it. Even truly terrible things have benefits. Smoking cigarettes makes it easier to maintain a healthy weight, this is well documented. Smoking has also been shown to reduce anxiety in some people.…

I do not believe generative AI has any benefits whatsoever! If it does, I have yet to discover them. It may be a benefit to everyone here which is great, but i would say that it's better to spare it.

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

#175

Post by webspinner »

tekbruh9000 wrote: post #26
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.

Here's an example of how reliance on traditional media leads to detrimental outcomes: https://ourworldindata.org/does-the-news-reflect-what-we-die... Anyone from far away lands, kings, priests, CEOs, rando on HN reaching into your mind... all engaged in information shaping to encourage allegiance. It makes instinctual sense for NY Times editors to get others to risk their health through limited coverage. Biology is s…

Oh, I don't exactly trust the NYT. But hey, I do read them once in a while. After that, I always do more research.

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

#176

Post by conception »

eboynyc32 wrote: post #142
bloppe wrote: post #136

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 oversimpl…

Such bs! Every new tech causes the disgrace of society! Music, films, dancing, comic books, the internet. Everything is always evil except the bible of course.

Only the dopamine sinks.

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

#177

Post by Sammi »

skinnymuch wrote: post #159
HeinzStuckeIt wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OP says tankies. Those kinds of extreme left are extreme even by non-USA standards. A European-style democratic socialist like Mamdani would be, one hopes, to the right of them. Tankies were largely forced out of European mainstream parties after the shocks of 1937, 1956 and 1968.

A better way to think of it is that the western “left” isn’t part of the global left. Using tankie unironically is a classic example.

The massive sympathy for Russia in the Ukraine war among the far left makes it pretty clear that tankies are alive and kicking.

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

#178

Post by zjp »

nekusar wrote: post #129
anukin wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

This is a 2000s era meme that was started to try and get people to see reason and vote against Bush, but it is not true and has not been for coming up on a decade. The Democratic Party is to the left of many European left parties, especially on issues like immigration and freedom of identity, and its politicians (especially the young ones) regularly pitch welfare state expansions that are more generous than European counterparts (see Kat Abu on 'medicare for anyone physically present in the US, for free'; a more generous offer than even the NHS).

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

#179

Post by seesaw »

entropie wrote: post #46
dingnuts wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

weep? I'd finally be free. I wish this site would disappear too. Whoever designed these algorithms got me good, at a young age, and I don't think these sites have been a net positive overall or on me personally

Iam nearly 15 years on reddit now and I would miss it if i cant use old. or a good client. Iam sure sooner or later it will happen and ill most probably leave. Reddits quality went downhill over the years but there is more or less no successor/competitor. It will be over and buried forever. Eternal september gets them all. Side note: be free if you want to and dont make it dependent on decisions others do for you.

I am in the same boat. I think I will get a lot more of time back if they kill old

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

#180

Post by kjkjadksj »

supersrdjan wrote: post #122
kjkjadksj wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wond…

I would say learning to be successful in modern society would probably count as a new competency. Rather than know to hunt and forage like our ancestors have for what millions of years, within three generations that has been replaced with having a sense for grocery shopping. How to hold a job. How to manage modern social constructs.

However, three generations or so is not enough time to see the effects of this form of selection on our species. All the great things we see in life that we’ve built rest on the laurels of behavioral patterns and neuron networks established by millions of years of this hunter-gatherer paradigm. Now that is over for most of the breeding population. What is next for us is the interesting question. What are we selecting for today? What sort of person tends to be the most fecund? Where are our alleles heading? I mean, we aren’t even selecting for reproductive success anymore. For example, the people who need to rely on ivf to reproduce today perhaps would not have reproduced in the past, and whatever alleles that conferred that infertility might have been regularly lost in the population shortly after they emerged through mutation. Now, that ivf offspring survives, and might harbor these alleles instead to the next generation where they will also depend on ivf to reproduce.

Intelligence is also not being selected for. Intelligent people tend to have kids late in life when sperm and egg quality are already in decline harboring more mutations than gametes from younger humans. They tend to also have fewer kids. Lack of education on the other hand is correlated with having more kids younger in life. The poor and uneducated therefore have a higher fitness.

It does not seem to bode well that our present level of intelligence will even be around in 10,000 generations time given that the selective pressures that generated it in the first place are now lost.

Maybe that is the great filter: intelligent life is short lived as the changes to behavior that emerge from it being widespread and technologically capable lead to that very intelligence no longer being selected for.

Socrates was really ahead of the curve on this I guess…

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