To think people are getting noticeably stupider

[CurdinHenry]

At every level of capability it just feels like the species is in decline

I worked in a university science department for a long time and I noticed a significant decrease in common sense. One example is when a student complained to me that her graduation might be delayed because she hadn't returned her books to the library, despite receiving several emails and a letter telling her to. She hadn't read them because "nobody told me to".
My SIL, educated to degree level and a qualified primary school teacher, criticises lots of people for being "thick", but writes could of, would of etc., and doesn't understand why it's wrong.

I want a vote to bring back no warning labels on everything. If you drink bleach, enter a building site or look the wrong way at a crossing and die it should be added to the Darwin awards

This morning I followed a car which turned right without indicating whilst being in the left hand lane . Twice. Both times were dangerous with the car lurching across the road right in front of me. I beeped the second time and the passenger turned round and gave me some kind of mouthful that I couldn’t hear through closed windows thankfully. Idiots.

This is a good point.
Good example - my DH came across a post on fb yesterday about otters eating ducks - followed by all kinds of outraged posters with angry emojis and the like.. he was incredulous.. This is nature. Why be so outraged?!

Absolutely this. I don't what's worse though: when people outsource their critical thinking with no accountability, or don't bother at all.

Is the OP ever coming back??

Why do you say this @CurdinHenry ???

I don't know really

Employees at the front line are poorly trained, poorly paid and have to deal with increasingly aggressive clients

Every transaction has been reduced to the simplest, computerised form

Everything. EVERYTHING is measured - cost, time for transaction, time to resolution, customer feedback

Employees are hired to push buttons and follow very simple procedures, anything which doesn't fit the simplified procedures is beyond the button pushers' remit, has to be referred 'up' and causes delays, causing even more friction

A lot of people are oblivious to the problems they cause, because they 'just want..', they 'only need...', 'it's just this..'

Shopping today was especially frustrating because of Immensely Stupid People (ISPs)

One woman bought bedding some time ago, it had never been used and she brought it in for an exchange for another set of bedding

She failed to produce a receipt and spent nearly twenty minutes having the rules explained to her - no receipt, no exchange - over and over again

It was a difference of about a fiver

Second guy was on his phone in a supermarket

Wandering back and forth, round and round, continuously chatting, getting in the way and not even looking at the shelves, loudly telling the the guy he's talking to where he is

People are not controlling their children, letting them play in the aisles, they're blocking the aisles and make shopping more frustrating

I find it ironic that we all hold in our hands tiny computers that can tell you anything you want to know. Any question you have can be answered, you can hear any piece of music you like, see any image from history. We've never been so well informed. And yet..

I think part of it has to do with people reading less. A lot of people I know will say "who told you that" or "how did you know that" if I know something not entirely everyday. My answer is always "I read about it". The same people seem to be the ones who say "no one ever told me that" as if you can only gain knowledge through being specifically told about something.

I think the internet and social media has made people think that information should come to them rather than to be able to search for it. Eg on Facebook local pages people just put things like “tip run needed today inbox me” “lounge needs painting” “garage in x town” and then wait for people to give them this information. (Most of the time don’t even use proper questions, niceties or anything, I think it’s rude but others always reply) People can’t even be bothered to google or look at things like trustpilot, they just want someone else to do the work for them. I do think technology is making lazy and also de-skilling us

I think algorithms and confirmation bias are a toxic combination. Perfectly capable people believe the most insane nonsense because it confirms their world view and are constantly being served more of it.

would agree to a certain extent. social media is to blame for most of it. also people are so used to having everything spoon fed to them they do not know how to proactively go looking for stuff etc even though a wealth of information available at their fingertips. hence all the stupid questions posted on Facebook - eh you have Google too no you rather someone else do the leg work instead

You reminded me of this chap's little sketch

It's very true.

It really is time people started to think!

Sounds like you just interact with dumb kids.

How does that work? Surely if takes just as much time to tell ChatGPT what you want to say, as it does to write it yourself?

Critical thinking seems to be in decline as does the ability to look at information from various sources and analyse what the different view points are saying. We want instant anwers, instant solutions, nobody seems willing to wait to find things out, to read, to sift the evidence or to just to let things ride and see what happens. We binge on box sets when once we had to wait a whole 7 days for the next episode, we have food delivered ready cooked where once we would have to at least walked to the chip shop or wherever to buy it or even shopped for the ingredients and then cooked it. I am guilty of wanting it and wanting it now and have really noticed my concentration and patience are much lower than they used to be. I'm trying hard to get offline more often, to get back into reading, to take my time before I make my mind up about things. That is what I have noticed about myself, the loss of depth of thought, the leaping to conclusions rather than taking time to think.

Is it they don't know or they are weaponising incompetence? Got used to people doing it for them. I know a few people like this that call me for help/advice/hand hold and they could do it for themselves. I say no now, go google!

completely agree with this, lazy also.

I'm on the Facebook residents group for the town I grew up in (which I still live fairly close to). Most of them seem to be semi literate at best! And the essence of what they post is often cringeable. Maybe it's just the types of people that post on residents groups in general but the one for the town I live in isn't half as bad.
It's weird because I wasn't particularly brainy.. I did fairly well academically in the end but there were plenty in my school who were more academically gifted than I was. So this indicates perhaps the most of those posting are younger than me and maybe things are on the decline.... I have wondered about this myself

One thing I did notice towards the end of my teaching career was a lessening ability to extract information from a map; people follow the instructions from Google unquestioningly, and I wonder what would happen if there were a problem receiving a signal......
I recently had the same conversation with three young women, several days apart, who had been sent out by a care company to assist a housebound invalid.
They had an address, ( nearby street, as it happens) and a name, and I admit to feeling rather concerned for the poor chap patiently waiting for his carers to arrive.
They took some convincing that my home was not the correct destination, repeatedly showing me their smartphone screen with the indicator pointing to their destination.
My wheelie bins are right by the front door, and to improve my chances of getting the right bins back on collection day, I have put stickers on the top and side with the number and street name on them, so I was able to point out to my callers that they were not in the right street; they were standing immediately beside something marked with the correct address, but they were still prepared to argue the odds......
As it happens, the road they were seeking is not that far away, and I was able to point them in the right direction.
Eventually, I realised that the problem was that the care agency had given them a postcode which was out by one letter, and rather than seeking the road in an A-Z or similar, they were completely bamboozled.
A few months ago, we lost the mobile signal in the area briefly, which was disconcerting, but I can't help wondering if sometimes we are hanging on by a thread.

Oh. My. God.

Any eloquence I posses has deserted me. That's just ... extraordinary.

Yes definitely!

Say that's some of it all right. it's big in my work. finally after alot of complaining my boss finally pushing back and forcing people to do it

Even if it’s the case that the parent is disabled, it’s still not the teachers job to drive their kid home from school!