To think people are getting noticeably stupider

[CurdinHenry]

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

They’re not just about basic things though are they?!
The modern ones are awful, crude and some downright disgusting, as CoffeeKat mentioned.
I don’t want to see them atall, especially when I’m eating 🤢

The major problem is that people are not taught basic critical thinking. Hence the fact that so many people don't see through the blatant lies spouted by people like Trump and Farage.

Oh dearie dearie me, that certainly got under your skin :)

So, we've progressed past sealioning to attempted ad hominem, red herring, a vague attempt at gate keeping and condescending rage baiting.

Lovely stuff. Interesting to see how a sealion quickly loses the mask of civility when correctly outed :)

You’ve only got to look at the kids coming through the school system to realise it’s only going to get worse.

On here, during Theresa May’s time in No 10, someone is surprised that Gordon Brown is no longer PM. Presumably they missed that rather important and controversial topic that happened under Cameron.

www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/2721627-oh-i-never-watch-the-news

How is that stupid? AI can monitor all the reports of strikes and give a much more reasoned assessment of where might be safest to head to.

Take it up with the author!

You are surely aware that ai chatbots regularly (yes, even now) get information wrong, even basic information is often simply wrong. They fabricate sources, quotations, and more.

I have a friend who works on legal reports (not a lawyer) who recently asked for some cases to back up his matter, basically speeding up his process rather than hunt and peck through searching.

Luckily, he always backchecks and discovered one of the cases had simply been invented. It didn't exist at all.

Back when I was still trying ai out I asked it for a Scottish poet, gave the name and a few lines of a specific poem I was trying to track down. It actually invented one, on the spot, and claimed it was the real deal. It looked quite genuine too at first glance. Fortunately, I always check sources too.

The last time I tried to use Chat GPT for anything more than a simple internet search was about a year ago. I gave it a list of places in a particular city and asked it to copy a basic map of the city and highlight just those places I had named.

It simply fabricated streets, it placed some destinations in completely the wrong place and the "map" it gave me was totally useles, it was certainly not from this universe.

This is a well known, heavily mapped city, there is a lot of information available about this place online.

In these three instances it admitted it was simply inventing things when challenged. Oopsie, yes, sorry about that, is very common with chatbots. This is a serious problem that they cannot seem to overcome.

Language matters a lot, the naming of a thing contributes to the trust we put in it, we really need to go back to calling them chatbots.

There is no way at all to tell if a chatbot is hallucinating without seeking verification.

Anyway, I suppose if the chatbot was your only source of information when trying to flee a danger zone it would be better than just guessing, and you might not have time to find a credible source in these circumstances, so not actually necessarily stupid, but certainly not ideal.

Im not sure democracy and welfare state is compatible anymore. Some of the incentives it creates are unhelpful for good government. Can see issues with it across Europe at the moment. Or perhaps liberal democracy is just in a very bad place. Liberalism doesn't work when everyone else isn't liberal and don't play by the same rules.

Well, years ago, there was the famous article in The Atlantic by Nicholas Carr, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"

Daytime tv makes people stupider… as found by Italian researchers. So some support for the OP’s proposition.

Entertainment TV makes people 'cognitively and culturally shallower'

Access to low-quality entertainment television makes people less civic-minded, less "cognitively sophisticated" and more likely to vote for populists, a 2019 study published in the July edition of the American Economic Journal has found.

Using the extensive data available about the introduction and use of private TV broadcasters in different parts of Italy, researchers from Spain, Italy and the UK have shown that the areas of the country that were exposed to Silvio Berlusconi's entertainment channels earlier were much more likely to vote for the populist leader the first time he ran for office in 1994.

Indeed, by "by priming particular cultural models, light entertainment shows, soap operas, and advertising" can have just as much as effect on behaviour as politically biased TV news.

This about sums it up.

There's the old joke:

In the 70s the car manual told you how to drain the oil from the reservoir. Now it tells you not to drink the oil.

But that's not quite fair. A lot of things that would have been standard to do yourself in a car, now modern engines have either made it not necessary or impossible to do without specialist tools.
And fear of being sued puts the disclaimers in, not that they expect anyone to do it.

But it also is the fact that we don't expect to be able to repair things in the way we used to. Growing up, if mum nor dad could mend it, that meant it was gone. No replacement, no taking it to a shop to mend. But most things they could mend.
We don't have that expectation, nor the expectation that superglue and a paperclip is a good enough mend, so in that way we're losing the ability to use our skills and initiative.

People from a ' wider background ' . 😂 What cinematographers ?

🤣 I often go through my index cards of an evening

The confidence of ignorance.

I used to run a public library and back in the 1960s, 70s and 80s I learned that the public in general are pretty dim and if you are smart end educated you can run rings around them. People have not only got dimmer they have also got lazier. I sell online and every customer is supplied with a tracking number. All they have to do is paste it into a box on their national website (mostly the United States Postal Service) to see where it is. Some of them cant even do that and are constantly emailing me for an update. One lazy duffer did this 4 times then opened a "not received" case. If he had bothered to look he would have seen that the tracking revealed the package handed into the concierge of his apartment. Ebay dismissed the case. You snooze you lose.

Who told you. Was ot Hitler ?

But this has trickled down to a quite ridiculous degree. Look at this place. If you can't face the heavy duty intellectual activity that is.. thinking of a username for yourself - never fear, the site will suggest one for you!

😂

Yes. Loads of evidence here on MN. See the thread about the eejit and the rooster. The rooster did what roosters do, she complained and now the rooster is no more. Stupidity, ignorance, lack of thought and then not taking responsibility for the consequences of their actions seems to be very common.

Reform voters are the only ones with any common sense! This country needs a revolution to toss out the incompetent civil service, corrupt self serving judges and the grasping grifters we call our Government.
Universities have become indoctrination camps, finishing schools for the inept.

Possibly, but it might also be the case that the poorly educated are now just louder, more entitled, and generally more visible. In the old days, the uneducated would’ve been occupied, sweeping chimneys, shining shoes, emptying chamber pots and selling matches. Now they’re sitting at home on benefits spouting nonsense on the internet.

Also, educational standards have fallen through the floor. Firstly in terms of discipline and behaviour, and secondly because of the idea that 50% of the population should go to university. You have to lower standards in order to pass them, because you can’t have 75% failing after paying £££ in fees.

I’d agree with this.
I find it harder to concentrate for long periods; an example cropped up the other day - an old episode of Call My Bluff came on the tv. I used to love it as a kid, so I sat down to watch it. After 20 minutes I was thinking ‘get ON with it’. They were talking so slowly and taking so long to make a point. I had to turn it off.

On the other hand, I hate news or documentary videos where each shot is 3 seconds or less. I want to learn something, not just take a quick glance.