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> Most people hate to write as much as they hate math. This resonates deeply. All that matters for our lived experience and our social interactions is how we t

> Most people hate to write as much as they hate math. This resonates deeply. All that matters for our lived experience and our social interactions is how we train our brains, both individually and at collective scale through agreed symbolic modes of expression. Brains are so plastic that wonderfully different alternatives are possible and we almost certainly have not discovered them all. Ancient bards were learning and reciting day-long epic poems by just hearing them. There are still cultures that train themselves to long recitations of text. I don't even know what that might feel like to have such a long sequence readily available in your brain. But training our brains requires massive energy. Depending on individual and social characteristics people will stop training their brains when the going gets tough. Math is a great example. You could argue that chatGPT has a job because our public information repositories are so littered with low-density information (unstructured textual information) that its impossible to navigate. Some professions would go to great textual length to describe in an ambiguous and limited way something that can be described concisely with an equation. Superficially at least, the impact of digital assistive tech is that we are being collectively dumbed down (just like we are becoming obese through the ready availability of massive amounts of fatty foods). Its a multi-pronged process: Before chatGPT decimated our writing skills, visual dissemination of information (which conveys less meaning but requires no training) has taken over like a raging wildfire. E.g., tiktok versus twitter.

dsign 3y ago
The small silver lining is that there are arguably more people who have access to literature, and who like to read, write, and do math, because generally those things have become more accessible to the wider world. But when the going gets really tough, those people may try to band together and secede[^1]. One thing I have to add though, as somebody who loves to write, is that I couldn't do it without our modern digital tools. Because I'm not a native speaker, I tend to bungle prepositions and semantics, and it's only with great effort and many Google searches and ChatGPTs and grammar checkers that I dare to afflict[^2] the world with my words. [^1]: I found this idea in "Homo Deus," blame Dr. Harari! [^2]: "Afflict": To the point, I used thesaurus.com here to find a suitable synonym of "torment".
- nologic01 3y ago
  Digitization is definitely enormously empowering in principle. You could indeed imagine that it might enable a sub-culture of super-literate people. But in practice after 50 years of tech hyperventilation the only nuance we've added to Phoenician script is... emoji. Amazing things will come, but not as fast as we might like them. The digital space is gigantic but we are exploring it at a snail's pace. The reason is not very different from the barriers linked to writing and math: people need to train their brains to code and it doesn't come cheap or easy. Imagine if 8 billion people would actually be able to code. Would there be room for "big tech"? The digital conversation might be very different. Right now we are roughly (in digital age chronology) circa 3000 BC, the dawn of organized digital agriculture. A few digital priests have invented cuneiform and in cahoots with the prevailing power structures are using it to tax and oppress the digitally illiterate masses.
smolder 3y ago
> (just like we are becoming obese through the ready availability of massive amounts of fatty foods) Not to derail, but: fat in food isn't what leads to fat people. As far as diet, the culprit is too many calories, and particularly foods which lead people to overconsume calories for various reasons.

dsign 3y ago

The small silver lining is that there are arguably more people who have access to literature, and who like to read, write, and do math, because generally those things have become more accessible to the wider world. But when the going gets really tough, those people may try to band together and secede[^1]. One thing I have to add though, as somebody who loves to write, is that I couldn't do it without our modern digital tools. Because I'm not a native speaker, I tend to bungle prepositions and semantics, and it's only with great effort and many Google searches and ChatGPTs and grammar checkers that I dare to afflict[^2] the world with my words. [^1]: I found this idea in "Homo Deus," blame Dr. Harari! [^2]: "Afflict": To the point, I used thesaurus.com here to find a suitable synonym of "torment".

nologic01 3y ago
Digitization is definitely enormously empowering in principle. You could indeed imagine that it might enable a sub-culture of super-literate people. But in practice after 50 years of tech hyperventilation the only nuance we've added to Phoenician script is... emoji. Amazing things will come, but not as fast as we might like them. The digital space is gigantic but we are exploring it at a snail's pace. The reason is not very different from the barriers linked to writing and math: people need to train their brains to code and it doesn't come cheap or easy. Imagine if 8 billion people would actually be able to code. Would there be room for "big tech"? The digital conversation might be very different. Right now we are roughly (in digital age chronology) circa 3000 BC, the dawn of organized digital agriculture. A few digital priests have invented cuneiform and in cahoots with the prevailing power structures are using it to tax and oppress the digitally illiterate masses.

smolder 3y ago

> (just like we are becoming obese through the ready availability of massive amounts of fatty foods) Not to derail, but: fat in food isn't what leads to fat people. As far as diet, the culprit is too many calories, and particularly foods which lead people to overconsume calories for various reasons.