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> it's moving away from long-form reading and writing. The kids (as usual) are adapting faster than us oldies The article specifically references this. The pro

> it's moving away from long-form reading and writing. The kids (as usual) are adapting faster than us oldies The article specifically references this. The problem isn’t they can’t read and write. It’s that their brains are measurably less powerful. If what we’re getting is everyone over 30 today having a permanent economic and living-standards advantage over everyone younger, so be it. What we’ll actually get is the kids of the wealthy able to read and think while the average American can’t think beyond a YouTube short.

marcus_holmes 5mo ago
Define "power". If you try reading an 18th Century novel, the prose is really difficult to parse. They were used to reading much more difficult text than we are. But we deal with more information in a day than they would in a year. It's hard to say because we can't experiment, but I would expect they would be completely confused by the sheer amount of shit that we deal with routinely. The next generation are just further along on this curve. And as TFA says, they're perfectly intelligent and cogent when talking, it's just their literacy that is changing. It's an adaptation to changing circumstances, not a reduction in thinking ability.
- JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
  > If you try reading an 18th Century novel, the prose is really difficult to parse. They were used to reading much more difficult text than we are They just wrote and spoke differently. You’ll notice a lot of 18th-century writing is also shorter; most of the Federalist Papers fit on one page, and serialised novels were about to become a thing.
  - marcus_holmes 5mo ago
    I'm more thinking of Dickens - long run-on sentences, with points stretched over sub clauses. It's difficult, and that was the pulp of the day.
    - GeoAtreides 5mo ago
      >long run-on sentences long yes, run-on no.
ngriffiths 5mo ago
So be it? Everyone under 30 being permanently worse off due to a decline in education is an extremely depressing outcome, that seems like the whole argument for fixing it

marcus_holmes 5mo ago

Define "power". If you try reading an 18th Century novel, the prose is really difficult to parse. They were used to reading much more difficult text than we are. But we deal with more information in a day than they would in a year. It's hard to say because we can't experiment, but I would expect they would be completely confused by the sheer amount of shit that we deal with routinely. The next generation are just further along on this curve. And as TFA says, they're perfectly intelligent and cogent when talking, it's just their literacy that is changing. It's an adaptation to changing circumstances, not a reduction in thinking ability.

JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
> If you try reading an 18th Century novel, the prose is really difficult to parse. They were used to reading much more difficult text than we are They just wrote and spoke differently. You’ll notice a lot of 18th-century writing is also shorter; most of the Federalist Papers fit on one page, and serialised novels were about to become a thing.
- marcus_holmes 5mo ago
  I'm more thinking of Dickens - long run-on sentences, with points stretched over sub clauses. It's difficult, and that was the pulp of the day.
  - GeoAtreides 5mo ago
    >long run-on sentences long yes, run-on no.

ngriffiths 5mo ago

So be it? Everyone under 30 being permanently worse off due to a decline in education is an extremely depressing outcome, that seems like the whole argument for fixing it