Are we entering the Post-Cognitive Age?

jonsnow399 said:

What "planning" you gonna do for yellowstone? Asteroid interception? good luck with that.

Click to expand...

dandyrandy said:

The movie idiocracy is a documentary...

Click to expand...

jonsnow399 said:

I seriously doubt they will allow anyone to perform medical operations without a license, However, radiologists are on their way out for sure. AI can already read scans better than humans.

Click to expand...

ttystikk said:

I'm a born optimist; we are wired to be.

Click to expand...

TacoMac said:

The optimist says the glass is half full.

The pessimist says the glass is half empty.

The engineer says the glass is exactly twice as large as it needs to be.

Click to expand...

ttystikk said:

If you want to see Venice, I'd get on that. It's not going to be there for much longer.

Click to expand...

TacoMac said:

Charleston, South Carolina will be the new Venice.

Click to expand...

ttystikk said:

Quite so!

And every other town on every seacoast ON THE PLANET.

I'm an engineer and I think we need another Pinatubo. Every year. Maybe a Krakatoa.

Yellowstone would definitely do it.

Click to expand...

TacoMac said:

I have an issue of National Geographic from around the end of last year regarding exactly that. The last time Yellowstone went up, it made Krakatoa look like a 4th of July bottle rocket.

Click to expand...

dabby duck said:

bullshit to the radiologist part. saying something doesn't make it true.....

Click to expand...

ttystikk said:

Nice of you to scream about the 1% likely scenarios and completely ignore the 99% certainties in the room.

Does that denial help you make it through the day?
Screaming???? Denial??? Yes, you nailed it, i'm in denial, otherwise I could'nt make it thru the day! C'mon TT knock off the hyperbole and acting like a drama queen.
Have a little more sand to bury your head in...

Click to expand...

jonsnow399 said:

What am I ignoring? You must be a mind reader! lol
Screaming??? In denial? you got me! I can't make it thru the day without denying something!
Hyperbole much?

Click to expand...

Chunky Stool said:

Where does it start?

Click to expand...

DiogenesTheWiser said:

It started already, probably with 24-hour cable television. Tech advances mean that we're gradually transitioning into an age when thinking is obsolete.

Click to expand...

ttystikk said:

Having given this more thought, I will disagree.

Calculators didn't make people too stupid to memorize multiplication tables, they allowed people to get the answers they wanted more quickly.

The same can be said for all enhanced intelligence tools.

Those who can think will always be able to drive progress. If that ever changes, we're through as a society and perhaps as a species.

Click to expand...

DiogenesTheWiser said:

I cannot come up with any kind of feasible method to test thinking and its depletion among Americans. I can only follow impressionistic data, and surely this has happened to you. You pay for cash for something, and maybe you even give the clerk a bill and some change so you'll get even dollar bills back. For example, say your purchase is $5.73 and you give the clerk $20.73, expecting a 10 and a 5 back in change. Have you ever experienced a clerk looking at you like you're a fool for giving them too much money? Or have you ever experienced a clerk unable to figure out your change because the cash register didn't tell them how much change you should get?

Those are examples of how non-thought is creeping into our society.

I'll go with some more service industry examples. When I was in college, like many Georgetown students I fried my brain waiting tables at DC eateries. A hard job because the only way you can make it pay off is to take as many tables as your managers will allow you to have. Being a good waiter meant timing, and constantly thinking about how to pace out sending orders to the bar and kitchen. You don't want, for example, appetizers to hit a table before drinks, or entrees before salads. And you've got four or five tables, and you have to think all this timing in your head.

Nowadays, when I visit my hometown and eat out, morons are waiting tables, and can't handle the thinking part of it. The last two times I've eaten out there, I got appetizers before drinks, and sometimes whole orders all at the same time. Reasons for this, I speculate, are that the server (probably a college student) cannot think too hard about pacing because they're too busy texting their besties every five minutes, or checking instagram or any other of those bonehead entertainment sites.

Same thing happened out West a few months ago. I was with a group of eight and the server, a U of Utah college student, was completely incompetent. I asked if it was her first day, no she'd been waiting tables there for two years.

The process of thinking means we have to imagine, and this is what scares me. My niece, my employees in their late 20s, seem to have less capability of imagining things. I argue that because they've never really had to imagine shit that they're losing their capability of doing it. Whenever I ask a younger person to imagine something, they look at me like I'm crazy and sometimes they say "I don't understand what you want me to do..."

All anecdotes I know, but again, I haven't figured out a way to measure non-thinking. Another anecdote would be social media commenting, message boarding, and shout shows on cable news networks. Think of the last time you heard meaningful debate coming out of these repositories of shout. Think of the last time you witnessed people listening to each other and trying to understand one another's positions or points of view. That's becoming fewer and further between.

Americans, if social media commenting is any indication, are incapable of even understanding tweets. I sent out a tweet once in which I stated something to the effect that the government should be more active in the economy rather than less active--because it promotes the general welfare from the preamble of the Constitution. Irate people responded by going way over board, claiming that I want government in all areas and aspects of my life. So how do they arrive at that conclusion about me based on just advocating an active gov. to make a more fair economy? Because they don't think...and maybe because they're even incapable of thinking.

Last thing, and at the risk of being labeled a "grammar nazi," it's really simple to correctly use terms like their or there, your or you're. That shit if fucking simple. Your and their are possessive pronouns, while you're is a contraction of two words, and there is an adverb referring to location or being. That shit is fucking simple, but I've even read print newspaper articles in which the reporter writing them couldn't distinguish between these very simple different words. That to me represents a society in which thinking is becoming a thing of the past. And the whole "grammar nazi" criticism of these kinds of things represents non-thinking. Are people who use that expression really thinking that using correct and proper English is akin to industrialized murder of millions attributed to the Nazi regime in Europe during WWII? It's become such a shorthand for "don't comment on my poor use of English" that it almost puts grammarians on the same plane as mass murderers.

You're right, there'll be thinkers in the unfolding post-cognitive age, but I fear there will be fewer of them because people will either lose the capability or economics will prevent them from being thinkers--meaning only the wealthy and those in power will have the time to think things out in a systematic way. And again, I reiterate that these changes are so gradually slow that it could be upward of 50 years before we really begin to notice it--but only the thinkers among society 50 years into the future will be capable of noticing it.

Click to expand...

DiogenesTheWiser said:

TTy, this speculation I'm making involves policy, technology, education, and economics. On that latter aspect, what jobs will be the ones that most people have in the next 15 to 30 years? Service industry jobs--which are becoming more and more automated. And as more and more automation hits these jobs, the less thinking will be required to perform them. Then people will go home after work, get on their devices so they won't have to think at home either.

Yes, I'm a grumpy old man. I've become that way because I've had all this time in the past 25 years to see how stupid Americans have become and there's nothing I can do about it.

Click to expand...

DiogenesTheWiser said:

I cannot come up with any kind of feasible method to test thinking and its depletion among Americans. I can only follow impressionistic data, and surely this has happened to you. You pay for cash for something, and maybe you even give the clerk a bill and some change so you'll get even dollar bills back. For example, say your purchase is $5.73 and you give the clerk $20.73, expecting a 10 and a 5 back in change. Have you ever experienced a clerk looking at you like you're a fool for giving them too much money? Or have you ever experienced a clerk unable to figure out your change because the cash register didn't tell them how much change you should get?

Those are examples of how non-thought is creeping into our society.

I'll go with some more service industry examples. When I was in college, like many Georgetown students I fried my brain waiting tables at DC eateries. A hard job because the only way you can make it pay off is to take as many tables as your managers will allow you to have. Being a good waiter meant timing, and constantly thinking about how to pace out sending orders to the bar and kitchen. You don't want, for example, appetizers to hit a table before drinks, or entrees before salads. And you've got four or five tables, and you have to think all this timing in your head.

Nowadays, when I visit my hometown and eat out, morons are waiting tables, and can't handle the thinking part of it. The last two times I've eaten out there, I got appetizers before drinks, and sometimes whole orders all at the same time. Reasons for this, I speculate, are that the server (probably a college student) cannot think too hard about pacing because they're too busy texting their besties every five minutes, or checking instagram or any other of those bonehead entertainment sites.

Same thing happened out West a few months ago. I was with a group of eight and the server, a U of Utah college student, was completely incompetent. I asked if it was her first day, no she'd been waiting tables there for two years.

The process of thinking means we have to imagine, and this is what scares me. My niece, my employees in their late 20s, seem to have less capability of imagining things. I argue that because they've never really had to imagine shit that they're losing their capability of doing it. Whenever I ask a younger person to imagine something, they look at me like I'm crazy and sometimes they say "I don't understand what you want me to do..."

All anecdotes I know, but again, I haven't figured out a way to measure non-thinking. Another anecdote would be social media commenting, message boarding, and shout shows on cable news networks. Think of the last time you heard meaningful debate coming out of these repositories of shout. Think of the last time you witnessed people listening to each other and trying to understand one another's positions or points of view. That's becoming fewer and further between.

Americans, if social media commenting is any indication, are incapable of even understanding tweets. I sent out a tweet once in which I stated something to the effect that the government should be more active in the economy rather than less active--because it promotes the general welfare from the preamble of the Constitution. Irate people responded by going way over board, claiming that I want government in all areas and aspects of my life. So how do they arrive at that conclusion about me based on just advocating an active gov. to make a more fair economy? Because they don't think...and maybe because they're even incapable of thinking.

Last thing, and at the risk of being labeled a "grammar nazi," it's really simple to correctly use terms like their or there, your or you're. That shit if fucking simple. Your and their are possessive pronouns, while you're is a contraction of two words, and there is an adverb referring to location or being. That shit is fucking simple, but I've even read print newspaper articles in which the reporter writing them couldn't distinguish between these very simple different words. That to me represents a society in which thinking is becoming a thing of the past. And the whole "grammar nazi" criticism of these kinds of things represents non-thinking. Are people who use that expression really thinking that using correct and proper English is akin to industrialized murder of millions attributed to the Nazi regime in Europe during WWII? It's become such a shorthand for "don't comment on my poor use of English" that it almost puts grammarians on the same plane as mass murderers.

You're right, there'll be thinkers in the unfolding post-cognitive age, but I fear there will be fewer of them because people will either lose the capability or economics will prevent them from being thinkers--meaning only the wealthy and those in power will have the time to think things out in a systematic way. And again, I reiterate that these changes are so gradually slow that it could be upward of 50 years before we really begin to notice it--but only the thinkers among society 50 years into the future will be capable of noticing it.

Click to expand...