SvennoJ said:
BraLoD said:
I think currently it produce a rather similar ratio of negatives and positives, but I don't think the negative aspect had outweighted or even come close to do it yet in general, the sheer amount of years of positives and what it still allow us to do..., yeah, not there yet.
It is clearly headed to disaster tho, as the consequences are already real and things keep getting worse, but it's not really yet in a point of no return state, and I don't think it'll be either in just a few years, but it is capable of pretty much shifting to some of the worst outcomes pretty quickly.
When some of the bilionaries directly involved stopped acting alone and fell in line around the figure of one of the leaders of the world most influential countries, it changed from being a distant fear to a palpable one.
But even so, even as the people supporting it are in line, and its reach has achieved a pretty big division of a big country and is influencing some of the world, the lack of inteligence and prepare of some of them is a unexpected blessing. There was already some break ups and even infighting too, it's clear they are only in line for their own personal gain, as expected from bilionaries.
It is already really bad, people will feed themselves with whatever fit their current mindset (which can contradict itself on a hourly basis) and always pretend they are right and they are not part of a huge problem, or even that there is no problem at all.
That people they don't know suffer because they deserve to, and even be happy with their suffering; or that when they don't want a particular person to be accountable for their actions, always including themselves, anything is justifiable; or that when they can't bring themselves to accept reality everything is questionable and there is always a conspiracy behind it to justify the perpretator to actually be the victim.
We are already at a point where self brainwashing routine is so widespread that is literally fruitless to try to have actual discussions, people become literally vicious and full of bloodlust for things they don't even understand, yeah, it's really that bad, and the internet is the medium for all of that to be possible and keep spreading, but the actual full blown destroy society functionality is still quite far from being real, because the people in control are still just mostly acting by personal greed, there is definitely acting by lunacy too, but control to achieve more money, not disruption, is still the imperative individual motivation.
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I would already say all that is a net negative. Before the internet you had much more contact with your neighbors and your friends, essentially fact checking you and exposing you to countering ideas without both sides digging their heels in with google and echo chambers.
Yes, it has literally become fruitless to have actual discussions. That's a huge negative.
Did you watch the video I linked? I wonder what you think about that. That video draws a line between the destruction that's happening to democracy right now and the smart phone. Emotional based thinking encouraged through short videos vs rational thinking encouraged through books / newspapers.
The video makes the claim that we're heading back to an illiterate society and democracy only became possible thanks to literacy.
Is smart phone addiction and the destruction of critical thinking and literacy still reversible? Schools are now banning smart phones in class here at least. Yet the days of doing your research in the library, looking up and analyzing texts are long gone. Book reports are now 'written' with ChatGPT.
https://www.gisreportsonline.com/r/worsening-2022-pisa-tests-results-oecd/
Seems like a pretty negative effect. (Although also very much related to worse education today)
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I did not watch the video, but based on what you are saying I agree with the premise, as I said in my initial post we are potentially heading to a reset in development as a society, and illiteracy is indeed one of the big problems, indeed.
I think it has going on apart from the internet tho, even as with everything, the internet has massively potentialized it. To try to keep the population stupid and in control is a really old political tactic, "bread and circuses" has it in its essence.
I think AI is a really big next step to make things even worse, but I think "googling it" and the overal internet information era is a great thing, the internet became a thing exactly because universities wanted to share information with each other, not having to go to the library is not the problem, having access to information 24/7 is awesome, the problem is how this information is being used and manipulated, which in itself is a problem humanity always faced, the winner wrote the history books, afterall, someone born in the USA and someone born here in Brazil have vastly different opinions about each other history based on what was purposedly used or not on their education, but once again, yes, it's made incredibly worse by the internet how it is now.
I think what we have with the internet is incredible, and I think we should never fear potential problems so much as to give up on it, we should learn to do better and on this particular case, well made enforced regulations are really in need.
As you said about school, you don't want kids with unsurveilled internet access there? Great. Make clear to parents it's going to be a big problem if their kids are caught doing so. Kids are bored and not learning because they are conditioned to 15 seconds content bursts because of Tiktok shorts? Make sure to let the parents now and act on it, offer physicological help in school when possible, maybe pay teachers more so they can actually do their work without thinking on their next job after that. And so on.
The problem is now we already have way too many people fighting on the opposite side of the social benefit, and doing anything good will be met with a lot of challenges. Doing the right thing was always way harder than doing the wrong, that's a big part of why a lot of people crack and choose the easy stupid route.
But as I write far too much once again, in resume I still think what we have built, achieved and have access now, thanks to the internet on all this years, is still a big positive in the balance, the balance is clearly shifting to the other side now, but it takes time to outweight all the historical and current benefits.
