Test scores across OECD countries peaked around 2012 and have declined since. IQ scores in many developed countries appear to be falling after rising throughout the twentieth century. Nataliya Kosmyna at MIT’s Media Lab began noticing changes around two years ago when strangers started emailing her to ask if using ChatGPT could alter their brains. She posted a study in June tracking brain activity in 54 students writing essays. Those using ChatGPT showed significantly less activity in networks tied to cognitive processing and attention compared to students who wrote without digital help or used only internet search engines. Almost none could recall what they had written immediately after submitting their work. She received more than 4,000 emails afterward. Many came from teachers who reported students producing passable assignments without understanding the material. A British survey found that 92% of university students now use AI and roughly 20% have used it to write all or part of an assignment. Independent research has found that more screen time in schools correlates with worse results. Technology companies have designed products to be frictionless, removing the cognitive challenges brains need to learn. AI now allows users to outsource thinking itself.
It feels like more and more people are taking pride in what they don’t do or what they aren’t, rather than in what they actually stand for. You see it in the people who brag about not using ChatGPT, not being on Twitter, not owning a car - or in those who define themselves by their hatred for others: the rich, meat eaters, republicans, whoever the current outgroup is.
It’s like their entire identity revolves around opposition. Their sense of belonging comes not from shared values, but from shared resentment. If the only thing that unites you with your tribe is who you hate, then you don’t really have much of a tribe - just a mob.
What’s most ironic is how many of these same people see themselves as independent thinkers, even though their views often are completely predictable once you know what they’re against. It’s as if they can’t even decide what they believe until they’ve first heard what “the enemy” thinks.