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I have another suggestion which doesn't contradict yours:

This is only a small part of it (tech addiction 24/7 via phone); certainly there is something bigger at play, here (e.g: "the brain isn't the same anymore;" agreed).

I do not use email nor a cell phone (several years; outgoing landline, only), so I have more than enough time to ruminate (and read a few dozen books, annually) – and yet agree very much with OC's theory on needing mental health exercises to replace our newfound AGI tools/workers.

As an extremely conversive person (unbound by a cellphone), it's become an extremely strange world, particularly when talking with strangers, even in just the past two years. It's like: everybody is just mentally exhausted, mortal.

I know I am.

–Phoneless

Maybe we’re just getting older.

As a young person, I can at least anecdotally say the same thing is happening to people who, while older, ain't old yet.

>>We get wise too late...

>>...and old too soon.

>>–Danish Proverb

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At early-forties, I don't think I count as "young" anymore.

Definitely: growing up without a cell phone was beautiful. I still remember driving around semi-lost, using paper maps, quite fondly (I still print directions).

My last partner (eight years my junior) "grew up on her cellphone" and it was just remarkable how fucked her brain was... at least different from my own landlined-childhood POV (e.g: attention-span; need for constant contact).

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And yet, my brain also enmushifies (lately: increasingly).

Forties isn’t old. You might not have the energy reserves of a younger person, but you shouldn’t feel like your brain is mush.

I’m a professional theoretical physicist in my 40s and I never thought the day would come that I would realize I became shit at mental math. I can do quantum physics in my head but don’t ask me to add 17 to 34

Thanks for mentioning this. It makes me feel better about stumbling with metal math in front of some colleagues that are faster.

I've also noticed that I drive more slowly/defensively, if only because I need more time to react to all these other bad drivers =P

You won't catch me (nor any of my brilliant brothers) doing math without a calculator... and I got a SAT790Math way-back-when (do they still score that way? I missed one question, only; many of my brothers scored 750+).

It is questionable what is, at present day, considered young and old (and particularly during mid-forties), as life expectancy doubled last century from roughly ~40 to ~80 years. which makes everyone in their forties old by ... olden standards and mid-life at current ones.

if we get to live through the (forthcoming or already unfolding) singularity, there's a fair chance new life standards extend to 140-180 years*, with medicine, yoga, nootropics** and all.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Maximum ** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nootropic

As a young person, I have no idea what you guys are talking about, and recommend not overgeneralizing from anecdotes.

Ratio /s

> It's like: everybody is just mentally exhausted, mortal.

Very much this. I think a lot of it is that the "slack" of our lives is being eliminated little bit by little bit to improve "productivity", and in so doing it is making life harder, mentally and physically, in ways that we don't really grasp because we're the frog being boiled. We are more "productive" and "efficient" than ever, but we're not happier or living better lives, and a lot of that I think is due to us eking out the last bit of gain for our work lives and leaving nothing left in the tank for when we aren't working.

This three day weekend, I only really felt like I could do things today, but now I have to go back to work tomorrow. Wouldn't it be great if I didn't need 2-3 days just to become a normal person again every time I don't have to work? Wouldn't it be great if I could use at least one day on the weekend every weekend to do something of personal interest rather than mental recovery in a fog?

My favorite full-time schedule was four-10s: ten hour days Monday-Tuesday, and again Thursday-Friday.

This MT_RF schedule meant I never had to work a "Wednesday", and my Tuesdays became additional "almost Fridays".

I would often take part-time gigs on Saturdays, because my problem isn't that I need several days off in a row... it's that I don't want to work more than three days in a row.

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The only thing I lack in my self-induced retirement is healthcare (so a big thing for this American boo)... which within the decade might require me to work some minimal job just to get benefits – I dread this day enough to avoid the topic, furtherly.

Is Trader Joes still 28 hours/week [for bennies]? I can still sort grapes, friend-uh-ly.

I seem to recall Church of the SubGenius had something about this.

I like friction in my life, and intentionally add it back in where I can for this reason.

It isn't me 'profiting' from having more free time, it's usually companies managing to find new things for me to fill my free time with.

Time spent vacuuming or washing dishes is time spent not scrolling.

I doubt that's the only factor, but I agree that it's almost certainly a factor. The modern "tech" industry has filled our waking hours with unceasing demands to do something. Buy this product, watch this video, listen to this podcast, react to this social media post; even "practice self-care" has somehow turned into an obligatory virtue-cultivating task. We obviously had advertising before, but this is a different beast, something akin to living in a casino.

As Bo Burnham put it, "apathy's a tragedy and boredom is a crime".

Definitely. Much of the structure of internet media encourages constant, passive consumption. Or, to use the terms of the grandparent, we move traded ambient thinking, reflection, and imagination, which the brain is pushed into during boredom, for ambient consumption.

I think a lot of people believe that, as long as they consume "high quality" or more intellectual content, the negative effects of constant consumption are mitigated, but I think that's false. It's less about the content and more about the structure and process. If you never give your brain moments to stop basic processing of wildly different inputs and to just critically examine them instead, you will suffer brain rot, even if the content you consume is "educational".

Yes. And I'd also add that so much of it is about context and intention.

If you intentionally sit down to enjoy some low-brow entertainment (Maybe a silly action movie or a mediocre rom-com) because you enjoy that, great.

But I recently realized that there are podcast episodes from 10 years ago that I still remember parts of, but few from recent years, even though I've listened to far more podcasts (and they haven't become less intellectual).

I too subscribe to theory that "being bored" was an important part of our day to day lives. I think it gave us time to basically decompress and "defragment" our minds, and that is also when a lot of novel ideas or clarifications would come to us. Now having 24/7 entertainment at the tips of our fingers is almost completely removing this extra time from us, and there is much less processing that actually happens.

I’m a champion of boredom. I really feel it’s a life skill. Personally, I do all kinds of things to create space for boredom. But really it’s my kids where I want them to experience some boredom and structure my parenting style somewhat around creating space for their boredom. On their own, they would never be bored a moment of their life. There’s too any screens and amounts of content available and my kids don’t even use the internet/SM, yet.

Walter Benjamin basically predicted this in The Storyteller (1936) — nearly a century before smartphones:

> "If sleep is the apogee of physical relaxation, boredom is the apogee of mental relaxation. Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience. A rustling in the leaves drives him away."

I will often experience something I call "feeling addled" when I haven't taken this kind of downtime for too long, usually after about two days. It presents as a difficulty in thinking clearly, a compulsion for easy dopamine, and feeling kind of like I've taken too much caffeine. It is disturbing to imagine that this is the constant default for many people now.

Sleep is also a forced meditation, so we can't avoid processing information. But in a different way of course.

We can totally avoid (being conscious of) processing stuff during sleep too. Just take some SSRIs or smoke weed and you wake up in the next day. I think that that has more effect on people than people realize, dreaming is important but many people don’t experience that side of things any more.

> just sleep and wake up

This is my default experience. Falling asleep, then waking up an unknown amount of time later as if nothing happened. Maybe I don’t pay attention to my dreams

If that's the case, you are missing the most important aspect of your life.

glib bullshit

I don’t remember my dreams most nights and that’s always been the case. When I do it’s fairly disconnected and random vignettes without discernible meaning. So I’m missing one of the most important aspects of my life? I guess it’s possible but it’s hard to feel that way without having experienced profound dreams.

Sometimes the meaning doesn't come from you to the dream. It can be how you decide to act in the dream that will shape your subconscious and in turn have influence in your state when awake.

For example, if you have a nightmare and decide to attack the threat instead of trying to flee, then almost all fear evaporates from your subconscious.

I suspect you mean benzos or Z-drugs not SSRIs based on context.

I get the wildest dreams. Lately it's nonstop cardio in my dreams. It's been like this for weeks. It is not relaxing, I don't know why my sleeping self won't just rest. Instead I have to spend the night dancing or jumping from moving train cars like frogger, climbing to the tops of high places, or just straight up running at a sprint for hours.

This concept of lack of boreness along with mention of studies was covered in a book called The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter (2021) that made me think about it a lot since I came across it. Amazing to see someone organically mention their experience about something similar.

That seems less likely then people being tired and stressed from the costs of living and the increased economic instability.

We have smartphones but we're perilously few missed pay cheques away from not having a house, with a capital class gleefully telling everyone how they'll all be unemployable very soon.

It would be the greatest irony if failing to manage the economic fallout of the coming AI revolution had a larger negative impact than the benefit it brings

We might just run into the worst recession in history as the heavily skewed service economy quickly runs out of customers who can afford to pay for it

We're already several years into the worst economic depression in history. People aren't having children because they cannot afford a home. But it can get worse of course.

The kids thing isn’t an economic thing, read the paper about the iPhone basically being birth control…

> the worst economic depression in history

You need to touch grass, friend. I am as concerned with the direction of things as anyone, but this is extreme hyperbole.

There's nothing extreme about my statement. People have just adapted themselves into extinction, which is what happens to you when you don't have children.

Food is cheap and plentiful, which is why people are still denying that it is the worst economic depression in history.

So you're saying the complete lack of evidence of economic depression is a mere distraction from the reality that the evidence is just hiding? Is the depression in the room with us now? Can I speak to it?

The collapsed birth rates is the evidence. The enormous disparity between worker productivity and worker compensation is the evidence. Economic recession doesn't always spell hunger, it can have other consequences.

But seeing the way you are talking, I think you will be uninterested in any and all evidence and more interested in blowing off steam on the internet.

Being bored, showering etc is well known to engage the DMN (Default Mode Network) where your brain connects pieces together from larger, more distant areas together. We as a society are missing this and its obvious.