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Comment by glimshe | Hacker News Reader

Every generation worries that the behaviors of the next will be the downfall of humanity. I wouldn't be surprised if the Greeks and Romans felt the same.

I grew up reading and still do it today. But my teen kid, who's a great student, hates reading books. He knows many things but gets all his information from Discord chats, AI and social media videos (and his parents, but he ignores that).

It does sound terrifying. "Grew up reading Gemini". But, at the same time, I think it's going to be okay. Hippies, role playing gamers and punk rockers also terrified parents and most of us turned out fine.

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It is pretty obvious that having "a screen which optimizes itself to keep you hooked for hours while you still have a developing brain, and no previous generation had anything similiar" is not very comparable to being able to throw away paper and have scratchpad because paper became cheap.

And the claim that hippies are doing fine isn't well substantiated[0][1][2]. Maybe we shouldn't claim to have answers for what we don't and exercise caution. Alert but not anxious.

[0]: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/002204267800800... ("70% abandoned deviance as a way of life" not sure what that exactly means)

[1]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28008372/ ("... members with regular cannabis use and persistent dependence experienced downward socioeconomic mobility, more financial difficulties, workplace problems, and relationship conflict in early midlife.")

[2]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9552770/ ("long-term cannabis users show accelerated biological ageing in midlife and poorer health preparedness, financial preparedness, and social preparedness for old age.")

In the hippie generation, not everybody was a hippie. And most gave up on that way of life pretty quickly or were never fully immersed to begin with. I had a girlfriend who dressed like a hippie, had many "alternative" friends and loved new age stuff, but otherwise worked full time and was completely part of the system.

I'm not saying everybody will be fine. I'm saying humanity will be fine because we will figure out how to create a functional world despite the underlying culture like we've always done. Part of my argument is that every generation is full of people saying "this time is different because of XYZ".

> I wouldn't be surprised if the Greeks and Romans felt the same.

reading and writing are corrupting your ability to remember everything you need to know!!

Greeks and Romans did experience a >99% loss of their literature during the medieval period...

When someone refers to the Greeks and Romans they are refering to a time long before the medieval period. Things got continued to get better after their most well known thinkers died for a century. (well define better... The there is a lot we would hate about their culture, but they would have considered better)

the difference is you can have bookshelves full of knowledge to keep. those discord chats will be deleted / inaccessible at someone else's doing. thats different than going into peoples homes and libraries and burning books, which is what you have to do to stop readers from learning and sharing.

> Discord chats, AI and social media videos

A.k.a: no trustable source.

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