When I was nine, I performed math tricks for my dad. He would mention several numbers and challenge me to calculate the sum for his buddies. Most times I succeeded. Considering my audience, I admit this was a low bar.
About 20 years later, my Uncle Joe shared his company’s latest invention, hand-held calculators by Texas Instruments. Very soon, my calculating ability disappeared. I’ve previously mentioned the idea that each human innovation making life easier diminishes some evolutionary advancement we’d developed. And things seem to be getting worse.
A few advances were great. Discovering that dropping raw meat into a fire enhanced flavor was an incredible and long lasting improvement. Some would say the wheel was life changing. But remember two things—the Egyptians built the pyramids without wheeled devices, and people use wheels these days to carry dogs on walks. So I wonder whether the wheel was positive or negative.
I’ve been reading AI horror stories recently. Atlantic Magazine featured one this month suggesting that AI will make us less capable of critical thinking. The idea is we use research to figure out what is correct. If we allow a computer to do that for us, even by using acquired knowledge, the ability to think things through is diminished. Computerized innovation really scares us. Remember Y2K?
This is very true when one thinks about all modern advancements. In addition to the wheel, fire, and calculators, consider MapQuest. This convenience reduced us all to the level of one of my aunts. She was never able to read a paper map. Of course, she couldn’t fold one either. Currently we’re all lost if our internet signal disappears. And consider what happens when the power goes out.
While I agree the idea of computers thinking for us is a bad idea, I’m not sure we can get much dumber. Look around. It doesn’t seem possible. The people we’ve elected the last decade should be evidence enough but there is much more to add. People are refusing vaccines for their children and their pets, who they now treat like children.
There are TikTok videos encouraging people to do all sorts of things, including putting onions in their socks to prevent the flu. But the most obvious examples of growing stupid are Flat Earthers.
The idea of a round earth was first developed by ancient Greeks. Pythagoras proposed it in 500 BC. Aristotle provided proof, using observations like lunar eclipses and changing stars a century-and-a-half later. This was still 350 years before Jesus was born. By the next century Eratosthenes had accurately calculated the earth’s circumference. And yet today, a growing number of people swear the earth is flat.
One would think that issue was settled decades ago. There are numerous pictures of a round earth from outer and inner space but no pictures of the earth’s edge. Maybe that will change soon. Columbia Sportswear CEO Tim Boyle is offering the entire company to anyone who can show him a picture of the planet’s flat edge. Sounds simple. All one needs is a camera and a map of earth’s edge.
I wonder if Columbia Sportswear is changing hands.
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