The Death of Critical Thinking: How Stupidity Took Over

Society is getting dumber.

>> Chimpanzini.

>> Sorry to be so Shalong. It's just you got a level 10 g. No glaze.

>> IQ and critical thinking skills are in freef fall. Young people don't want to

freef fall. Young people don't want to go to school anymore. And Hollywood is actually making a movie about Skippidity

toilet.

I fear that we as a generation might be cooked and what we're witnessing could be the slow death of human intelligence.

What happens when an entire generation of humans don't develop critical thinking skills? And how will our

thinking skills? And how will our society cope in a world where dumb people make all the decisions?

To figure it out, I spoke to the researcher who literally invented the idea of measuring our attention spans, the professor who led the charge against

chat GP cheating, and the MIT expert who's trying to understand what AI is doing to our brain. And what I discovered was that the problem is not

as simple as you might think. And the

solution is even more difficult.

>> You know, tornadoes don't care if you believe in them or not. They're going to level your house anyway, right?

Pathogens don't care if you believe in them or not. You're going to get sick.

[Music] So, first things first, are we really getting stupider? It's so easy to be

getting stupider? It's so easy to be cynical and say the world is devolving into a real life idiocracy.

But actually, it turns out there is evidence. You might even say proof, and

evidence. You might even say proof, and it's pretty dramatic. Starting in the 1930s, for half a century, America's IQ

rose steadily yearover-year, this phenomenon became known as the Flynn effect. Well, why? greater access to

effect. Well, why? greater access to education, but also improved access to healthy foods and reduced exposure to environmental elements harmful to our

brains like lead. But since the turn of the century, the tide has shifted drastically, resulting in what is now known as the reverse Flynn effect. IQ is

in freef fall, not only in the US, but across Europe as well.

US high school math and reading skills have plummeted to all-time lows, and college students have been found to be less verbally skilled than their peers from 50 years ago.

>> It's not unusual for a student to have not read a book prior to coming to college.

>> There's also plenty of cultural evidence that our intelligence is falling. No one

reads books anymore. The lyrics of the pop songs that top the charts have gotten increasingly simplistic and childlike. And our standards of

childlike. And our standards of entertainment in general have changed from this to

well literal brain rot.

And I I promise this isn't just some old man yells at Sky moment.

It would be easy to point out things like screen time and the internet for why we're getting dumber, but we've had pretty much the exact same reaction to

every technological innovation from excessive reading to the radio, the Walkman. In fact, for a moment, there

Walkman. In fact, for a moment, there were even fears that riding in cars could dangerously stretch your brain.

Every smart device devised by man has been accused of robbing the youth of their native intelligence. But something

today really does feel different, more transformative, more destructive. And

that's not just a feeling. There's hard

data to back it up. Critical thinking

skills are in decline, and that decline is accelerating.

All of this in spite of the fact that people worldwide are far more educated than their grandparents and great-grandparents were. In 1900, the

great-grandparents were. In 1900, the global literacy rate was barely above 20%. Today, nearly 9 out of 10 people

20%. Today, nearly 9 out of 10 people worldwide can read and write. The

average number of years a human being spends in school has ballooned over the last century. The world is indisputably

last century. The world is indisputably more knowledgeable than it used to be.

So, shouldn't there be some relationship between the amount of knowledge we possess and the amount of importance that we attach to said knowledge?

Because sadly, it seems to be the opposite.

The value of education is falling drastically among young people. In fact,

in just six short years, from 2018 to 2024, the percentage of American teens who considered going to college a

priority dropped by almost 40%.

And it's not hard to see why. When you

look at previous generations saddled with student loans and unable to find jobs even with their degrees, while at the same time an endless array of

seemingly self-made online entrepreneurs flaunt lifestyles and wealth beyond the wildest dreams of the average college

grad, well, you can see why education starts to look like the worst bet. But

even if traditional education has lost its allure, it doesn't explain why simple intellectual curiosity seems to have gone out the door as well. Well,

now you are actually going to have to listen to my old man yells at Sky rant because truly your mom was right. It's

that damn phone. Well, part of it.

My name is Gloria Mark. I am

Chancellor's Professor Emmerita at University of California Irvine. I am

the author of the book called Attention Span and I write a Substack on the same topic called the future of attention.

>> Dr. Mark's interest in this subject originated from her personal experience back in the early 2000s. I was trained as a psychologist.

So I had this very deep interest in how the mind works. And I became especially interested in it from my own experience.

Noticing how my own attention started to be diminishing when I was using tech, how I was multitasking.

And I asked colleagues, is it just me?

Does anyone else have this experience?

and others said yes, they've noticed the same thing. So I figured I have the

same thing. So I figured I have the tools to be able to study this empirically, right, as a scientist. And

so that's how I uh began to study it.

>> What's crazy to realize nowadays is that at the time this was pioneering work.

>> Yeah. So unfortunately, no one had ever studied attention spans before 2004. And

so we really had nothing to compare it against.

>> And the initial results were shocking.

>> So what we found at the time was that people switched any activity on average every 3 minutes. But if we just looked at their attention on screens, they

switched on average every 2 and 1/2 minutes. Now, at the time, this

minutes. Now, at the time, this astonished me because I didn't expect and I thought, well, maybe people might

spend 15 minutes, maybe at worst 7, 8 minutes, but I really didn't expect to see this kind of switching of attention on screens every 2 and 1/2 minutes on

average.

>> And it's only gotten worse. So in 2012, the average attention span was 75 seconds on screens. And then starting

from around 2016 through 2020, right before the pandemic, the average comes to 47 seconds average on a screen before

switching. This has been replicated by

switching. This has been replicated by others as well. And this isn't just something that happens with young people like the news or your grandparents would have you believe.

>> In our research, we have not seen a difference. I've looked at college

difference. I've looked at college students and people in the workplace roughly between the ages of 25 and 65 and we've looked for age differences and

we've not seen them.

>> For everyone across all ages, depending on digital products as a crutch does affect your brain physically. I'll give

you one concrete example and that's with the use of GPS. You know, a lot of people complain that they've lost their ability to navigate because they're

reliant on GPS, but studies of brain imaging show that the hippocampus size has actually shrunk for people who are

heavy GPS users. There's more than one study that shows this. There's actually

a very interesting study that shows the converse. It shows that London taxi

converse. It shows that London taxi drivers who have to memorize a map of the convoluted streets of London in

their mind they have very large hippocampus sizes larger than people who don't have to do it. So we are seeing an effect of this uh in terms of

hippocampus size.

>> Okay then. But how do these changes affect our lives?

>> It certainly is affecting us. Um

certainly we're seeing a correlation of stress with shorter attention spans. And

in fact the the World Health Organization had designated stress to be an epidemic of the 21st century because when you're switching your attention so

rapidly, you're not thinking deeply.

You're not reflecting. you're not

deliberating over the material. There's

a psychological concept called depth of processing, which means that the more people are actively engaged with information, the better they are able to

comprehend it and to retain it. That

doesn't happen when we're, you know, looking at short snippets of content from uh educators in K through 12 who

I've been speaking with. They tell me that students are having a much harder time paying attention than earlier years. And so what they're doing is

years. And so what they're doing is they're adjusting content to match shorter attention spans. I worry about a

gradual shift in society to not only reinforce our short attention spans, but to accept them, that we're reaching a a

new level of normal where it's fine to have short attention spans. It's fine to not do the cognitive work to be able to

learn something. And I I really worry

learn something. And I I really worry about the effects that this is going to have.

>> No rational adult believes tick tock style content is an acceptable substitute for real learning. But when

generations of kids raised on YouTube shorts make it to the classroom, what if that's the only thing their brains are capable of digesting?

Is this the future of history class or biology 101?

Smartphones and social media have been consciously engineered to demand our ongoing attention, not for long sustained periods of time, but in

endless small bites. Endless scroll

layouts create feeds that are easy to start but never actually end. Multiple

apps, tabs, and devices encourage stopart peacemeal multitasking.

These constant external and internal reminders create a world in which sustained focus and sustained thought becomes increasingly challenged. So much

so that simply being in the same room as your phone has been demonstrated to lower mental aptitude.

How far has our collective brain power devolved?

[Music] What happens to a society when too few of its citizens possess the intellectual curiosity and the mental stamina to seek

out facts and evaluate objective truth?

For Renee Desta, the doorway to a scary new world cracked open back in 2013. In

researching preschools, Renee noticed that childhood vaccinations for deadly diseases like measles, which she had given her own child without a second

thought, were in her California Bay Area community, seemingly seen as optional at best.

>> I actually um went to the California public health databases and there were some schools in the neighborhood that had measles rate uptake in like 33%.

And I said, "My god, this is this is insane actually." Um, so I started

insane actually." Um, so I started writing about it.

>> Despite a measles outbreak in California linked to Disneyland, local law at the time allowed for voluntary opt out of vaccinations for any reason. Leading the

charge against that law was a state senator who also happened to be a pediatrician.

>> When I got involved in that legislative fight, me and a couple of other moms who I didn't even know uh started a organization called Vaccinate California. we met on the internet.

California. we met on the internet.

>> At that point, Renee quickly became acquainted with a passionate group of whose existence she was previously unaware.

>> The antivaccine movement had been very wellworked online for a very long time and they had also been very accustomed to using techniques like harassment to

push people out of the conversation for a very long time because unfortunately it works. Uh you can use intimidation.

it works. Uh you can use intimidation.

Renee was shocked to see that for antivax zealots, few tactics were actually off the table.

>> I had a Facebook profile where which I hadn't locked down in a million different ways yet. I didn't know better at the time. Um, and they went and they took pictures from my profile of me with

my baby. We were at Disneyland for

my baby. We were at Disneyland for Halloween. I was dressed as Maleficent.

Halloween. I was dressed as Maleficent.

He was dressed as the little crow. and

they said that uh you know they took those photos and they started sharing them into harassment hashtags saying that we were Satanists.

>> Other moms in Vaccinate California endured the same.

>> They would send instant messages to people's older kids to kind of like high school age kids you know saying like do you know what your mom is doing? So it

was these these sort of tactics that were gross really but the intent was to make it feel like it was a liability to participate. This isn't unique to the

participate. This isn't unique to the antivaccine movement. Of course,

antivaccine movement. Of course, >> these and other eyeopening experiences led Dr. Desta, now a research professor at Georgetown, to write a book called

Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality. We reached out to Renee to help us first understand why junk science and other mistruths wield

so much power in online dialogue, increasingly nowadays, spilling over into the real world.

Notice the use of the word lies in her book's title. A term we would commonly

book's title. A term we would commonly apply to antiax content is misinformation.

But Renee finds that label misleading.

>> Misinformation implies that there is a fact that is wrong and that if you just correct the fact, people are going to say, "Whoops, I got it wrong." And, you know, they're going to maybe change

their mind. And so it it's not

their mind. And so it it's not necessarily misinformation where the problem is the fact where you can say no no here are 10 studies that show that this is safe. Here are 10 studies that

show that this doesn't cause that. Here

are 10 studies because the study the fact that is not the point. The point is the fear. She therefore lays the blame

the fear. She therefore lays the blame not with the army of angry online commentators and trolls, but with the malicious few who have carefully

cultivated their warped views.

>> I had my my first baby in 2013. I have

three kids. Um, but when I had my first, my Facebook feed fundamentally changed.

All of a sudden, I started getting recommended mom content. And a lot of the mom content that I got recommended was antivaccine content. Uh, and it's because that's where a lot of the high

engagement stuff was. And oftentimes if you would click through and go to their websites, they would be very, very heavily monetized because what they would want to do is they would want to

sell you alternative products. So, get

my oils, get my supplements, get my books, get my kits, get my 10-part web series. Right? So I have a great deal of

series. Right? So I have a great deal of empathy for the people who are fearful, who are uncertain, who are hesitant, who don't know who to trust, who don't know what messages to believe. And I think

that that is very distinctly different from the prophetering grifters who do what I just described.

>> Like queen bees, thought leaders in community like these, driven by attention and profit, enjoy the outreach and intimidation efforts of their many

volunteer worker drones.

What drives that passion and that fear?

In the case of the antivax crowd, why are so many so willing to disregard the advice of the medical establishment and trusted family doctors in favor of

online charlatans that they've never even met? It's easy to just point and

even met? It's easy to just point and laugh, but the reality is much more nuanced. Overall faith in traditional

nuanced. Overall faith in traditional institutions is failing fast.

Government church media our collective belief that these one-time pillars will tell us the truth and have our best interests at heart has fallen

in half over the last 50 years. In the

past, they were experts and by and large people listened to them. But then for a wide variety of reasons, cracks in that armor began to appear. For many, experts

is now synonymous with elites, and elites, of course, are the enemy. What

follows from here is a kind of asymmetric online warfare. The

institutions we have been taught to trust operate at a natural disadvantage.

>> So, there is still somewhere inside an expectation that this group of institutional media is going to tell you the truth, actually, that experts do in fact know what they're talking about.

But that that gotcha model drives a lot of engagement. Two things can both be

of engagement. Two things can both be true. Institutions screw up sometimes.

true. Institutions screw up sometimes.

They should be more transparent. They

should reckon with things when they do.

Also, at the same time, that effort to undermine them constantly is happening because of an incentive where the influencer themselves is maximizing

economically and in terms of attention from undermining that institution. And

the thing about a lot of social media is that it targets and elicits very basic

emotional responses from us. So basic

responses like excitement or fear or disgust. These kinds of basic emotional

disgust. These kinds of basic emotional responses keep us glued to the site because we want to experience these, you

know, especially happiness or excitement or shock. Those kinds of responses are

or shock. Those kinds of responses are intriguing for us and want us keep going for more.

>> Every time you open an app, it is using all the tools at its disposal to figure out ways to keep you scrolling. Tech

giants know we don't just respond to the things we like. We respond to novelty, to intricate conspiracy theories and exciting gossip, no matter how far-fetched.

It's easy to judge, but have you ever seen a social media story so tantalizing you foolishly shared first and fact

checked it later? At the end of the day, none of us are immune.

Unlike the vast majority of online content, real life is nuanced and complicated. The health of a society and

complicated. The health of a society and a democracy depends on the voting public valuing and being able to employ logic.

Logic means structured thinking. It is

the very antithesis of going with your gut.

The gold standard of logical and productive human thought is the Greek philosophy of epistemology. The idea is separate fact from belief. Fact is

determined on the basis of establishing truth based on credible evidence and the use of reason.

In 1858, a series of famed debates between Senator Steven Douglas and former President Abraham Lincoln involved whole towns full of ordinary

citizens, many of them illiterate and uneducated, evaluating carefully constructed arguments and counterarguments in events lasting 3 hours. Contrast the world in which

hours. Contrast the world in which Lincoln Douglas debates were conducted with the 2024 US presidential election, the front lines of which were largely

inflammatory Tik Toks and non-stop political memes.

And that's not just politics. When all

eyeballs are on short form content, how is anyone supposed to convey more than the simplest thoughts and ideas?

Scientists who hope to communicate their research and findings outside of their own specialized community have to settle for thoroughly dumbed down YouTube

videos. But it's not just that we like

videos. But it's not just that we like our viral content short and sweet. It's

also that comparing and contrasting competing information is mentally taxing. Many people, although they claim

taxing. Many people, although they claim to be interested in the news and truth, are really just looking for something that hits them in the fields.

In the online world, which increasingly seems like the only world that matters, bold and unambiguous sensationalist messaging is the ultimate recipe for

reaching the widest possible audience.

You'll sometimes hear it said that we live in a post-truth society.

Well, the irony is that a world of verifiable truth to separate fact from fiction is rarely more than a Google away. Unless you indulge in the most

away. Unless you indulge in the most extreme conspiratorial thinking and believe little readily available online information can be trusted, the truth is

out there and it's usually not hard to find.

This then is the real question. Why do

people who care about spicy subjects rush to flood your feed with dodgy content but are never interested in taking a quick second just to see if any

of it is actually true? Well, largely

because deep down they're not looking for the truth. They're looking for arguments and evidence to confirm what they already believe. There's a sort of power that comes from embracing

ignorance or maybe just your own set of facts. Much of the irrationality

facts. Much of the irrationality infecting our cultural dialogue can be attributed to people who don't like getting their answers from authority figures, but who also lack the critical

thinking skills to evaluate information for themselves. Now, of course, as a

for themselves. Now, of course, as a YouTube channel that enjoys pondering and exploring all of life's great mysteries, we love the idea of people

doing their own research.

But isn't it funny how whenever they do, it always seems to end up confirming the biases they went in with at the start?

Perhaps there is an even deeper reason so many people are embracing and even celebrating ignorance. There's a sense

celebrating ignorance. There's a sense that our so-called cultural superiors have taken advantage of us little people and they're looking down on us and they've been looking down on us for too

long. And now the mob is finally getting

long. And now the mob is finally getting their revenge.

In the dopamine driven online arena, boring old facts get shouted down and replaced with sexier fake news and conspiracy theories. Opportunistic

conspiracy theories. Opportunistic political figures have observed this phenomenon of anti-intellectualism and embraced it.

>> I love the poorly educated.

We're the smartest people. We're the

most loyal people. Mistrust in public institutions like the government and academia stoked by unconventional outsider political figures makes people

even more doubtful of scientific information. And now the lunatics are

information. And now the lunatics are running the asylum. Over the course of the last decade, Renee Desta has been a firstirhand witness as the anti-science

movement has gone mainstream.

>> Robert F. Kennedy Jr. showed up to California to kind of fight with the antivaxers to support in defense of measles was kind of how I put it. But

now he runs the CDC and and Health and Human Services. Right.

Human Services. Right.

>> As if we didn't already have it bad enough in the last 2 years that problem has gotten much much worse.

What would you say happened to our collective ability to do mental math when calculators came along? I think

we'd all agree everyone got worse at arithmetic.

What happened to our ability to remember basic facts post Google? We all got more forgetful, right? So, what then happens

forgetful, right? So, what then happens when a new kind of tool comes along? but

one that allows us to outsource not just mental arithmetic or trivia but all of our curiosity about everything both mental and emotional providing endless

answers with only a few mouse clicks. I

started getting these emails saying, "Hey, I started using this tool called CH GPT and I I think my memory became worse. I can be like, hey, can we can we

worse. I can be like, hey, can we can we measure that?" And this new tool, right?

measure that?" And this new tool, right?

It's barely 3 years old barely. And it's

been right now introduced in all of the aspects of our lives everywhere, right?

And so, of course, the question was naturally, okay, so do we actually know what's happening in the brain? No. No

one really ran a study. So we decided to design one. My name is Natalik Smina and

design one. My name is Natalik Smina and I'm a research scientist at MIT Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab and I work on what is known as

brain computer interfaces or BCIs for the past 16 years. And today we're going to be talking about one of the recent studies we released called your brain on CHPT.

Given that her lab is on a college campus, the basic outline of the study was easy enough to drum up. Gather a

bunch of students, ask them to write essays. Some can use chat GPT while

essays. Some can use chat GPT while others use search engines, and then others still have to rely on the power of their own mind.

In the most basic terms, Dr. Cosmina and her team found that the more robust the technology a given test subject was allowed to use the less information they retained.

>> The details as we know tiny tiny things do matter. We actually saw this also

do matter. We actually saw this also with our paper and reaction to our paper. By not doing this cognitive work

paper. By not doing this cognitive work and reading through the scenes you would not be as knowledgeable. You would not be able to respond as fast. You not be as comfortable and fluent in some of

those responses. But how is this any

those responses. But how is this any different from things like calculators that came before?

>> You know, you do not talk to your calculator about your feelings, about your worries, about your stresses at work. You do not go to bed with your

work. You do not go to bed with your calculator. Literally, don't wake up and

calculator. Literally, don't wake up and check your calculator first thing in the morning.

>> In her well-informed opinion, AI is a transformative technology, a quantum leap forward even from old school Googling. So in case of Google, right,

Googling. So in case of Google, right, this definitely cost to attention that was found back in 2008, 2011, changes in our working memory, short-term,

long-term memory and recall.

>> But googling still requires active mental participation. It's an aid to

mental participation. It's an aid to thought and not a replacement for it.

>> The idea there is that you'd still need to work your brain to search for that information. So you like, hey, what is

information. So you like, hey, what is this? Oh, this is about that. Okay. So,

this? Oh, this is about that. Okay. So,

you kind of need to incorporate what you are looking for, process it, analyze it, kind of pull it together in some coherent story for yourself. So, you

kind of need to work your brain, if I may say so.

>> Full disclosure, Dr. Cosmina recently joined Google as a visiting researcher, although this relationship began after the project was completed.

In contrast, LLMs like ChatGpt or even Google's Gemini do not allow you to interact with the concepts in the same way. There is no analysis, so you retain

way. There is no analysis, so you retain a lot less information. The more you actively engage with material, the better able you are to understand and to

retain it. What do we do with large

retain it. What do we do with large language models? We issue a command and

language models? We issue a command and it produces output. That's very

different than doing that directly yourself. So, we're not doing depth of

yourself. So, we're not doing depth of processing when we're using LLMs. Predictably, much of the mainstream reaction to the MIT study played up the

potentially negative implications of a world in which many of our day-to-day mental tasks are outsourced to AI.

Natalia largely considers this a classic case of confirmation bias. people seeing

what they or what their audience want to see.

>> So I'm personally very very excited for AI. The paper we released literally two

AI. The paper we released literally two weeks after this one actually does connect CH GPT and brain activity of a person literally to actually improve and

change some of the outputs. So here you go. so much for anti

go. so much for anti >> and like it or not it's already here and it's here to stay having insinuated it itself into every corner of the online world

>> we all use it we already all use it you hate it you still use it you still use it >> still her eyes are wide open to the unprecedented dangers that it might represent

>> social media is a great example of what we have already lost like the train that already left the platform social media is an excellent uh awful excellent

example in this way of things that we didn't regulate well. We missed so so much.

>> In a perfect world, the powers that be would have been ready for the challenges presented by LLMs. >> Government oversight needs to happen in

a more proactive and not reactive way, right? This is social media like why

right? This is social media like why haven't we learned anything from that example? LLMs are ultimately you would

example? LLMs are ultimately you would say on the scale are tenfold 100fold ultimately more powerful. So why that is not being taken into consideration? They

were not just released randomly in December of 2022. That product was in the making and we knew about it. So why

it's only researchers that are monitoring that?

>> Governments weren't the only ones that were caught flat-footed. For all we know, the entire higher education system could very well be on the brink of collapse.

>> I want to say the 12th of December, 2022, and I was grading exams and it's the end of the semester. Look, a

plagiarized essay normally screams its nature, right? It's it's a piece of

nature, right? It's it's a piece of crap. It's a a cobbled together document

crap. It's a a cobbled together document that shows they have no idea what they're supposed to be writing about.

This was not that, right? This was not a piece of crap. It was well written enough. Uh, it showed an excellent

enough. Uh, it showed an excellent understanding of something I expected them to understand and then just absolutely got him wrong on something else.

That's odd. That's just not a set of red flags I'd ever seen before. And I'd

heard people talking about this chat GPT thing on the internet, but I I would say broadly and in general, we had no idea what it was capable of. So I turned to

this AI thing, right? what is this? And

I played with it and eventually I came out with something that was producing verbal quirks that look very much like what this essay looked like.

>> Dr. Hick had just encountered his first example of what we now know as chat GPT hallucination.

>> I'm Darren Hick. I am associate professor of philosophy at Ferman University. In in addition to contacting

University. In in addition to contacting his school's administrators, Darren then went online and made a post, one that would ultimately be shared 17,000 times.

My first move after doing that was to then explain all this to the internet. I

thought, I've got a lot of friends on Facebook right now who are also crunching their way through essays.

There's a solid chance they're going to encounter this thing, which at that point was two weeks old. And so I thought I'll just put this out there on the internet and uh you know it sort of

pull a Paul Rivere and and say the AI is coming.

>> It was immediately obvious that academia was in for a massive challenge.

>> So I looked at all my assignments including the assignments I had coming up that next semester and it was like I had specifically written these things to

be answered by chat GPT. It screamed at me and said, "You are you are in for it.

I've thought more about teaching in the last 2 and 1/2 years than I've thought about it in the last 20."

>> Even before AI came to college campuses, many were already panicked about the contemporary state of academia.

>> I think that our students today have had a healthy dose of skepticism uh drilled into them. I would say my students now

into them. I would say my students now are more skeptical about claims that are made to them. I don't know if they have been given the same skills for actually

going and doing the research and finding out whether it was true, but I I think their skepticism is a good place to start.

>> And he believes many of them possess a genuine desire to learn.

>> I would say they're stunted. However, I

think that this is balanced out by a greatly increased curiosity and willingness to at least do a first stage of research on things that they are personally interested in without there

being a project associated with that.

So, I think we're seeing a new set of uh skills that they've self-developed, >> but in far too many cases, the world that they were born into has simply let

them down. students who were elementary

them down. students who were elementary school students and high school students during the pandemic. There uh has been a definite drop off in their preparedness

for college. We are just starting to

for college. We are just starting to work our way out of that thing, but there's some weird effects we're seeing.

It's not unusual for a student to have not read a book prior to coming to college. It's becoming more obvious.

college. It's becoming more obvious.

I'll put it that way. As helpful a tool as chat GPT is, it might be the worst thing that could happen to students.

Young people should be building up their reasoning powers by pouring mental energy into researching and writing schoolwork. And now they can just get

schoolwork. And now they can just get their own personal Jarvis to do much of it for them, skipping the reps their developing brains so desperately need.

If you think chat GBT has ruined your critical thinking skills, consider future generations who might not ever even have the chance to develop them in the first place.

We have entered truly uncharted territory, a brave new world >> here. It potentially could be a danger

>> here. It potentially could be a danger for the whole development of critical thinking. in the very beginning, right?

thinking. in the very beginning, right?

Think about it. You know, you and me were born when LLMs were not a thing, right? So, we developed the skill and

right? So, we developed the skill and ultimate skill to ask a question and also obviously have the answer, understanding the answer, having the argument, disagreeing, right? Having it

hopefully polite as a discourse, the conversation in the society. Now, think

about a child, right? We don't have right now results on any of these uses of LLMs on children. However, that is the real risk we are running here,

right? If you have been, you know,

right? If you have been, you know, taught with an LLM and there were no way of supervising it, right? We do not have actually data that would show that you

would be able to develop these critical, you know, thinking skills, skills of being in a society, in a human society and more importantly actually developing any human relationships. We don't have

this data. I'm not talking specifically

this data. I'm not talking specifically of adults who already developed them.

That's ex exactly you know already the case you have already developed it most likely you will also lose some of it but I'm talking about the base right the base skills the base understanding you

don't have base it will be very hard for you to do any maths if you don't have a base it's going to be very hard for you to build a conversation so the idea that you would not be able to pull two words

together literally and more importantly you would not be able to build real human conversations and more importantly relationships right so all of these is

can actually be really really devolving for our society and that can actually happen within one generation. So very

very fast and I'm pretty sure no one wants this you know this devolution.

>> This dark vision of the future does not seem all that far-fetched or even that far off. When OpenAI released chat GPT5,

far off. When OpenAI released chat GPT5, many people complained, not because AI was stealing their jobs, but because they felt that OpenAI was taking away

their friend. The GPT5 model was

their friend. The GPT5 model was designed to be less friendly and the outrage was so much that Open AI had to reopen access to the older models because people were already too

emotionally attached to it. It was so bad that Sam Alman had to make a statement that the parasocial bonds people were forming with Chad GBT was a

pretty bad idea and was moved to make an online statement detailing his discomfort with these parasocial bonds.

The statement seemingly alluded to some deeply disturbing incidents that have recently been making headlines.

Removing companion mode for the time being was a well-advised precaution, but it was only a band-aid. With a few tweaks, it might well be back for

version 6.0. And even if it's not, as we

version 6.0. And even if it's not, as we all know, where there is demand, supply will inevitably present itself. If Open

AI won't provide virtual companions, then their competitors will. As we

reckon with a world in which humankind struggles to find the common ground of a agreed upon truth, are we already moving into a new one in which humans no longer

seek to connect with each other at all.

So that's where we are. Collapsing IQ's,

compromised critical thinking skills, insufficient attention spans, the embrace of ignorance coupled with opportunistic leaders stoking the flames of stupidity.

All of which is supercharged by information distributing systems that discourage deep thought and further alienate us from one another. It all

sounds pretty dark. In the city of Trent, Italy in 1475, uh, a 2-year-old child has gone missing and without evidence, a Franciscan preacher named

Bernardo Dealtra seized the opportunity to spread anti-Semitic hate, accusing the local Jewish population of unaliving the child and drinking its blood.

Moving swiftly and decisively, the Pope denounces the story, but he's completely ignored. A local politician orders a

ignored. A local politician orders a roundup of the entire city's Jewish population. Dozens are tortured. 15 of

population. Dozens are tortured. 15 of

them are burned at the stake. And all

the while, the Pope, traditionally held up as the messenger of God's will on earth and an authority on the level of kings is helpless to stop the madness.

Why? 40 years earlier in Germany, Johannes Gutenberg had invented the printing press. Almost overnight,

printing press. Almost overnight, sensational handills became ubiquitous throughout Europe. Propagandists

throughout Europe. Propagandists competed to see who could spread the most effective gossip, hearsay, and slander.

Local populations were intoxicated by the steady stream of inflammatory content. Distrust of powerful figures

content. Distrust of powerful figures like the Pope, who had previously controlled the flow of information from the top down and abused their power at the expense of the peasantry, made

common people all too eager to believe alternative facts that fed into their worst prejudices.

Too few were able to truly comprehend that just because something was printed on a piece of paper did not mean it necessarily contained the truth.

Now, after I've said all of that, does it sound familiar at all? Political

influencers are the modern analog of the authors of these inflammatory hand bills. No one really knows what happened

bills. No one really knows what happened to that abducted child. The only

certainty is that Father Feltra's hateful accusations weren't true. And

yet the child named Simonino was canonized as a martyr of the Christian faith at the hand of bloodthirsty infidels. He remains a saint to this

infidels. He remains a saint to this day, over 500 years later. Proof that

fake news can sometimes have real staying power. But here's the silver

staying power. But here's the silver lining. This whole episode was arguably

lining. This whole episode was arguably the darkness before the dawn. While

Goodutenberg's printing press supercharged the dissemination of dodgy info, it also helped spread new religious and philosophical ideas previously unavailable to the common

man. No medium of communicating

man. No medium of communicating information is inherently good or bad.

It's just what we make of it. And

ultimately, Gutenberg's printing press is mostly associated with the good it did and the movement that it enabled.

That's the kind of movement we could use right now. A new enlightenment.

right now. A new enlightenment.

Considering that this is a video about stupidity, it's pretty dumb that we've made it this far without establishing what stupidity actually is.

You see, the thing with stupidity is that it's very easy to spot, but it's actually pretty hard to define.

For one thing, stupidity is not the same thing as ignorance. Ignorance means you don't know things, or at least not yet.

Stupidity means you aren't able to learn or you simply don't want to. French

philosopher Christian God puts several fine points on what stupidity is and is not. He notes that stupidity avoids and

not. He notes that stupidity avoids and distrusts complexity. As soon as an

distrusts complexity. As soon as an explanation becomes complicated or counterintuitive, you can see the stupid person become frustrated and shut off.

It's why phrases like sa bow, shut your ass up. Just put the fries in the

ass up. Just put the fries in the bag, bro. Or, "It's not that deep," are

bag, bro. Or, "It's not that deep," are now more popular than ever. No one wants to engage in critical thinking or any sort of complex discussion. Stupidity

dislikes change in the unfamiliar. It

puts faith in stability and what it knows and views the unknown with suspicion, derision, and fear. When

confronted with disagreement, stupidity resorts to mockery. Stupidity finds

comfort in blindly following rules and sticking with herd mentality. God also

notes that very few people think they're stupid and indeed that being blind to one's shortcomings is an easy tell that someone lacks true intelligence.

Swedish professor Sarah Spulchra agrees pointing out that paradoxically feeling stupid can often be a sign of intelligence. Uh many stupid people

intelligence. Uh many stupid people assume that they have everything figured out. Smart people are aware of the holes

out. Smart people are aware of the holes in their knowledge and rather than feeling insecure and threatened because of them are motivated to fix them and

overcome them. Uh no one knows

overcome them. Uh no one knows everything and and no one holds the correct opinion on every issue large or small. One of the smartest things you

small. One of the smartest things you can do is to maintain the humility to accept that everyone, including, yes, ourselves,

is stupid in some way. A 2015 study of everyday instances of stupidity assigned the highest order of stupidity to what you might call confident ignorance.

Believing that you are the smartest person in the room and acting on that belief, revealing yourself to be the dumbest. Here's an example. A thief who

dumbest. Here's an example. A thief who cleverly hatched a plot to steal a bunch of GPS devices.

This link between high confidence and being blissfully unaware of one's own ignorance leads to what is known as the Dunning Krueger effect, which explains the dumbest voice in the room is often

the loudest. It also calls to mind the

the loudest. It also calls to mind the political philosopher Makaveli who preached that a strong and charismatic leader who speaks in grandiose and simple statements is likely to

outmaneuver a more intelligent and likely more qualified rival for the simple reason that intelligence often leads to caution and self-doubt even

when well warranted and less bold action. In looking at our current

action. In looking at our current geopolitical landscape, do those words remind you of anyone?

Perhaps in some small ways, the tide against ignorance and unfettered distraction is already turning. The

first step in fixing a problem is always simply recognizing and acknowledging that it exists.

If it sometimes feels less like you own a phone and more that your phone owns you, Dr. Mark encourages you to fight the good fight.

>> People, we're not just mere pawns, you know. I believe that people can take

know. I believe that people can take agency to take back their attention. Uh

it takes work.

>> There's a real cost to the time that we spend and honestly waste online.

So the time that you're spending on social media, right? And maybe it depends on the person, but a lot of people don't feel very fulfilled when they go on social media. But after

they're off, they say, "Wait, what did I just look at for the last 30 minutes?"

But there's an opportunity cost because we could instead spend that time reading something that's a lot more powerful and

inspiring. Getting immersed in a book.

inspiring. Getting immersed in a book.

Immersion is is such a powerful mechanism. And you know when you think

mechanism. And you know when you think back to when you've read a book that just captured your attention so much and

after reading it, it wasn't lost on you, right? It stays with you because it

right? It stays with you because it affected you in some way. So I think we should be thinking about replacing time spent with something that doesn't

provide value with some other activity that does. Luckily, as our society's

that does. Luckily, as our society's leading expert on the subject, Dr. Mark has some practical advice for how to reclaim and restore your ability to

focus and cut your personal attention deficit.

>> All right. So, what what can people do?

So, a notification on your screen that's creates an automatic response to look at that blinking notification. I might

click on it automatically.

So, what can we do about that? Well, one

thing we can do is to raise these automatic actions to a more conscious awareness. I call this meta awareness,

awareness. I call this meta awareness, which means probing yourself to become more aware of the things you're doing.

So, every time I have an urge to go to read the news, I'll stop myself and I'll probe myself. Do I have to read it right

probe myself. Do I have to read it right now? Why do I have to read it? Usually,

now? Why do I have to read it? Usually,

it's because I'm procrastinating or I'm curious or I'm bored. But that question causes me to reflect. It makes me more

conscious of my actions. When you're

more conscious, you can be more intentional. When you're more

intentional. When you're more intentional, you can form a plan. And

so, my plan might be, okay, I'm going to work 20 more minutes and then I'm going to take a break.

Next, stop setting unrealistic expectations for yourself. Pace yourself

and realize that breaks aren't a bad thing.

>> Another thing we can do is to take more breaks. When our minds are fatigued,

breaks. When our minds are fatigued, executive function becomes fatigued and we become even more susceptible to distractions. So by taking breaks, it

distractions. So by taking breaks, it can help us replenish our cognitive resources, helps our executive function, you know, kind of get back up to speed.

>> And finally, >> another thing we can do is to be aware of our attentional rhythms. What what do

I mean by that? So we've studied people throughout the day and we find that there are peaks and valleys of when people are focused. It's very easy to

figure out when your attentional peaks are. Are you in an early type, a late

are. Are you in an early type, a late type? Uh you can also just keep a a

type? Uh you can also just keep a a simple journal. And what you can do is

simple journal. And what you can do is to plan your day in terms of putting the hardest work that has to be done to do

it at those times when your attention will be at its peak. And don't waste that time doing uh doing email or going

on social media. Reserve that time.

>> By this point, society is aware that change is needed. Most Americans support at least some limits on the use of smartphones in school. And almost half

of us believe much of the information we encounter online is likely false. Even

more admit to difficulty in distinguishing online fact from fiction.

Furthermore, four out of five people agree that we urgently need a more effective way of managing and filtering online information to differentiate

between fact and fantasy.

In the face of vast and powerful irrational forces, what we believe or choose to believe matters. It's not just about likes and followers. There are

real life implications.

You know, tornadoes don't care if you believe in them or not. They're going to level your house anyway, right?

Pathogens don't care if you believe in them or not. You're going to get sick.

You do need consensus reality. You do

need that ability to come together and say, "We all agree that this data is accurate. We all agree that that these

accurate. We all agree that that these experts are processing it accurately and correctly." And we don't have that now.

correctly." And we don't have that now.

And that is what I think is dangerous.

Hopefully, as we collectively realize that the internet information ecosystem is not serving us, either it will evolve or we will evolve and look elsewhere.

There is some evidence that traditional institutions of information and expertise are belatedly wising up and realizing that they need to combat bad information and bad actors on their own

terms and on the modern battlefield. the

idea that you're going to continue to communicate the way you did in the era of top down broadcast era press conferences like no it's not going to work. This is the era that we're in now.

work. This is the era that we're in now.

Adapt to the era that we're in now and move forward. You would see the

move forward. You would see the institutions and um public health officials put out, you know, these very boring fact sheets and they wouldn't speak in stories, they wouldn't use

memes. They wouldn't really do very much

memes. They wouldn't really do very much that was designed to go viral. Uh they

wouldn't engage with influencers. Now

you're starting to see a rise of a whole lot of physicians who are speaking as influencers themselves who have now, you know, a million followers who are out there saying, "We're going to put out

content." When a government speaker

content." When a government speaker who's not giving accurate information says something, we're going to counter it. We're going to put out good

it. We're going to put out good information and we're going to do it in a way that goes viral so that other people can share it.

>> It can be easy to be intimidated by the prospect of ever more powerful artificial intelligence. Dr. Cosmina

artificial intelligence. Dr. Cosmina reminds us that the AI revolution is still in its infancy.

>> But there are new tools like LLMs are a thing of the past so to say. I know it's crazy when I'm saying that, but you have new ones that are coming like you have robotics, but then you will have neural

computing. You will have BCIs. Are we

computing. You will have BCIs. Are we

ready for robotics? Are we ready for BCIs? We are not. So what why is it so?

BCIs? We are not. So what why is it so?

Is it because oh this is this is the thing in in in 30 years? No, it's not in 30 years and it's not even in 10 years.

It's in 2, 3, and five.

>> For all the talk of chat GPT brain rot and machine learning eliminating human careers, AI has undoubtedly already changed many of our lives for the

better, handling the menial and mundane mental chores from which we derive no satisfaction.

But what else will it become?

Many fear AI will someday surpass and render unnecessary mankind's more elevated pursuits. Perhaps it will make

elevated pursuits. Perhaps it will make human created art look primitive and uninspired. But if history is any guide,

uninspired. But if history is any guide, it will just as likely provide us with tools to take our own creative expression to new heights. Just as

cameras, digital musical instruments, and so many other innovations, each derided as the death of human art on their arrival did in the past. We hold

the keys. We are the drivers. Each of us votes for the kind of world that we want to live in with every click and keystroke.

Far-fetched dystopian fantasies aside, artificial intelligence will likely only become as helpful or destructive as we human beings allow it to be through the

choices about when and how we use it and allow our children to use it. Likewise,

we hold the keys to the intellectual future of our species.

The phrase doing your own research has come to function as shorthand for the worldview of people who are hostile to actual facts.

>> I think a lot of the times that phrase has come to mean I googled for the things that I already wanted to believe.

That's where you get into trouble.

Right? When that turns into a reflexive contrarian distrust for every institution out there, that's where I think you start to have some problems. But ironically, a big part of the

solution to the problems that we collectively face lies in our collective willingness and ability to do our own research, only to do it the right way.

And we have the tools at our disposal to help us in that pursuit that would have seemed like sci-fi futurism to our forefathers, the very same ones that so

many of us fear. And I think that having that humility and saying there are people who know a lot more than me on this topic and I can do my own research meaning I can go I can go and I can pull

down papers. I can upload them to chat

down papers. I can upload them to chat GPT if I want to now and I can ask it to you know in thinking mode like help process a paper. I can ask it in deep research mode for more recommendations.

You know there's different ways that you can use certain types of tools to go deeper into research. Now,

>> it's time to collectively prioritize seeking actual information over sensationalized sound bites. Rather than

seeking out evidence to confirm our existing convictions, to go get out of our own bubbles, question received wisdom and group think, and to remain

humble and brave enough that we are prepared to revise our own beliefs and opinions when confronted with compelling evidence to the contrary. The time has

come to make our devices work for us again, rather than giving them an endless amount of our time and attention and making slaves of ourselves.

The time has come for us to pick and choose what screens are good for and when to shut them down, to do some mental heavy lifting, and to earn the

deep soul satisfaction that can never come from outsourcing a task to a chatbot.

The time has come now for all of us to get smart.