Scrolling away our genius
"We live in an era where a motivated 12-year-old can learn the basics of woodcraft, programming, or how to bake bread that would rival world-class bakeries. They can master nearly any mechanical system or any number of technical or artistic vocations, even if no mentor lives nearby. The limit is no longer some teacher or institution but a child’s own patience and interest, as well as the interested support of the parents."
Why is it that we are producing less and less Einstein's?
I argue it's because of the abundance of dopamine that is accessible 24/7 on a device that is used by everyone. Why would a young child decide to work through hard problems like learning how to make a video game when they can scroll TikTok or Instagram and get the same nuelogical result? The brain doesn't know the difference between dopamine from scrolling and dopamine from hard work, it will just crave whatever is the least path to resistance. Boredom is no longer a thing, and that's the core issue, because boredom is what created Einstein, Feynman, Tesla, etc. Imagine if they had these abundant algorithms at their fingertips, they likely wouldn't turn out to be Einstein, Feynman, and Tesla.
Not only do these algorithms distract curious children from doing valuable learning at a young age, but they also compoundingly emparing their agency, their cognitive functions, their focus (study: addiction to short-form videos reduces brain activity in the frontal lobe weakening the ability to focus), etc. This is true of adults, but even more true of children, because these are their formative years. By the time they are an adult, their cognitive functions are so reliant on these insane algorithms that they are truly addicted to them, in a way that is order of magnitudes stronger than an alcoholics addiction to alcohol.
Modern algorithms are poisoning society.